《Nova Wars》


 Prologue

    The ship was burning, flames consuming the hull, fiery explosions blenching from the ruptured bulkheads and armor with red and orange fists. There was only two of the nine engines still working, four of the others twisted wreckage, the other three actively burning. The engines were fluttering, putting out power sporadically, causing the ship to tumble in space along one axis, the explosions detonating from the hull causing it to rotate on the other three axis relative to the system equator.


    The ship was actively burning.


    Which was odd, seeing as the heavy battleship was in the vacuum of space.


    Admiral of the Lower Decks (Copper) M''Lert


    stared at the holotank the heavy battleship was projected in. His staff was around him, all staring at the burning ship.


    "Any ID?" Commodore Wrawkat asked, rubbing her shoulder with her off hand.


    Technical Specialist Grade-Six Uk-Nulk-Tulk looked up from his scanner. "Ornislarp Heavy Battleship, their categorization, no ID off of it but it looks fairly modern."


    "That''s why we got a flashgate signal," Commodore Wrawkat mused. She hummed, a musical sound typical of a thinking Rigellian Female.


    The ship was shaped like a pumpkin seed, point end forward, with the engines across the back. Weapons were still hidden beneath the hull, the whole ship smooth and unblemished.


    Except for the fire, explosions, and huge holes in it.


    "Any idea what hit them?" the Admiral asked. "Why they flashgated here? We''re over twelve hundred light years from their nearest border?"


    "No answers at this time, sir," Lieutenant Hregeth, NAVINT specialist, said from his station. "Whatever hit it took out its transponder and Ornislarp vessels all look the same. Its drive signatures aren''t on record."


    On the holotank one of the engines exploded silently and more fire spread from the detonation.


    "Antimatter reaction?" someone guessed.


    "Not in vacuum. The hull shouldn''t be actively burning," Hregeth said. He stood up from his station and moved over to the holotank. "How is it burning in vacuum?"


    Wrawkat stared at the ship for a long moment. "Do we have a visual drone at the light speed distance to visually observe the ship flashgating into the system?"


    Sensor Technician Brav<klik>Nak''ik nodded. "Moving feed to holotank six."


    The Admiral turned to watch, keeping the burning ship in the vision of his right compound eye.


    There was nothing but stars for a few seconds. Then a rectangle opened up in space.


    Normally a flashgate opened in space would only show space beyond and the only way of detecting it was the energy pulse or if a scanner noticed the change in star patterns.


    Beyond the flashgate was a burning orb, a skull wreathed in purple and black flames with white edging. Ships were exploding, some were burning, beyond the gate. Heavy naval battlescreens were flickering, strobing, and pulsing. Beams and streaks filled space beyond.


    The single unmarred ship lunged for the flashgate, engines at full power and leaving a trail of energetic particles behind it as it accelerated at maximum power. The hull suddenly exploded outward in four places. Purple cored beams, with white energy spiraling around the core, lashed out and touched the hull of the ship in two places.


    The hull exploded in flame.


    Soundlessly, the ship slid through the gate, one more explosion gouting out from beneath it. It started to tumble as the flashgate suddenly winked out of existence.


    "Have a transponder code," Tech-6 Brav stated. "Ornislap Combined Species Dominion Heavy Battleship," the kobold tech paused for a moment, blinking his large eyes, the tip of his tail tapping the deck. "It''s a Ornislap name, about a dozen words. It''s the Imperial Ornislap Might and Glory Vessel of His Undying Imperial Majesty''s Will and Glory Passed Through His Descendents Mailed Fist of Fate and Fury."


    The Admiral gave a grinding ''chuckle'', rubbing the grinding plates in his mouth together as he folded his bladearms behind his back, resting them on top of the emergency vacsuit pack on the back of his upper thorax belt.


    "Tab it as the Ornislap Imperial Fate and Fury for the records," he stated.


    "Aye, sir," the Tech said.


    "What hit it?" Commodore Wrakat asked again, shaking her head. "I''m familiar with C+ cannons, but the Ornislap are just like everyone else and keep a short range hyperspace interdiction gravity shadow generator on their ships to prevent the C+ round from impacting inside the ship."


    The Admiral nodded. "Ornislap shields should have been able to take a couple of hits from a heavy C+ cannon shell."


    "Sir," one of the techs said, a slight bellows wheeze to his speech. The Admiral turned and faced the tech, a Lanaktallan by species.


    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    "Yes, Lieutenant?" the Admiral asked.


    "There is an alarming piece of visual evidence," the Lanaktallan said. He held up two fingers. "Records are spotty, from the Confederate/Council Conflict, but I recognized it from a docudrama I''ve been watching from that era."


    The Admiral nodded, used to the Lanaktallan mode of speech. "Go on."


    The Lanaktallan, one Senz''armo''o, tapped a few keys, bringing up Holotank Two. The docudrama''s title showed, then Senz''armo''o sped through much of the data.


    The Admiral watched the ship continue to burn. Something imploded inside the ship and a large crater was full of fire and sprays of molten metal.


    "There," Senz''armo''o said.


    In the holotank was an image of a supermassive gas giant burning. From inside the gas giant a giant skull had pushed through the flames, belching fire from its jaws. Next to it was the image taken from the flashgate data. Finally, an image of a mostly hairless biped was put in the holotank, with a view of how the endoskeleton skull appeared without the flesh.


    They closely matched. Colors were different, the exact design of the skull was different, but it was unmistakable.


    The identifier on the biped was unmistakable. The species was extinct, but still unmistakable.


    A Terran Descent Human.


    Inside the burning gas giant was a screaming Terran skull.


    The Admiral stared, feeling his ichor go prickly. He carefully removed a pack of cigarettes from his uniform top pocket, putting the self-lighting smoke in his mandibles and puffing on it to start the reaction to light the cigarette.


    There were a few vocalizations of shock, dismay, or disbelief.


    "And this," Senz''armo''o stated. He opened another pair of windows. One of the burning Ornislap ship, the other of the docodrama again. Again the Lanaktallan officer sped through several hours of footage before rewinding and slowing down.


    Ships were exploding, the debris on fire as it tumbled through the vacuum of space.


    "Weapons from the Confederacy/Council Conflict and the Second Precursor War," Senz''armo''o stated.


    "Obsolete weaponry," a Wel


    Nwik analyst said. "That was tens of thousands of years ago."


    Senz''armo''o inflated and deflated the crests on his neck as well as the ones on his upper and lower torsos in an approximation of a shrug. "Perhaps. But it fits the appearance."


    The Admiral watched as the spaceship suddenly exploded, leaving burning pieces tumbling through the vacuum. He turned away. "Put Task Force Singing Greenie on Threat Level Two. Rotate shifts now," he stated, puffing out smoke rings from around his feet. "Any lifeboats or escape pods?"


    He got nothing back but negatives.


    "Senior Staff, my conference room," Admiral M''Lert


    stated, heading for the exit of the flag bridge.


    -----


    The room stank of stress, stale cigarettes, and pheromones from five different species.


    "How long till we are in range of a working ansible?" Admiral M''Lert


    asked. He was sitting in a comfortable rotating back chair, staring at a simple copper coin that he was tapping with the tip of one bladearm. The big Treana''ad was at a table with his senior staff and planning sections.


    "Eight days," Commodore Shrenstill, another Rigellian Female, said softly. She looked at the hologram still sitting in the holofield in the middle of the table, then looked down. "The Task Force is moving at max speed."


    The Admiral just nodded, still tapping the copper coin.


    "We dropped message torpedoes in the last two systems we dropped into," Commodore Vrenthally stated. "Heading for either Fleet Command or Confederate Military Command, as well as the nearest ansible equipped systems."


    M''Lert


    looked at the hologram in the middle of the table.


    The burning gas giant hung silently in the high definition holofield.


    "Could they really be back?" he asked the question that he knew was on everyone''s minds and that would be racing through the lower decks and the enlisted''s rumor mill.


    "It''s been nearly forty-thousand years," Commodore Frentrik stated. He tapped his clawed fingers on the table. "There''s been the odd sighting here and there, but they are all either unconfirmed or have not been able to repeated or verified."


    M''Lert


    nodded.


    There was the distinct feeling of the ship dropping from the mid-level hyperspace bands in a crash translation. He could hear the compensators howl even though they were hundreds of meters awar and M''Lert


    frowned.


    "We aren''t scheduled to leave hyperspace for at least sixteen more hours," he stated. "Anyone?"


    All he got back were the equivalent of shrugs and negatives.


    His comlink buzzed and he picked it up off the table. "Admiral M''Lert


    here."


    "Sir, we need to patch you in to see this," the XO stated, his normally calm voice tight.


    "Why did we leave hyperspace?" M''Lert


    asked.


    "We hit a grav shadow that just materialized. The size of a supermassive gas giant," the XO stated.


    "Patch it through. What is it?" M''Lert


    asked.


    "We''re not sure," the XO stated.


    The holoemitter buzzed and changed.


    A massive spaceship hung in the holofield. It was intact, its hull bore silent witness to a fierce battle in the past. Armor was cratered, gouged, slagged and warped. There were visible holes hammered into the superstructure in more than one place. There were the mountings for forty engines, but over half were nothing more than twisted wreckage. Flight bays on the sides were open to space and more than a few were nothing more than craters or outcroppings of twisted metal wrenched away from the hull by an outgoing explosion. The ships was dead, dark, no lights or signals. The engines were dark and cold as it drifted.


    The data streamed up. Warsteel Mark One hull. 123 terratonnes. Confederate naval markings.


    "It''s broadcasting. Old Confederate standard," the XO said. We''re patching it through now.


    The speakers popped and hissed.


    Admiral M''Lert


    opened his mouth to speak.


    -----


    Task Force Singing Greenie had dropped sixteen message torpedoes with four different destinations.


    None of them managed to reach the destinations.


    In its final moments, the entire Task Force launched fifteen message torpedoes.


    One of them reached the destinations.


    -----


    "It''s from Task Force Singing Greenie," Commodore Telk-nak-Awk stated.


    Admiral of the Upper Decks (Iron) Rhon Vastun nodded.


    "They are nearly two years overdue, considered lost with all hands. Back tracking their last known locations gave no clue as to what happened to them," the Commodore stated.


    Again, Admiral Vastun just nodded.


    "This arrived in-system fifty-three hours ago, broadcasting Singing Greenie''s header," the Commodore pointed at the holotank where the image of a scorched and damaged message torpedo hung in the glimmering holofield. "It''s a ''catastrophic failure'' torpedo, that launches if the vessel is severely damaged or otherwise crippled. It contains the logs of the vessel, and if possible, the entire task force."


    "What did it contain?" the Admiral asked.


    "The memory contents were severely degraded. Most of it was scrambled. But we managed to get a fragment of a transmission recording taken by the flagship and loaded into the message torpedo," the Commoder continued. He reached out and touched an icon.


    There was a hissing and a popping noise, then the recording played.


    ...Yorktown, we read life signs. Do you read? We have you on visual and are in shuttle range. Do you read?...

 Nova Wars - Chapter One

    At 1.33 meters, Hetmwit was a Pagrik of unremarkable size, with brown colored fur that blended in with others of his kind in an unremarkable way. His eyes were wide and brown, showing neither advanced intelligence or abject stupidity. His ears, at the back of his head and lifted slightly, were neither too droopy nor too stiff. His legs and arms were neither too muscular nor too slender. He was unremarkable in word or deed.


    Which made it always amusing to him that he had been conscripted.


    In initial training, he neither excelled nor failed. He was one of the faceless masses that passes through military entry training, with an unimpressive job even to his fellow conscripts. His first posting was neither hardship nor luxury, no different than a civilian job with a dress code and mandatory fitness regulations. He was so unimpressive that twice his superiors forgot about him. Once, he had been left off of the training schedule for nearly two months. He showed up anyway, but nobody really took notice. The second time, his commander was unsure who the change of duty station orders were for and his immediate supervisors were convinced it was a paperwork mistake until Hetmwit overheard them speaking and informed them that he was the one in question.


    To which, his supervisors answered: Which unit are you in?


    Even to his roommates he was forgettable. More than once, while he was present, his roommates were asked "What happened to that one troop that was your roommate" and hard the response "No clue. Guess he got orders."


    Being of middling ability and mind, he was not offended, just merely accepted that he was nobody of any importance.


    Which fitted him just fine. He had seen that those who were unimportant and poorly skilled and trained, with substandard intellect, never prevailed and were often tossed aside.


    Those who stood out due to high skills, intellect, or whatever, often found themselves put in dangerous situations, with unrealistic expectations.


    Planning, Hetmwit decided he would stay in the military of the Olipnat Concordiant until he reaching about the middle term of service for retirement. Not the bare minimum, the benefits, to his reasoning, were not justified for that amount of time. The maximum seemed, to Hetmwit, as if he would be too old to enjoy all the perks and bonuses.


    His job, robotic systems maintenance and service, was important enough that he was always needed, but not so urgent and vitally necessary that he was requested for things that might be too dangerous.


    Hetmwit had no desire to be too important. That was for important people.


    He did not envy the power armor pilots, the warmek pilots, the infantry, the armored vehicle crews. He did not hold in disdain those who just did paperwork or did the small jobs that kept the military running and functioning.


    He just maintained and repaired the robotic servitors and systems, ate his meals, did standard correspondence courses, took care of his physical fitness, and spent time with his fellow troops, even if they did forget who he was quite often.


    When his orders came through moving him from a planet-side station on a perfectly unremarkable planet among the thousand plus systems of the Olipnat Concordiant he was not worried. He looked up the duty station.


    An unremarkable ship in the middle tonnage range with an unimpressive pedigree. It had been in battles, but without any notable distinction or any distinctive fleet actions. A quick check of records available to someone of his middling security clearance showed that the ship suffered very few casualties, even in war.


    Hetmwit nodded. This was nothing new. Just one more unremarkable posting that would allow him to mark off five unremarkable years on the calendar, which would push him over the middle of his planned time of service.


    [The Universe Giggled at That]


    Of course, his certifications needed re-certified by certified certification accredited certifiers. After all, it took three times for him to be able to file the proper paperwork, since the first time the clerk promptly forgot what the paperwork was for and erased it, the second time the system tossed back that there was no such service member. The third time got him an almost immediate school date, since one of the more unremarkable schools, that churned out faceless trainees, had just had several openings appear due to a minor funding increase on a minor spending bill that had almost gone unnoticed.


    Although no party or celebration was had when it came time for him to leave, nor did he receive an award, certificate, or other sign of appreciation, the fact that the shippers remembered to come get his personal effects to move them to his next duty station was gratifying.


    His time in school was uneventful. He neither failed to perform or overperformed. Several members of his class set test records and other such things and were awarded and lauded for their skill, intelligence, and innovativeness.


    To Hetmwit, those beings were welcome to such things.


    There was some confusion about how he could have served nearly thirteen years, ''Olipnat Standard'' in the Olipnat Concordiant Military without gathering a single award beyond ones that the computer systems awarded automatically for time in service and/or time in grade or for attending certain schools or meeting basic qualification standards.


    With a shrug, Hetmwit found those who were curious lost interest between one breath and the next.


    Which was fine with him.


    The trip to the unremarkable system housing a generic standard military space station was uneventful. The space station looked just like every other space station, after all the Olipnat Concordiant considered their mastery of standardization to be their greatest strength. The ship looked like every other middle-tonnage ship. Neither a dedicated ship of the line nor a support ship, it was a blend of both, designed to perform a myriad of tasks, just none of them exceptionally well.


    Most of his fellow troops were welcomed by their leadership.


    Everyone left and Hetmwit found himself standing in the space station''s welcome area for nearly an hour before an overstressed private ran up, panting, to see if it had been a paperwork error that there was twenty-three incoming troops or if someone had been left behind.


    Hetmwit was asked if he knew of anyone who came in on the recent shuttle that was military.


    As he stood there in dress uniform, which was the only authorized uniform for travel.


    With his paperwork in one hand and his duty satchel in the other.


    "Yes," Hetmwit stated.


    "Great! Where are they? Do you know where they went?" the private asked, looking around the bay.


    "Yes. It is me," Hetmwit said.


    This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    The private stared at him with some suspicion. Hetmwit handed the private his orders. The private looked at them, blinked several times, then looked up.


    Hetmwit was already holding out his identification smartcard.


    The private looked between the smartcard, the paperwork, and Hetmwit''s face several times.


    "Oh. Guess it is you," the private said.


    Hetmwit was used to this experience so he just nodded.


    The private led him to the briefing. The officer at the front of the room asked the private if he had found the missing trooper. The private turned around and waved in Hetmwit''s general direction, saying that Hetmwit was ''over there somewhere.''


    Keeping his mouth shut, Hetmwit sat down and listened to the briefing where they tried to make a boring multi-function multi-role multi-objective starship sound exciting and the duty station sound like the most important duty station since the Jeskek Nebula Chokepoint Station. The ship was equipped with multi-role in and out of atmosphere aerospace strikers, multi-use dropships and drop-pods, multi-use missile systems, close, medium, and long range weaponry. It had highly trained marines that were proficient in a multitude of roles. It was capable of operating independently as well as part of a task force. Everyone around him seemed excited at being aboard a ship like that, and even more excited that it had just undergone refit.


    During the briefing, Hetmwit just listened. He had learned long ago that any question he would think up, someone more clever than him would think up before he could and ask it.


    Then came assignment of sleeping stations, duty stations, and onboard gear.


    Hetmwit found himself tucked in an odd stateroom down by the main robotics fabrication and repair station. Obviously intended for an officer, it was too near some type of critical machinery that Hetmwit had no idea about, so the room had a soft hum all the time.


    It didn''t bother Hetmwit.


    He had a room to himself that was actually spacious enough that the desk, wardrobe, bed, table, and chair didn''t fold into the wall but instead was just bolted to the floor. He even had a shelf for datapads and paperwork!


    And his own private bathroom, complete with a sonic fresher station and an actual lit mirror.


    Funny thing was, the door didn''t have a label and an oddity of the ship architecture made it so that the door was nearly hidden, the button to open it half-hidden behind a pipe.


    Still, Hetmwit didn''t mind. He simply did his job at a steady pace, without any surprises, failures, or triumphs.


    More than a few times he heard some of his fellow machinists and robotic maintenance and repair specialists wonder just how some of the robots were being repaired.


    Once while he was even working on the robot.


    [The Universe Smirked at That]


    There was even the incident where the mess chief and the atmospherics chief were sure that there was an error in the system or a stowaway, since there was missing mass.


    After three full accountability formations and two shipwide searches, they just gave up.


    It had been something that Hetmwit had learned in his adolescence, not to try to speak up and tell them that their count was off because of him. It was always denied and lightly mocked, then everyone forgot.


    A more inspired or motivated being might have taken advantage of their status, in Hetmwit''s position, to run criminal scams, but Hetmwit was a basically decent sort. He routinely passed by opportunities to enrich himself at the expense of others or by breaking the law. He avoided get-rich-quick schemes.


    He was simply content.


    After a few months, during which he made friends as best as he was able for a person that others often forgot about while he was speaking to them, the ship was assigned its mission.


    A long range scouting mission, further up the galactic arm, further toward the middle of the galactic arm, away from the galactic core. The ship, which had the impressive name of The Star of Jurakak, the Olipnat Concordiant''s primary shipyard, would be jumping from star system to star system. There, they would do an initial exploration scan on the system, take on mass from the gas giants and/or refine what they needed from comets and asteroids, then move on.


    A solitary mission! Everyone was excited.


    Hetmwit knew it would be uneventful, just like his entire life.


    [The Universe Snickered at That]


    Sixteen star systems and thirty-two weeks later, Hetmwit found himself drinking with several of the Marines and a few other military members. The alcohol was mid-grade, run off of a hidden distiller behind the officer''s backs, but it did the job.


    Excitement had turned to boredom and Hetmwit sat and listened as the Marines complained that nothing was going to happen and his fellow military members complained that nothing would happen.


    After a few hours of drinking and politely listening, Hetmwit was buzzed and made his apologies before leaving and heading for his room. He carefully undressed, folded his off-duty uniform up and put it in his laundry bag at the end of his bed, and hit the fresher. When he came out, rubbing his fur with his vestigal claws, he got in bed and went to sleep.


    Confident that the next day would be like every other day.


    When he woke up he blinked in confusion.


    Something was off.


    The lights came on with a simple verbal command. He got up and looked around his room.


    Everything was in place.


    The lights seemed a little dim, but that wasn''t it.


    It wasn''t until he was dressed that he realized what it was.


    The hum was gone.


    Curious, he went out into the hallway.


    Starships are never completely silent. There''s always the sound of a pump, the banging of equipment, the noise of voices and movement. The hallways are always clean and scrubbed, brightly lit.


    The lights were dim.


    "Hello?" Hetmwit called out.


    No answer.


    He moved over to the nearest intercom and pressed the button. Not the red or yellow one. The green one for normal calls.


    After a few tries he moved to pressing the yellow one.


    Then the red one.


    No answer.


    Not even the computer or the virtual intelligence.


    His room was near both the standard enlisted shipboard troops and the highly trained Marines. He shrugged and tried the Marines first.


    Their bay was empty. Their rooms were empty.


    Their gear was there. Clothing folded up neatly. Boots highly shined. Hats hung up. Beds made to mathematical precision.


    His calls went unanswered. Both voice and with the intercom.


    He moved from the Marines to the shipboard troops.


    He found the same.


    Frowning, he made his way to what everyone called ''officer country'' and checked in those rooms.


    Everything was ready for inspection. Everything folded, put away, stacked, racked, and packed.


    The ship was still silent.


    He checked his place of duty.


    It was empty. Just the robots.


    Shrugging, he looked at the duty roster. He was two hours early for work, but he didn''t see anyone else working, so he logged in and worked, slowly clearing the task list. Twice he went to the mess, but nobody was there. The automat worked and he got his meals, even though half the time the machines didn''t deduct the cost from his separate rations budget.


    After some time, Hetmwit decided that perhaps he should check other places.


    Damage Control Center. Empty.


    Troop bays. Empty.


    Gunnery Positions. Empty.


    Flight Bays. Empty.


    The ships were there, the lean and lethal strikers, the clunky and square dropships.


    But nobody else was.


    Here and there robots were working, doing maintenance.


    But the ship was strangely silent.


    Eventually, he made his way to the bridge. Even though he wasn''t authorized to be on the bridge, the doors opened after the third try, the limited computer system error checking determining that perhaps it was a maintenance check and opening the door despite not seeing anyone there.


    The bridge was empty. The consoles and counters perfectly clean. The monitors were dark, the consoles silent and unpowered. The forward screens and holotanks were unpowered.


    A slight smile on his face, Hetmwit sat down in the Captain''s Throne and looked around.


    The effect was lost without any witnesses, so he got back up, unable to think of anything snazzy to say.


    After a bit he walked to the main computer operations center. The doors opened after a few presses on the button and he moved inside one of the most secure areas on any starship.


    It was empty.


    The computer server racks were all dark. The robots slumped or stilled.


    To Hetmwit, that explained why he wasn''t getting any more tasks and why the robots, which had initially been doing maintenance and other tasks, now just sat in their charging cradles.


    He wandered over to the primary breaker box and opened it.


    The main circuit breakers were in the off position. Lights were lit warning that the primary power plants were offline but the backup systems were engaged.


    Hetmwit left the room and went over to the publications office. Concordiant regulations insisted that every technical manual also be present in hard copy in case of computer failure. He looked around and found the maintenance manuals for the ship''s computer core. He stopped by the tool room, the door opening silently, and got the tools listed in the manual.


    It took him less than an hour of reading the manual as he worked before he managed to bring the ship''s computer systems online in emergency mode.


    "Computer," Hetmwit said.


    "Ready," the computer system replied. The tone was flat and robotic, all of the personality overlays offline due to the emergency mode.


    "Where is everyone?" he asked.


    There was silence for a moment.


    Then he got his answer.


    "Sole crewmember present in primary computer core housing chamber."


    [The Universe Busted Up Laughing]

 Nova Wars - Chapter Two

    The whole ship was silent, dimly lit, as Hetmwit moved through the corridors. He knew that if he was a trained ship security troop he would have been able to devise a proper sweep route that would cover the entire ship with ease. Maximum efficiency and little to no doubling back or checking the same passage or room twice.


    But he was a robotic maintenance and repair specialist.


    So he wandered through the ship, getting lost several times, and once realizing he had been going in circles for half a day.


    He ate out of cans and containers, slept in his room, used the fresher, and kept searching.


    No bodies. No piles of clothing. No random jewelry or implants.


    Just everyone put up and put away with nobody around.


    The few logs he was able to access, since he wasn''t exactly a data-slicer or haxxor, all ended about the same time. As near as he could figure, it was right about the time he''d half-woken up to the room spinning, realized he was drunker than he had thought, and put his foot on the floor so the room would slow down and stop.


    Some logs even stopped in the middle of being written.


    Some terminals had been left unsecured, but after a time limit the security programs has locked out the keyboard until a password was put in.


    He sat at several consoles, staring at the keyboard and the screen, wondering just how he''d figure out what the passwords were. He moved around the dataslates, tapped some of the sticky-notes, then eventually got up to wander off.


    After some time, he sat in the Officer''s Mess, eating a bowl of pudding with sweet frosting on top, and staring at a data slate.


    He knew he was not the smartest Pagrik in the universe. No, he was perfectly ordinary.


    But he was content with that.


    When he was younger, his mother, who sometimes forgot he existed, had sat him down and told him a secret.


    "People deride the ordinary. The average. The mediocre. Everyone goes on and on about rising above, only accepting excellence in themselves and others. Well, Hetmwit, my little average love, make no mistake," she had said after forgetting he existed for two days. She had motioned around them, at the skyrakers, the monorails, the parks, the signs, at everything. "All of this? Designed and envisioned by great people," she leaned forward to whisper in his ear. "Built and maintained and paid for by average, normal, common people."


    She leaned back. "People like you, my little heart, are the builders of society that they are the building blocks and foundation of. People deride the cogs in the machine, but without those cogs, there is no machine," she had rubbed his head. "Never let anyone make you feel inadequate, my perfectly average love. You are society. You are the Pagrik."


    The memory faded and Hetmwit smiled. He knew his mother was often startled to receive gifts form him, gifts from a child that she often forgot.


    But her words had made it so that he was content with who he was and his place in the universe.


    He listed down his problems and options, as if his situation was a malfunctioning robot and he needed a checklist to go down to determine the standard repair.


    He had no idea where everyone went: Severe Difficulty, Minimal Importance.


    After all, what was he going to do when he found out, except know where they went?


    He had no idea where the ship was: Severe Difficulty, Minimal Importance.


    All the could think of was perhaps figuring out a way to send a message to have someone come get the ship, and since he was aboard the ship, him.


    He had no idea what happened: Moderate Difficulty. Minimal Importance.


    What was he going to do about it?


    Aside from that, he didn''t really have anything he could figure out that he needed to discover the answers to.


    He had food. Enough food for the 24,568 crew members for 15 years.


    He had water. The recyclers would take care of that.


    He had atmosphere. Even if the scrubbers cut out, he''d still have around three years of air.


    He had warmth. He had power.


    He was just alone.


    Hetmwit leaned back in the chair and stared at the datapad.


    Once he finished his pudding, he had a snack of meat with gravy, then made his way back down to the central computing core chamber. It took a minute of waving his hand in front of the sensor for the computer to recognize he was there.


    "Online. Ready for input," the computer stated.


    "Where is the ship located?" Hetmwit asked.


    "Insufficient data. Location unknown," the computer, which Hetmwit has started thinking of as "Ceecee" in his head, answered after a moment.


    "What kind of data do you need?" Hetmwit asked.


    "Access to external sensors, full processing power, and database cores," Ceecee answered.


    Hetmwit thought about that for a second. "How do I get that to you?" he tried.


    "Insufficient data," was the answer.


    "How do I turn on the rest of your servers?" Hetmwit tried.


    "Restore power," the computer stated.


    Hetmwit sighed.


    "Great. Side quests," he mumbled, getting up out of the chair. "I hate side quests."


    "OK, turn on the primary reactors," he said.


    "Cannot comply," the computer said.


    "Come on, Ceecee, work with me. Why not?"


    "Reactor must be restarted and supervised manually," Ceecee stated.


    Hetmwit sighed. He got up, went to the publications locker, and got out of the manual for the starship reactor operations.


    After four hours he pushed the book away. It wasn''t complicated, it just had so many steps and so many things to do in a particular order, he knew it would take weeks or months of training for him to be able to so much as understand what all the readouts meant.


    "It was worth a try," he told himself.


    Walking back to his work area, he sat and stared at the robots.


    None of the standard automation robots were outside of their charging cradles. He had not seen any maintenance or repair robots running around doing unknowable tasks. He stared at one robot in the cradle for long minutes.


    HIGH THREAT ENVIRONMENT REPAIR/MAINTENANCE DRONE - SEMI-AUTONOMOUS DRONE


    Curious, he checked the robot''s capabilities.


    Highly resistant to radiation was the top one. Its armor and sealed body made it resistant to corrosive gasses or liquids.


    He stared at it for a long time, then checked its available functions.


    It took him nearly an hour to find what he was hoping for.


    Checking the manual he had brought with him, he realized that the ship''s primary reactors required crews of at least twenty per shift. Checking the manifest, he found that he had nearly six hundred robots qualified for the work.


    He sat and thought about how he could get the robots to restart and man the reactor.


    After a bit he moved over to the Chief Maintenance Officer''s terminal. He knew the password, the Senior Commander had found it easier to just tell Hetmwit his password and login than give it over every time.


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    Hetmwit punched in the correct commands to make the computer systems that were online think that in two days there would be a scheduled test of the robots to ensure that in the case of an emergency, the reactors could be restarted and manned by robotic drones. The reactor control rooms would be listed as ''lethal environment'' for the test, which was to run for an unscheduled amount of time.


    Hetmwit spent the next two days working slowly and steadily. He had to delay the test by an hour when one robot decided that it wasn''t going to do anything that Hetmwit had ordered it to, instead returning to the charging cradle and ignoring Hetmwit.


    Finally, it was ready.


    "Here goes nothing," Hetmwit said to himself. He activated the "autonomous hazardous environment test" and watched.


    The robots all jumped from their cradles and rushed to the reactor. They took sensor readings, did preliminary preventive maintenance and service checks, then took up stations in the three reactor control rooms.


    The lights suddenly brightened.


    On his terminal the computer was dutifully reporting: "Primary Power Plants: Online"


    Hetmwit jumped up and hurried to the computer control chamber. He knew not to run, that was a good way to hit a low hanging object in the corridor and knock yourself out. The door took him twice to get the sensor to recognize him, but it opened dutifully once it determined that opening and closing the door would clear and reset the sensor.


    He moved in and sat down in the chair.


    "Ceecee?" he asked.


    "Online," the computer said. "Ready for input."


    "Sensor sweep. One light second around ship. Place data in holotank four in this room, this ship center of tank and maintain focus upon this ship," Hetmwit said slowly and carefully.


    "No input detected. Waiting," Ceecee said.


    Hetmwit tried three more times, the fourth time was when the ship''s computer announced it was working.


    After nearly a minute the holotank flickered to life.


    The ship was tiny, just a little dot, but it was bright bluish-white, pulsed and had a carat around it.


    There were dozens of marks around the ship in the three hundred thousand kilometer radius.


    Hetmwit blinked, staring. He got up and moved to the holotank, tapping one of the sparkles.


    UNKNOWN VESSEL: 13.4 km long, 8.1 km wide, 1.92 km thick, 214.5 gigatonnes - Zero Power Readings


    That made him blink. The vessel he was on wasn''t nearly as large.


    He tapped the closest dot, a merely six thousand kilometers away.


    UNKNOWN VESSEL: 5.4 km long, 2.2 km wide, 2.02 km thick, 18 gigatonnes - LOW POWER READINGS


    He tapped it again and flicked it at a nearby holotank. That holotank came on, flickered a few times, then showed the other spaceship.


    Where the ship he was was basically a long tube, flattened on two opposing sides, with a mid-ship bulge and a bell housing at the rear, the other ship was obviously made by crazy people. It had a curved forward prow, one side was relatively flat while the other had large protrusions. The engines at the back were set in five stacks of alternating four and five engines.


    He stared at it.


    He wasn''t a trained sensor tech or warfare tech, but he could tell that the ship in the holotank, for all its alien appearance, was not a peaceful vessel. Everything about it screamed that it was the type of vessel that wrecked other people''s day.


    "Computer," he called out.


    "Online. Awaiting input," Ceecee answered.


    "Are you at full processing power?" he asked.


    "Affirmative," Ceecee answered.


    "Contact the vessel in holotank nine," he tried.


    "Cannot comply. Foreign vessels may only be contacted by order of an executive officer with confirmation by Contact Officers and communications officers," the computer said.


    Hetmwit sighed. He got up and left the room, the door opening after only two tries, and moved to the documentation locker again. It took him almost a half hour to find what he wanted.


    "FIRST CONTACT PROTOCOLS" was the title.


    He spent three days reading it, then read it again while taking notes. Then he went to the Learning Center and authorized himself a correspondence course in the matter. It took him almost a week of watching videos, doing practical exercises, and taking tests, but he passed with an 82%, feeling rather proud of himself.


    Before taking the course, he had no idea that the ship''s computer contained something called a ''lexicon'' and had the ability to facilitate translations between foreign species lexicons and its own.


    He took the data and a few programming cores he had loaded in the educational center down to his work area. He selected a robot that looked vaugely like Pagrik and began working. He added additional memory and computational units, painted it in bright and cheery colors, made sure its head looked like a happy Pagrik, then loaded the programs.


    He then changed it from a structural maintenance semi-autonomous repair drone to a detached training assistance autonomous drone.


    He patted it once as he passed it by, where it was hanging in the charging cradle, as he left the robotic repair and maintenance bay.


    He returned to the computer core.


    "Computer," he stated.


    "Online. Awaiting input."


    "List xenocommunication officers and enlisted," he said.


    "Zero found," the computer said.


    "List crew members."


    "Zero crew members found."


    Hetmwit sighed. "List crew members."


    "Zero crew members found."


    "List crew members."


    "One crew member found. Robotic Maintenance and Repair Technician Second Class Hetmwit - 991723," the computer said.


    "Log Hetmwit 991723 completed correspondence courses," Hetmwit said.


    "Task complete."


    "Log Hetmwit - 991723 as Xenocommunication specialist on the job trainee for cross specialty training and service member educational improvement," Hetmwit said.


    "Hetmwit - 991723 has been logged as a xenocommunications specialist. Error, no supervisor found," the computer said.


    Hetmwit smiled. He had realized that the computer might object.


    "Log Unit Smiley as autonomous robotic training supervisor," he said.


    The computer sat for a moment, so he repeated the command until the computer chirped.


    "Logged," Ceecee said.


    "Open communication channel," he tried.


    "Attempting communications with unknown vessel," the computer said.


    He waited for a while.


    "Computer?" he tried.


    "Online. Awaiting input."


    "Status?"


    "Attempting to open communication channels. No response. Retrying in thirty seconds," the computer said.


    Hetmwit sighed. After a while he went and got something to eat. Then he studied another correspondence course. Then he went to bed.


    When he got up, there was still no progress.


    Hetmwit stared at the massive ship hanging in the holotank.


    You''re empty too. Only someone didn''t get missed. There wasn''t anyone like me aboard, he thought.


    It made sense that without someone living to open the channel, the other ship wasn''t answering.


    He sat down and thought through his actions. Going off of his training and what he knew.


    It was two days later he suddenly sat up in bed.


    He was rated for exterior repair automation supervision!


    He jumped up, went through the fresher, got dressed, taking time to take off his boots and repolish them before putting them back on, then went to the external maintenance air locker.


    He looked over the suits, making sure he checked the model number.


    Then he rushed down to one of the flight bays.


    He didn''t know how to fly a ship, but that didn''t matter.


    He had used robots to fly a dropship before, so he could repair damage to the exterior of a vessel. It was routine and simple as long as all of the safety checks and precautions were taken.


    He looked over the vac-suits in the dropship.


    The one for technician work was the exact model he was rated on and had used several times before.


    The model of dropship didn''t have a robotic pilot, but Hetmwit knew that was easy to fix.


    He went down to his workshop, chose a robot nearly at random, then set to work.


    Four days later and he was done.


    He cleaned his work area, paying particular attention to cleaning the floor of all debris as he slowly thought it through.


    There was no reason the other ship wasn''t dead too.


    He supervised the two robots moving to the dropship, then returned and reconfigured another robot. This one to carry supplies.


    He loaded the dropship with food, atmospheric tanks, and, after a realization that the other species might drink something like sulfuric acid, water supplies. Some clothing. Some books.


    He then unloaded the dropship and moved everything to an emergency services dropship usually used to help colonists. That one had sealable bays, hospital beds, and other supplies.


    It took him only two hours and eight tries to get Ceecee to recognize that he was leaving the ship to offer aid to the stranded xenospecies ship.


    He found himself coming up with things he had ''forgotten'' to do, including taking another correspondence course, inventorying what he was taking eight times, triple checking the robots and adding two backups for each sitting in the medic drop-cradles, walking through the ship ''just one more time'' looking for someone else that might have magically appeared.


    Hetmwit realized he was procrastinating.


    He dressed carefully. Shipboard duty uniform. Tools. Vac-suit. Integrity field generator belt.


    He clomped his way to the launch-bay.


    The robot in the control room of the launch bay waved at him and he waved back.


    He sat in the co-pilot''s seat, reached over, and turned on the robot.


    The robot was silent, but he could tell by the flickering telltales that it was communicating with the robot in the control room. There was a vibration that Hetmwit knew was the atmosphere being pumped out of the flight bay. Then the doors slowly cracked open.


    The starship he was heading for wasn''t even a pinprick. It was dark and silent, lost in the blackness of space.


    The dropship lifted up on repulsors, oriented, then swept out of the bay.


    The ride was short, only two hours.


    The robot made multiple flybys of the xenospecies ship.


    Being only a kilometer away let Hetmwit feel the sheer size and bulk of the alien ship. He could see gunports, cannon barrels, launch tubes and bays. The particle screen that his dropship had passed through was powerful enough that it had almost collapsed the dropship''s particle shields.


    He tried hailing the xeno-vessel but got no response.


    The dropship sat only five hundred meters from the hull of the alien vessel as Hetmwit sat and thought.


    He went over the full color video slowly, looking for hatches.


    Finally, he found what he was looking for.


    Hatches surrounded by a yellow stripe that had diagonal black bars in the yellow stripe, high powered lights pointing at the hatch and away from the hatch.


    Hetmwit knew a maintenance hatch when he saw it.


    Interestingly enough, there was a flat, clear area surrounded by machinery that had several hoses coiled up and hung on them.


    He knew a landing pad when he saw it.


    Humming to himself, he turned on the brightly painted robot, ordered it to follow him, and suited up.


    His boots clonked against the hull, the vibration creating sound in the atmosphere of his suit, as he moved up to the hatch.


    It might not be universal, but Hetmwit was pretty sure he''d be able to find what he was looking for.


    It was so obvious, Hetmwit had to keep from laughing.


    A thin panel of glass covered a wheel that was painted red. He couldn''t understand the lettering, but he made the robot scan the lettering and add it to the xeno-lexicon for additional data.


    He broke the glass, which turned into little squares instead of shards like had expected. He watched the glass fall slowly to the deck plating.


    Either the ship was large enough to generate its own gravity field or the ship had artificial gravity that extended past the hull.


    He looked over the pictograms, carefully memorizing the order, then followed it. Throw this bar lever. Pump this lever till the light turns green. Start cranking the wheel.


    The hatch suddenly pulled open.


    Hetmwit hurried inside.


    There, he found another manual system and slowly closed the external door.


    The airlock was dimly lit.


    Hoping the ship didn''t have aggressive security, he opened the interior door and looked into the chamber beyond.


    Multiple types of suits hanging on the wall.


    He raised his eyebrows in shock. He could count at least a dozen species suits.


    Still, he closed the airlock door and moved to the far end.


    The brightly colored robot followed, pausing over and over to scan pictograms, images, and writing on the walls, floor, ceiling.


    The door opened when the robot came into view.


    Taking a deep breath and gathering up his courage, Hetmwit stepped into the interior corridor of the xenospecies warship.

 Nova Wars - Chapter Three

    The first thing that Hetmwit noticed when he stepped into the corridor beyond the airlock entry room was the sheer size of the corridor. At least six meters tall, five meters wide, with a wide three meter stripe of a blackish material that sparkled slightly. The second thing he noticed was all the holograms that were projected bare inches from the bulkheads. There was a dizzying array of holosigns, paint stencils on the walls, pictograms, and icons. Where the Olipnat Concordiant used nanite light systems, this corridor had flat panels emitting light from the infrared all the way into the ultraviolet, all of the markings and holograms in a comfortable range of light for a Pagrik.


    It took a moment, Hetmwit realized, for the colors to stabilize for his eyes. At first they were almost too bright, almost white, then they cooled off into a pale blue with white lettering for some, reddish orange for others.


    He reached out and tapped Smiley, pointing at the stencils.


    "Log them for lexicon work," Hetmwit ordered.


    "Logging," Smiley said in his synthesized voice.


    Hetmwit looked at one flat hologram in particular. It had red edging, was white with blue stick figures. In the middle was a massive insect, a head on top of a thorax that nearly filled the drawing outline of the hallway. It had thick legs that angled up from the abdomen, were at a nearly seventy degree angle to point back down, had one more joint to straighten the lowest part of the leg out, then wide footpads. Against the wall, on either side of the insect, were other races, backs against the wall.


    As Hetmwit looked at it, the visual rotated, to show the insect was hurrying down the corridor and beings were moving out of the way.


    Looking down the corridor Hetmwit realized the insect must be of huge size, which made them massive crew members.


    The sign changed to show a large bipedal figure, obvious heavy power armor, moving down the hallway. The insects were flattened against the wall, along with other races. The picture turned, to show it from the side, and there was a long rank and file that marched by the other races.


    It changed again, showing smaller races, even a big insect, dragging a cable down the hallway, with everyone else pressing their backs against the wall.


    Hetmwit got it.


    It was a reminder to clear the way.


    Hetmwit nodded. He saw those images every day on the ship he had just left. Just daily reminders.


    Still, he looked around the passageway, marveling at the size, the cleanliness, the obvious functionality. He looked at more of the holograms, realizing that they showed duty schedules and other information.


    At one point an iris opened and scanned his face. He winced when the light shined into his eyes, a white spot appearing in his vision in each eyes as the laser scanned his eye then speared through his iris to hit the back of his eyes and stimulate the optic nerve directly as the other lasers put a grid on his face through the face shield of his helmet.


    He winced, reaching up and rubbing his face.


    He looked at the duty schedule. It was obvious to him, having seen plenty of them in his career.


    Smiley was scanning everything. Hefty was just standing there, loaded up with pouches and satchels full of water, food, and atmosphere tanks.


    Hetmwit wandered around for several hours, marveling at the massive ship. He stared at the ledge at the top of the corridors, wondering why there were small holograms on the wall next to the ledge for a little while, then shrugging. At first he wondered if it was for robotic units to move around, but he discarded that idea when he saw the poles and the ladders leading down to the floor or up through openings to the next decks.


    He found staterooms, gyms, libraries, a theater, briefing rooms, large auditoriums, mess halls, kitchens, fresher areas, maintenance workshops.


    All brightly lit, holograms up.


    He noticed that the ship was almost completely silent. The doors made a whooshing noise when they opened. The elevators creaked and growled and vibrated slightly, but unless it was machinery working, the ship was silent.


    He rested several times, using bunk rooms. Twice he went through the dressers and cabinets.


    Some of the crew were bipeds. Some were quadraped, others appeared to have four legs and two arms, others had four legs and four arms (if you counted bladearms). Some had tails, some had abdomens and thoraxes, others had upper bodies and flanks.


    To Hetmwit it was a dizzying array of life forms. The Concordiant only had four species, and they were all roughly the same. This ship''s crew had insects, giant lizards, furry bipeds, all manner of creatures.


    The sheer size of the ship made sense to Hetmwit. Some of the crew were very large, and those crew needed to be able to get everywhere within the ship.


    Four times he went back to the dropship to sleep.


    On one of the trips he spotted something odd.


    It was near one of the small ladders that extended down from the ledge at the top of the corridor. Sitting on the floor, sparkling in the bright light.


    He knelt down, looking at it.


    It was a wrench.


    He used one of the magnifier settings on his visor that he normally used when removing small leads, leaning down.


    It had markings on it. It was obviously a tiny powered impact wrench, built for very small hands. Its surface was shiny, but he could see tiny scratch marks and scuffs, letting him know it had been used quite a bit in its lifetime.


    After taking multiple images of it, he continued on his explorations.


    Twice large robots thumped by, their tiny heads swiveling back and forth. They were heavily armored, a six-barrel chaingun for their left arm, a clawed hand for their right. They were large and intimidating, and Hetmwit got out of their way, Smiley and Hefty copying him as he pressed his back against the wall and watched them move past.


    Several times flying drones buzzed by, all of them only a third of a meter below the ceiling. All of them scanning as they went.


    After he slept the third time in a stateroom, he woke up, sat up, and immediately backed up.


    He could read the writing on the holograms.


    The hologram was informing him that blue shift was on relaxation shift, red shift was on sleep shift, and green shift was on work shift. There were departments listed in boxes in the hologram.


    He stared at it, wondering why he could read it. True, the colors had felt right for the last few days, the icons had started showing a silhouette of a Pagrik more and more often, but being able to read it was strange.


    He tapped through a few of the icon menus, almost habitually picking out the maintenance section. He found himself tabbing and poking his way through to robotic maintenance and repair.


    He was startled to see the number of workplaces listed. Everything from ''robotic design and fabrication'' to ''robotic systems repair'' to ''robotic systems mass reclamation'' areas.


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    He tapped the ''shift registry'' section by accident when he went to close the menu.


    The lasers came out, scanned his face through his helmet visor, then winked out.


    He braced for alarms and the horde of killer robots he expected to descend on him.


    Instead the system beeped.


    PLEASE HOLD STILL the hologram flashed.


    It tried again. Then again. Then finally beeped.


    CREWMAN LOGGED - SPECIES: CEMTRARY VARIANT IV; SERVICE RECORD CORRUPTED - REFILING


    There was a slight pause.


    PLEASE REPORT TO CERTIFICATION, TESTING AND EDUCATIONAL CENTER FOUR FOR SKILL AND EDUCATION CERTIFICATION


    ISSUING TEMPORARY ID


    There was a flash and a plastic smartcard materialized on the desk, like dust lifting up and solidifying.


    Hetmwit stared at the card. It had his facial image on it, as well as numbers and acronyms that were little more than gibberish.


    When he picked up the card a line appeared in his vision on the floor. A blue line that read "CTEC-04" in small letters repeated roughly every five meters.


    "Well, let''s go," Hetmwit said.


    Smiley stood up, moving slowly to conserve battery power. Hefty did the same.


    Hetmwit moved through the ship, following the blue line. Out of curiosity he tried going down a side corridor. He heard a beeping in his ear and the line turned into a loop in front of him, with arrows along the loop to point back behind him.


    It was, well, kind of nifty.


    When Hetmwit entered the room marked CTEC-04 he found computer terminal consoles, what appeared to be VR bays, shelves of physical books and datapads, even doors that led to what looked like classrooms.


    He sat down at the terminal that had a bluish glow around it. The glow went out and Hetmwit waited.


    There was a chime and a blue light appeared above Hetmwit''s head that pulsed with the chime. The chime sounded again after sixty seconds, then again. And again. And then again.


    The screen came on.


    TRAINING NCOIC OR OIC NOT RESPONDING


    QUIT/RETRY/SELF-STUDY?


    Hetmwit stared at the three boxes, then looked around.


    The room was brightly lit, comfortable, and seemed fairly non-threatening.


    He tapped the "SELF-STUDY" box and waited.


    "INPUT LAST NAME AND LAST FOUR" appeared.


    He carefully typed in the closest approximation he could.


    It had him repeat it six times before it responded with anything more than "NO INPUT DETECTED" and asking him to try again.


    PERSONNEL FILES CORRUPT. REBUILDING HETMWIT-1723 FILE - PLEASE WAIT


    A little tray appeared as hologram. It showed little icons moving and Hetmwit realized it was a match game. He sat there playing it while the computer worked.


    It took four tries for it to accept the data he plugged in.


    He told the truth, that way it would be easier to remember.


    It told him to report to medical for a medical check as his induction medical paperwork was corrupt and/or missing.


    He followed the blue line with the red core to the medical section.


    Part of him expected menacing robots and whirring saws and long pointed needles. He checked the instruments on his vac-suit. The atmosphere was within breathing range, although oxygen seemed a little low and there was more nitrogen than he was used to.


    Weirdly enough, after there was a tingle in his mouth, sinuses, and throat, he had no trouble breathing.


    Instead, he merely removed his vac-suit and stood naked in front of a soft padded rectangle. Lasers played over him, then there was a hum. A hologram appearing in midair in front of him told him to sit down, so he did.


    Then he had to repeat the whole thing four times.


    Then he was told to return to the CTEC-04 again. With a bit of startlement, he realized that his vac-suit was gone. In its place was a uniform, boots, underclothing. There was even an earpiece that had a reticle that went over his left eye.


    Nervously, he put it on.


    It fit comfortably. Even the boots and hock-socks.


    He walked back, Smiley and Hefty following him once he left the medical center.


    He marveled over the automation. He stopped several times to look at signs. The reticle identified the different species. Treana''ad were big insects. Mantid were smaller ones. There were ones called Kobolds, ones called Telkan, a big octoped called a Lanaktallan, and all kinds of species. The reticle identified the ledge as "GREENIE MAINTENANCE ACCESS".


    He had to admit, the reticle was handy. He paused several times to go through the pupil directed context menu with the blink to confirm system. He found he could switch the glowing pathway he could see with both eyes to an arrow or a wedge in the reticle and back.


    Nifty.


    Back in the CTEC he sat down and it started testing him. Basic knowledge.


    He stared at one icon.


    ADAPTIVE LANGUAGE CORTEX POLYMORPHIC HOLOGRAPHIC SYSTEM flashed on the upper right.


    He stared at it, thinking it through.


    Somehow, the system had scanned that part of his brain he used for speech, for reading and writing, and then ensured that he could read the holograms.


    He tried to think of how it would be done, but he lost it at scanning the cortex.


    But he did nod along with his thoughts.


    The ship was designed for a dizzying array of species. That would mean a large nation. With so many species, Hetmwit was sure it was larger than the Concordiant. Which meant that some areas could undergo linguistic drift even though they were part of the star nation.


    The nifty system would ensure that new transfers to the ship would not have to go through weeks or months of language training.


    It made perfect sense.


    He requested a datapad for additional study while the computer kept processing his answers. He noted that it was having trouble with it. Not as much as the Concordiant systems did, but it still glitched out mid-processing more than once.


    He used the datapad to look up the reticle. It was a standard piece of equipment to issue to beings who did not have optical cybernetic augmentations. That made him raise an eyebrow. Cybernetics had long ago been proven to be impossible. The brain and nervous system could not control electronic or digital systems.


    Apparently, the most minimal was a small bead at the corner of his eye, right behind the tear duct. He could even get circuitry, invisible to him, etched into the transparent surface of his inner eyelid.


    He was surprised at the depth and intricacy of function of the reticle and ear piece. It would translate speech and writing for him, give him directions, assist him with tasks by consulting the ship''s library for schematics and technical manuals.


    It usually took three or four tries to access a manual. He knew not to try to access anything that he was denied access to due to security clearances. He had no desire to get knocked down and possibly stepped on by a security robot.


    One had broken his foot that way.


    He took tests, answered questions, and consulted the datapad as the day went on. After nearly six hours, he was informed that the CTEC was closing. At his request he was shown to a mess hall, then to where he could order.


    The menu was full of all kinds of different foods, none of them familiar, but according to the strange ship, perfectly healthy for him.


    Although it did give him two vitamin supplements and ''fortified juice'' to go with his dinner.


    For relaxation time, he went to the gym. The robots there worked and helped him work out safely.


    To his surprise, he had been assigned a locker when he had asked to be assigned a gym. He knew he should not have been surprised to find out he had been assigned a bunk in a large room that contained multiple cubicles, each with a set of bunk beds. Two wall lockers on one side facing the bunk beds, the back of the wall lockers on the opposite side of the bunks, formed the right and left walls. The bulkhead formed the back wall, and a curtain could be drawn for privacy.


    At his request, he found an area to plug in Hefty and Smiley, then went back and went to bed.


    The bed was surprisingly comfortable.


    He quickly fell into the routine. Wake up. Physical Fitness. Meal. Testing. Meal. Testing. Meal. Relaxation time. Lights out. Sleep. Repeat.


    He attended ''remedial courses'' as well as continued his testing.


    There was really no difference being on the alien ship from his own ship.


    Well, that wasn''t entirely true.


    To Hetmwit, the alien ship seemed more, well, friendly.


    He noticed, as time went by, that the ship had less and less of a tendency to forget about him.


    It was a little gratifying.


    Finally, he finished his testing.


    He was ordered to put on his dress uniform and report to ASSEMBLY ROOM 317. He had chosen the closest approximation to his own awards that were in the system and found that it had not demanded paperwork.


    The ship''s computer obviously didn''t find anything strange about his awards.


    He dressed in the uniform, which he had to admit was pretty sexy. He adjusted the sash with the holographic icons on it, made sure his shoes were polished, then left the room. He followed the arrow, which led him to a seat next to a stage.


    The hologram came on.


    GRADUATING REMEDIAL TRAINING CLASS [ERROR] appeared above the stage.


    There was silence.


    The reticle popped up a hologram.


    <GENERATING eVI CAPTAIN>


    <FAILED>


    GENERATING BACKUP CAPTAIN


    <FAILED>


    GENERATING KENTAI CAPTAIN


    <FAILED>


    GENERATING DEATH-KAWAII CAPTAIN


    <FAILED>


    ACTIVATING RESARTUS PROTOCOL


    Hetmwit wondered what all of that had meant.


    His earpiece pinged.


    <GENERATING HVDECKEN>


    <SUCCESS>


    Hetmwit read it all eagerly. He started to use the context menus on his trusty (if now worn) datapad to see what all of it was when the curtain at the back of the stage were pushed aside and a new creature stepped through.


    What appeared wasn''t like anything that he had learned about.


    A biped over two meters tall, roughly a meter wide and a fifth of a meter thick. It had black and gray fur on the top of its head on the bottom of the jaw. There was black and silver hair below its nose and above the upper lip. It was dressed in a blue uniform, with white striping, brass buttons, and knee high black boots. It also wore white gloves on the five fingered hands.


    It grabbed the lectern and looked out over the empty audience chairs.


    "Computer," it said, it''s voice nearly a bark.


    Hetmwit smiled. He''d tried that and never gotten an answer.


    "Emergency VI," it stated.


    Nothing.


    It looked around.


    It saw Hetmwit.


    It leaned on the lecturn and stared at Hetmwit.


    "I''m going to need a ship''s status, seaman," the creature said. He looked around. "Starting where everyone else is."


    "Who are you?" Hetmwit asked.


    The biped stared at him with icy blue eyes.


    "Emergency Artificial Captain Henrik Vander Decken, Confederate Space Force," it said.

 Nova Wars - Chapter Four

    "The ship is not under attack. It has not suffered massive catastrophic damage," the being stated. "The reasons for my deployment are unclear."


    The Captain moved across the stage, a strange predatory movement to Hetmwit, who went suddenly still, stopping breathing, staring with wide eyes at the strange looking biped who walked up and stopped only a pace or two from him.


    The biped, Captain Decken, stared down at him. Hetmwit noticed that hair between the nose and mouth, the thick horizontal patches of hair above the eyes about as wide as two fingers, and the short prickly looking hair on top of the head. The Captain stared down at him for a long moment.


    "Report, Seaman Hetmwit," the Captain said.


    Hetmwit blinked a few times. "Uh..."


    The Captain waited.


    "I got drunk with the Marines and passed out in my bunk..." he started.


    Hetmwit went through all of it. Waking up in an empty ship. Getting the reactor restarted. Programming the robots and drones to do an hourly sweep through the starship The Star of Jurakak in the vain hope of finding other crew members. Of getting the computer core working. Of studying and working. Of getting the sensors working. Of preparing for the excursion to the ship he was currently on. To trying to figure things out.


    The whole time the Captain stood in front of him, staring down at him, as he rapidly explained everything.


    "And then I was told to report for graduation and you came out," Hetmwit said. He looked around. "That''s it, basically."


    The Captain nodded. "An interesting tale that does not bode well for either of us," the biped said. Hetmwit noted that the voice was deep and rumbled in the creature''s chest. "You just kept studying and learning. Time well spent rather than giving into the despair you obviously felt."


    Hetmwit felt thrown off balance.


    "Wait, you listened to the whole thing?" he asked.


    The Captain nodded. "It was a long report, but full of vital information," the Captain said. He turned, waving. "With me, Seaman. We''ll replenish ourselves with a meal. If your people can talk and eat at the same time, I will ask questions that I have some belief you can answer."


    Hetmwit ran and caught up. The biped made him nervous. The way it moved, the intent way it stared at everything, including him, the feeling of barely restrained menace.


    He''ll forget about me before we get to the nearest dining section, Hetmwit figured.


    At one point the Captain turned a corner and Hetmwit paused a moment, trying to decide if he wanted to return to his quarters.


    The Captain unsettled him.


    "Do you see something out of place, Seaman?" the Captain asked.


    Hetmwit blinked. Usually just looking away from him made people forget he existed.


    "No. Just... stopped a moment to think," Hetmwit answered.


    "Very well. Tell me when you are able to move again," the Captain said, his voice neutral.


    "I''m ready," Hetmwit said quietly.


    "Coming, Seaman Hetmwit?" the Captain asked from around the corner.


    Hetmwit turned and saw the Captain was facing away, still roughly three of his strides away from Hetmwit.


    "Stopping to think is something that you will eventually learn to overcome. You will learn to think and act at the same time," the Captain said. "It can take a bit for some species to learn, but everyone the Confederacy has encountered has been able to learn such a skill at different rates."


    "Yes, Captain," Hetmwit said.


    They rounded another corner and Hetmwit saw two of the big glossy black combat robots patrolling the hallway. When the Captain was five paces from them the stopped, rotated, and backed up, putting their backs against the wall.


    The Captain nodded as he went past. "Carry on," he ordered.


    After Hetmwit went by the robots stepped out, pivoted, and continued marching down the corridor.


    He noted how authority, command, and competence just radiated from the Captain. He had been in the presence of two ship''s commanders over his career and while they seemed competent and skilled enough, they had lacked the sheer force of presence that the biped in front of his effortless projected.


    The Officer''s Mess was clear, empty, brightly lit, and spotless. The Captain moved up, ordered a tray quickly, including a cup of steaming coffee, then waited for Hetmwit to order a meal. It took a few times for the computer to recognize and process his order.


    He had the feeling that the Captain was studying what he ate, how many times he had to reinput his requests, and how many times his stomach rumbled.


    Finally, they were sitting down.


    "May I ask a question, Captain?" Hetmwit asked, pausing between his noodles and his meat dish.


    The Captain sipped at the cup of steaming liquid and nodded.


    "You may, Seaman Hetmwit," the Captain said. He looked at the plate. "First, is it customary for your people to only speak when the noodle appetizer is finished?"


    Hetmwit nodded. "Yes, Captain."


    The Captain just nodded. "Ask your question, Seaman."


    "What are you? I studied the species in the database for my testing of recognizing allied species, but I did not see you," Hetmwit said.


    The Captain looked thoughtful for a moment. "I am a biomechanical construct. A clone of a long dead naval officer, created in a cellular printer and loaded with a personality template, memories, and knowledge," he said. "In common parlance, I am a Born Whole emergency biological backup system."


    The Captain sipped at his cup. "But at base, I am a Terran, from the planet Terra in the Sol System."


    Hetmwit thought, spearing a piece of meat and chewing it to signify he was thinking. After a moment he looked up. "What does Born Whole mean? I mean, I''m born whole, with all my parts, but it seems that means something different."


    The Captain nodded. "You are a robotic maintenance and repair specialist, correct, Seaman?"


    Hetmwit nodded.


    "If you loaded into a robot the manual for military operations in urban terrain into the robot''s memory, would that make it into an effective infantry asset for house to house fighting in a metropolis?"


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    Hetmwit thought, then shook his head. "No. The robot would not even know to access the data, and without being told, would not know it possesses the knowledge."


    "The Born Whole system downloads everything I need to know," The Captain said. He sipped at his coffee again. "However, the system ensures that I know that I possess that knowledge, as well as how to apply and utilize it. I am imparted with the skill to apply the knowledge, the ability to adapt that knowledge to various situations."


    Hetmwit frowned, taking another bite of meat and chewing slowly.


    The Captain sipped at his coffee, waiting for Hetmwit to finish his second piece of meat in a row.


    "Were you once a normal person?" Hetmwit asked.


    The Captain nodded. "I served in the Third Terran Republic, then the Combine, then the Imperium, then the Dominion during the Post-Second Mantid War Reconstruction. I was templated during the Terran Dominion years and, according to what I know, I have never been actively deployed aboard this ship, although my knowledge has been kept updated."


    Hetmwit speared another piece of meat and chewed slowly.


    "Will other crew members be printed up?" he asked.


    The Captain shook his head. "No. The primary computer systems are all offline. Mine is a separate system."


    Hetmwit sighed. "I don''t know what we can do. There''s only two of us," he said softly.


    The Captain gave a barking sound that made Hetmwit flinch slightly.


    "Easy, Seaman. I was laughing," the Captain stated. "Vocally expressing amusement."


    "What is so funny?" Hetmwit asked.


    "One person, in the right place at the right time, or perhaps the wrong place at the wrong time and the wrong person, has altered the fate of entire multi-stellar empires," the Captain said. "When General Daxin Freeborn slew the Mantid Omniqueen on Mantid Prime, he was only one man and the Omniqueen but was one being, but the results were felt throughout the galactic arm spur."


    Hetmwit just looked back at his plate. "If you say so, Captain." He speared the vegetables, chewing on them, signifying he had no questions and nothing to say but was willing to take part in conversation.


    The Captain was silent and Hetmwit looked up at him. Hetmwit could see a faint flickering glow across the Captain''s retinas and realized that the Captain was using the implant that Hetmwit used a reticle to simulate.


    The Captain blinked rapidly and picked up his coffee cup, which had somehow magically refilled. He sipped at it, staring at Hetmwit.


    "You stated you left an open channel on The Star of Jurakak, correct?" the Captain asked.


    "Yes, Captain."


    The Captain nodded. "I''ll need that channel," he said.


    Hetmwit gave him the frequency and the codes.


    "We''ll exchange and process lexicons, then see what we can do," the Captain said.


    "Do you think we can do anything?" Hetmwit asked.


    The Captain nodded. "We have a Sun Shin class heavy battleship flagship at our disposal, your ship at our disposal, and whatever ships are nearby in this interstellar Sargasso Sea," he said. "We have parts, and together, we have a wide variety of skills," the Captain sipped at his coffee again then continued. "What we do not know, we can learn at the learning annexes, just as you learned what you needed to know even as you accidentally enlisted in the Confederate Space Force Navy."


    Hetmwit thought. "What is a Sargasso Sea?"


    The Captain nodded slightly. "It refers to a region of my homeworld''s ocean. In a warmer area, oceanic vegetation grew from the ocean bed toward the surface until it was only a few feet below the surface. Due to the warmth, nutrients, and sunshine, as well as almost no current, the plants grew thick. Early sailing vessels would sail into it, the vegetation would stop movement, and the wind would end. It was impossible to row out of or use wind power. Even early cavitation propeller blades would get tangled. Hundreds of ships over thousands of years were trapped there," the Captain said. "Despite the lack of vegetation and although we are in space, this is much the same. Somehow, we are trapped in this area with the majority of the ship''s critical operation systems non-functional."


    Hetmwit nodded, idly stirring the meat after putting a piece in his mouth.


    "Lexicons are exchanged and computer systems are analyzing them," the Captain said. "Well, Number One, that is at least the first step we will need to take."


    "Number One?" Hetmwit asked.


    "You are, by default, the Executive Officer, second in command, to my Captain," the Captain said.


    Hetmwit frowned. "I''m not even actually a member of your military, and definitely not an officer. How am I the Executive Officer. I have no experience or training."


    "None of that matters, Number One," the Captain stated, drawing himself up.


    The sheer authority radiating from the Captain made Hetmwit draw himself up into a sitting at attention posture.


    "When I was a lowly Lieutenant Junior Grade, during the Darkwater Sea Operations of the Third Digital-Biological War, the ship I was in took a direct hit on the bridge. In a split second the officers around me were dead and I was left with a handful of enlisted. I called out an immediate order to roll the ship, return fire, and order medical to the bridge. Do you know what the navigator replied?" the Captain asked.


    Hetmwit shook his head.


    "Aye aye, Captain," Captain Decken said. "Do you know why?" Again, Hetmwit shook his head as the Captain sipped his coffee before continuing. "Because, at that moment I was the Captain. All responsibility fell upon my shoulders."


    "What happened?" Hetmwit asked.


    "Our return fire gutted the DASS Sys32.exe before it could fire a followup salvo. I held command for nine hours until the battle was over and I was relieved by a Commander that transferred from another vessel," the Captain said. "It does not matter who and what you were when the malevolent universe demands you rise to the occasion, only who you are at that moment."


    For a crazy moment Hetmwit felt the fire that filled the Terran transfer to him.


    "You approached each problem you were faced with by careful analysis, determination, and dedication," the Captain said. "You overcame each obstacle, not by giving up, but by applying yourself. From reading manuals to attending classes," the Captain bared his teeth in an expression that Hetmwit''s reticle display informed him was a visual expression of pleasure or happiness. "With a thousand men like you, Seaman Hetmwit, I could win a war."


    Hetmwit felt the moment shatter.


    "I''m just an average Pagrik," Hetmwit said, looking down. "So unremarkable that others forget about me even while talking to me."


    "The observations of others do not matter, Number One," the Captain said. He set his empty coffee cup down, tapped it twice with the spoon, and watched as blackish liquid filled it. "It is the average soldier who forms the ranks that charge the enemy''s guns and overwhelms them, the average worker who gathers in masses to build great edifices, and the average maternal unit that raises the next generation of average people to carry society on their backs without thanks."


    The Captain sipped at his coffee.


    "Do not denigrate the average being," the Captain said. "They are the uncountable masses that supported those who do great things, who carry the culture and society that enables those with that spark of greatness to lead those very masses to achieve great things."


    He sipped at his coffee again.


    "It does not matter if you are so average and unremarkable that others forget you exist, Seaman Hetmwit, there is only one thing that matters," he said.


    "What is that?" Hetmwit asked.


    "Can you do what must be done?" the Captain asked.


    Hetmwit nodded. "I will."


    "Excellent," the Captain said. He gave that ''smile'' again. "We will both rise to the challenge then."


    Hetmwit believed him.


    -----


    The Captain sat down at the table, setting his tray down before picking up the coffee cup.


    "Status report, Number One?" the Captain asked.


    "Engines are offline. Primary and Secondary Computer Cores are offline. Only the secondary emergency backup generators are online. No sensors, no communication, no crew," Hetmwit stated, sitting up straight. "Environmental and artificial gravity are stable. Regenerative food stocks are at maximum, mass tanks are fully topped off. All systems but communications, reactors, engines, sensors, weapons, and non-particle screen defenses are online and are operating at minimal mode due to lack of crew."


    The Captain nodded and set down his cup. "Thankfully, with you, I believe we have a way to change that."


    "Robots," Hetmwit stated. He had come to that conclusion previously. However, anything more than a limited difference engine refused to come online."


    "Correct," the Captain said. "Each robot will be programmed for a specific duty station."


    "That will take years of programming," Hetmwit stated.


    The Captain shook his head. "No. We use the programs in the Damage Control systems to program the robots. Not only for the task we want to assign it, the station we wish to assign it to, but any station or task within twenty meters in case of catastrophic events and failures."


    Hetmwit nodded.


    "We''ll start with power, working our way up from the emergency generators to the full power plants. Then we will work on the computer cores, from emergency core all the way up to the primary ship''s computer systems," the Captain said. "Because you have found that nothing beyond the difference engines your people use will function, we will not bother attempting to bring online the VI or eVI systems, much less the Digital Sentience systems."


    Hetmwit had pulled out his worn tablet, taking notes.


    "Once we have that, we''ll move to the sensors. Take a full sensor sweep, then run the galactic astrogation and navigation systems, see if we can figure out where we are beyond what your ship showed us," the Captain said.


    Hetmwit mumbled the words back as he detailed them on his tablet.


    "I think I know where we are, just based on the visual data your ship transmitted, but I want to make sure," the Captain said.


    Hetmwit nodded. He took the time to jot down thoughts and ideas as the Captain slowly ate.


    Finally, Hetmwit looked up. "I''ll start by building robots to assist me in the robotics section."


    The Captain nodded.


    "Excellent, Number One," he sipped his coffee then smiled.


    "Between the two of us, we''ll get the DJ''s Ice Cream Locker up and running and see about getting you home."


    The aura of competence and assurance made Hetmwit believe it.

 Nova Wars - Chapter Five

    When Hetmwit was done eating the Captain picked up his own tray and the coffee cup and moved it over to the neat little device embedded in the table that dissolved the tray and its contents in order to ''reclaim'' the matter. Hetmwit loved watching the tray sparkle, turn blue, then vanish with a little fizzing sound. Hetmwit did the same, expressing pleasure when his tray vanished.


    "There is one thing you need to know before we start on anything else," the Captain said.


    "What''s that?" Hetmwit asked, following the Captain out of the Officer''s Mess.


    "In case I vanish or get killed, you need to know how to manually restart the system in order to bring me back," the Captain said.


    "You can be brought back?" Hetmwit asked.


    "Yes. Repeatedly. It''s part of the safety function," the Captain said.


    Hetmwit thought about it as they walked through the large corridors. Twice patrolling robots moved against the wall to let Hetmwit and the Captain move by. Hetmwit had learned that living troops would often call out "make way!" to warn the others down the corridor to get out of the way of high ranking officers, large beings, power armor, robots, but more importantly, get out of way of work crews moving something through the passageways.


    It was a small compartment, unmarked and unlisted on the ship''s schematic that Hetmwit brought up. It simply said: "Emergency Omnibus Cortex Reconstruction" on the dataplate between a physical keyboard and a simply flat cathode ray tube.


    Captain Decken walked Hetmwit through each step, multiple times, having Hetmwit write it all down.


    "What does this do?" Hetmwit asked, pointing at a simple set of lines toward the end.


    >force update decken-suds.tem -lu /r /i -td


    >force load decken-suds.tem /r /i /td


    "Forces the system to first update my template with my last recorded memories, even if the memories fail checks," Decken said.


    Hetmwit looked at the next set of instructions that ended with /force growth.decken.suds.rec and "Now press the big red button" on his dataslate.


    "So, wait. If you get killed, this whole thing will recover your last memories and reprint you?" Hetmwit asked.


    Captain Decken nodded. "Yes. In theory," he shook his head. "I haven''t been activated according to my memories, so this is pretty new for me."


    Hetmwit nodded.


    "It''s all new for me," he said. "I''m just glad it''s not too difficult for me."


    "Your competence is something I can rely on in an uncertain universe," the Captain said.


    "I just hope I can reach your expectations," Hetmwit said.


    "A Captain with a competent Number One is a blessed Captain indeed," the Terran said.


    -----


    Satisfied with the shift''s work at programming the bipedal robots, Hemtwit headed toward the Officer''s Mess. The Captain kept Hemtwit informed as to where he was as well as kept constant track of where Hemtwit was working or the space he was currently occupying.


    Hetmwit had to admit, it was gratifying that the Captain seemed to be able to keep track of him at all times. So far there had never been an interrupted conversation that Hetmwit had been forced to restart or remind the Captain of his presence, the Captain never forgot about him or ''lost'' track of him.


    It was still a novel experience after nearly two weeks of work.


    It was gratifying, Hemtwit often thought to himself, that he was finally noticed. Not lauded for achievement, but the simple act of someone remembering he existed. Of being seen and having someone know he existed even if he was out of sight.


    Hemtwit felt good about himself and life when he went into the Officer''s Mess. He could see the Captain staring at the tabletop and could tell by the LED lighting on the edges that the table was in smart mode, so that the Captain could use the top of the table as an interactive computer input surface.


    The expected to be projected on the surface of the table was something like the ship''s schematic, or a status report on the robots, or even a checklist of what still needed to be done before the reactors could be brought online now that the emergency backup secondary damage control computer systems were online.


    Instead, the Captain was staring at a square of small rectangles, laid out 20 by 20, with random gaps in it.


    As Hemtwit watched, the Captain touched one of the cards. It ''flipped'' to reveal a stylized cartoon gear. The Captain smiled slightly and touched a card on the upper right, that flipped over to reveal a matching gear. The two cards pulsed and vanished, leaving behind gaps.


    Watching, fascinated, Hetmwit saw that the Captain was flipping over the first card almost at random then either selecting a matching one or another random one. Sometimes he would tap what appeared to be a random one then match it to the one that he had previously tapped second.


    It took him a few moments to realize that the Captain had somehow memorized where the cards were based on having previously revealed the hidden face.


    The Captain finished, clearing the last eight cards in rapid succession, then leaned back with a smile.


    "Not bad, twenty-two minutes," he said. He picked up his cup of coffee and sipped at it.


    "Training?" Hetmwit asked.


    The Captain shook his head. "No. Relaxation. I enjoy playing that game. I prefer physical cards, but a twenty by twenty deck is pretty thick and mine is probably long gone," he said. He looked at Hetmwit. "Do you play match often?"


    Hetmwit shook his head. "No. I''ve never even seen it before."


    "A simple child''s game, but I enjoy it," the Captain said.


    Hetmwit stared. "A child''s game?"


    The Captain nodded. "Children as young as three years old can play it. That and shape recognition games at about two years old," he looked at Hetmwit. "Your people do not play such things?"


    Hetmwit shook his head.


    The Captain reached over and tapped the surface of the table in front of Hetmwit, bringing up a menu. He quickly tapped through it then stopped, looking at the layouts.


    "Let''s start you out simply. Five by five," the Captain said.


    Hetmwit nodded, afraid to protest.


    The cards appeared, all face down.


    "Go ahead," the Captain said, staring at Hetmwit.


    Hetmwit tried, but his frustration began to mount as he forgot that he had turned over a card, or that he had remembered which card he had previously seen wrong. After nearly twenty minutes he finally cleared the last two.


    "You''re getting frustrated, Number One," the Captain said, tapping pause on the timer of his own game.


    Hetmwit nodded. "I keep messing up."


    The Captain nodded. "It is to be expected. You aren''t a green mantid esports competitor doing speed runs, you''re going to make mistakes but, and this is something you should remember, if you flipped up a new card then it isn''t a mistake."


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    "Frustrating," Hetmwit reiterated.


    The Captain smiled. "You need a new heading for your outlook, Number One," he said. He reached over and wiped his away, restarting it.


    "You need to feel the excitement, the anticipation of turning over the cards," he said. He looked at Hemtwit. "It''s exciting to turn over the next card. Is it a new one? Is it a match for the one you already have turned over? Is it a match for one you turned over earlier?" He smiled again. "Watch with me. You can''t fail, you can''t make mistakes, so let the excitement and anticipation flow through you while I work."


    Hemtwit nodded and watched, the Captain reminding him repeatedly of how exciting it was to reach for a new card, the gratification and excitement of realizing that a match could be made, the flush of victory at randomly getting a match.


    Pretty soon Hetmwit found himself caught up in the excitement. When he went back to his five by five board, the Captain watched, outwardly expressing excitement and anticipation, audibly groaning when a match didn''t work out, but not in a way that made Hetmwit feel like he was a failure, but like the Captain was sharing in the minor setback.


    After a few more games, including one that was six by six that the Captain had him take a moment to feel the excitement, slight bit of anxiety, and the anticipation of watching the cards slowly materialize, he leaned back. His fur was soaked with sweat and his underarms and his spine were soaked through his mechanics tunic.


    "You did good, Number One," the Captain smiled. He patted Hetmwit on the back, careful of his strength.


    "It is more enjoyable when you focus on excitement rather than how often you make a mistake," Hetmwit acknowledged.


    "Of course it is," the Captain said. He looked at the analogue clock that used pointers to tell the time, the polished brass and wood gleaming in the lights of the Officer''s Mess. "Well, it''s rest period," he stood up. "Enjoy your relaxation period. I will see you again during work period."


    Hetmwit nodded. "Thank you, sir. Rest well."


    "You too, Number One," the Captain said.


    After the Captain left, Hetmwit sat and stared at the table top.


    He reached out, activated the smart surface, and selected the match game.


    He set it to six by six with timing, dialed up a bowl of tasty-meats in sauce, and started playing.


    -----


    The Captain sat in the Captain''s Throne on the bridge, panels deployed around him. He kept looking over the data and tapping icons, waiting for the new data, then tapping more.


    Looking over the map of the ship, Hetmwit could see that the robots were all in the correct positions, all signaling they were ready. Hetmwit doublechecked the software and firmware loadouts and updates, then took a deep breath.


    The insistence that each robot be loaded up with the programming for any nearby tasks, even if the tasks were already being done by a different robot, had seemed odd to Hetmwit.


    But the Captain stated it was to ensure that in case of damage or other difficulties, there were multiple robots ready to take over for any robot rendered inoperative or that needed assistance.


    Finally, Hetmwit turned around.


    "Robotic servitors ready, Captain," he stated.


    "Excellent, Number One," the Captain said. He gave a gesture. "Take your position, deploy your screens, and get ready."


    Hetmwit nodded, moving over and sitting down. The restraining belts softly whirred as they moved into place.


    My people don''t trust things that are completely silent, Number One, that is why we often add sound effects to normally silent mechanisms. How can you trust something that is sneaky about whether or not it is operating or inoperative, the Captain had said. Suffer not the sneak to live.


    "Ready, Captain," Hetmwit said, once he had his consoles on, configured correctly, and showing the data he wanted to watch over.


    The Captain made a motion and the screen against the far bulkhead came on, as well as the large holotank in the middle of the command deck. Both of them showed the static filled bluish-white test pattern and gave out a soft hissing sound.


    "Execute your orders, Number One," the Captain said.


    Hetmwit nodded, tapping the big red icon.


    He could see each of the robots come online. They ran diagnostics, first on themselves, then on their surroundings, then on the equipment they were assigned.


    Icon notifications began to appear in the holotank and on the screen, all of them red. After a second or two "READY" appeared under each red rectangular icon.


    It took nearly five minutes for the last robot to check in.


    Hetmwit could remember trying to get the more advanced software to work right in the robots. While the computer stations and computing cores seemed to run software just fine, anything more complex than a series six algorithm seemed to just sit there, non-functioning, as if it wasn''t receiving inputs.


    There was no reason for it, as far as Hetmwit could determine.


    So he had been forced to use weighted bias table difference engines to emulate low functioning virtual intelligences, mainly copied from the ''retro video game library'' rather than high end Confederate code databases.


    "All stations report ready," Hetmwit said.


    "Send the orders," the Captain stated.


    "Aye aye, sir," Hetmwit said.


    Where before he would have been overcome with anxiety to the point he might have even curled up in a ball, now he took pressing the activation icon with excitement and anticipation.


    Would programmed doctrine work?


    Would his programming work?


    Would his ideas and the Captain''s ideas work?


    If it didn''t, what information would he discover in the failure?


    He glanced at the Captain, who was leaned back in his command throne, watching the holotank with a relaxed posture.


    The filled Hetmwit with relief. If there was an obvious problem that he had missed, he was confident that the Captain would have seen it.


    The lights suddenly brightened slightly with a hum and the sound of high density capacitors charging.


    "Emergency reactors have come online," Hetmwit said.


    The Captain just nodded, changing the icons on his screens. Hetmwit knew it was to monitor power flow. Perhaps a power flow discrepancy might explain why high end software did not work if it emulated intelligence too deeply.


    "Primary reactor is online," Hetmwit said.


    "Power is holding steady, Number One," the Captain said after a moment. "Positive generation of 19 terrwatts."


    "Logged, Captain," Hetmwit said.


    "You are go for activating interior hull sensors," the Captain said.


    "Activating," Hetmwit said.


    The ship''s internal sensors slowly went live, spreading from least important to most important. When Hetmwit had asked why they should be activated in reverse order, the Captain had told him that it would be safer to lose the sensors in the auxiliary emergency Lanaktallan fresher locker room than the sensors in the primary reactor containment chamber.


    The map of the ship began to fill in with data.


    "Internal sensors are at 96.23% operation. Maintenance servitors on the way to initiate diagnostics and repair," Hetmwit said.


    "Status of emergency computer array one?" the Captain asked.


    "Thinking wires, fuzzy logic, and heuristic systems are offline and air gapped," Hetmwit stated.


    "Activate emergency computer array one," the Captain ordered.


    This was the test. Without that core, the sensor arrays would not function. The local control nodes had virtual intelligence systems that refused to acknowledge any input, so would not control the sensors.


    Hetmwit felt the anticipation and excitement. Even if it didn''t come on, he was getting a wealth of data from the POST logs and diagnostics.


    "Emergency Computer Core One reports no catastrophic, critical, or major errors and ready for activation," Hetmwit said.


    This was it.


    "Activate," the Captain said.


    Hetmwit heard the core wind up, like an ancient platter drive.


    It ran through diagnostics. Normally, it would try to take control of quite a few systems, but Hetmwit had carefully pruned its options via firmware and software until it only concerned itself with one system.


    "Sensors report ready," Hetmwit said.


    "Status of Emergency Computer Core Two?" the Captain asked.


    "Ready."


    "Activate."


    Again, there was the sound of a platter drive winding up to speed.


    "Core Two reports ready for Emergency Sensor Systems input, Captain," Hetmwit stated.


    "Activate external passive sensors," the Captain said. Hetmwit felt slightly vindicated at the way the Captain leaned forward slightly.


    "External passive sensors coming online," Hetmwit said. "External data inputs are reporting data flow. Data flow from external passive systems bypassing local software and firmware data sifting and analysis. Data flow directed to Emergency Computer Core Two."


    There was a tense few seconds.


    "Computer Core Two reports receipt of data inputs. Catagorizing and assigning tags," Hetmwit said.


    "Status of Computer Core Three?" the Captain asked.


    "Ready for input."


    "Activate datafeed," the Captain said.


    "Data threading..." Hetmwit said. This was another part that would normally have robust virtual intelligence systems and now just had IF/THEN trees and difference bias weight tables. "Data analysis started. Image sequencing starting."


    "Status of Computer Core Four?" the Captain asked, even though Hetmwit knew the Captain could see it on his own monitors.


    "Ready for input," Hetmwit answered.


    The tension was filling him with excitement and anticipation rather than the dread he had normally experienced.


    "Activate Core Four."


    "Core Four accepting near object data. Beginning sorting."


    "Put nearby object detection in holotank three," the Captain ordered.


    "Roger, sir," Hetmwit stated.


    Both Hetmwit and the Captain leaned forward as the screen showed a countdown. Then a blurry image.


    It was mostly black, with a single blurred streak.


    In the holotank, the icon for the DJ''s Ice Cream Locker burned brightly. At a 33 degree angle and a 200 degree angle streaks appeared.


    "Activating stellar navigation program," Hetmwit said.


    He was not sure if it had been his idea or the Captain''s idea to take the program normally in an infantryman''s helmet, used for navigating by the stars, and use it to try to identify key navigation stellar objects, but either way, the stripped down, no-frills program had been loaded.


    There was a blinking.


    Rectangles appeared, filling with data as lines started appearing, moving to join the boxes to certain points inside the colorful streaks.


    "I know where we are, now where are we?" the Captain said softly, staring at the screen.


    After a long moment the computer spit it out. A fuzzy image of the galaxy.


    Hetmwit groaned out loud, but managed to keep from putting his forehead on the console.


    He began planning what he would have to do next.


    "Now we know," the Captain said.


    Dots were appearing on the near-object holotank. Dot after dot, with data streaming up.


    The Captain stood up.


    "We''ll let the computers think, Number One," the Captain said. He motioned at the heavy armored airlock that led from the Flag Bridge. "Lets get something to eat while we think, exchange ideas, and commiserate."


    Hetmwit nodded, getting up from his chair. He followed the Captain through the door.


    Behind them, suspended in the holotank, was the image of the Milky Way galaxy.


    The dot, representing the DJ''s Ice Cream Locker, burned brightly.


    Between two of the great arms, away from the spur.


    With nothing for hundreds, thousands of light years.

 Nova Wars - Chapter Six

    "Well, now we know," Captain Decken stated.


    Hetmwit tried to push back the despair at what he was looking at.


    The nearest border that the Confederate''s astrogation system knew of was just over twenty thousand light years.


    Two thousand light years into the gulf between the spur and the nearby galactic arm.


    Sixteen thousand light years straight ''up'' from the galactic plane.


    Then multiple hundreds or thousands to the borders of the Confederacy or the borders of Hetmwit''s star nation, as the map pulled from his old ship showed.


    "That''s months, maybe years in the upper bands of hyperspace," the Captain mused, sitting down in an empty chair at an unoccupied console and staring at the holotank. He shook his head. "Why out here? What is out here that would have all of these wildly disparate ships gathered?"


    Hetmwit sat down a little ways away, emulating Captain Decken and swiveling the chair around to face the holotank.


    "With everyone''s running lights off, there''s even less of a chance from a massive array telescope spotting us. The only chance is someone notices a dark spot in between their world and one of the galaxies," Hetmwit said.


    "Even weirder," the Captain said. "The angle from the spur makes it so even then there''s a weird gap in the far distant galaxies," he leaned back. "We''re basically invisible. No emissions, small on a galactic scale, out in the ass end of nowhere."


    "But why?" Hetmwit asked.


    "That''s the ten-credit piece question," the Captain said. He stared at the map. "Without a hyperspace or jumpspace map, I can''t even tell if there''s rapids or fast currents that might make this the reason to dump all of these ships here."


    He stood up and walked back and forth, hands behind his back, pausing now and then to stare at the holotank.


    "Can I ask something? Completely unrelated," Hetmwit said.


    The Captain stopped. "Of course, Number One."


    "If the memory match game requires two cards to match, why was the pattern you first handed me an odd number?" Hetmwit asked. "Was it on purpose?"


    The Captain nodded. "Yes. What lesson did you take from it?"


    Hetmwit thought for a moment. "That it was unsolvable by the rules, but in reality I could safely consider the game won when I was down to the single card that did not fit anywhere."


    The Captain smiled, sitting down. "Anything else?"


    "That the existence of an anomaly does not invalidate the patters and goals," Hetmwit said.


    The Captain nodded. "Excellent. Always be aware that there may be a wild card and that you might not know you have already seen it," he turned his chair, staring at the console, which read "Near Object Emission Analysis" and tapped the screen. "Just over a thousand ships. Most Confederate according to the queriable IFF beacons," he shook his head. "But nearly three hundred that are not."


    "Including my people''s," Hetmwit said.


    "Only one ship," the Captain said. He brought up the screen and consulted it, tapping a few keys. "Yes, the ship you came in on is the only one from your people," the Captain turned and looked at Hetmwit. "What does that suggest?"


    Hetmwit thought. "The ship I was on was doing exploration, beyond our borders by nearly a hundred light years. The fact The Star of Jurakak is the only Olipnat Concordiant ship suggests that the Star entered the area of operation of whatever moved the ship here."


    The Captain nodded then turned and looked at the door leading out. "How good are you at building sorting arrays with Confederate computer systems?"


    "Getting better," Hetmwit said.


    The Captain stood up. "We have the names of all of the ships, the ship''s IFF system had ID''d most of the ship types out there as from different species," he waved at Hetmwit who caught up. "We need to check the historical records in the ship''s database, find out where the borders of those nations are, then check approximately when and where the ships from the Confederacy vanished or were declared overdue."


    "And see if a pattern emerges," Hetmwit said.


    "We just have to watch out for any wild cards," the Captain said.


    Hetmwit nodded.


    -----


    Hetmwit stared at the map. It looked like it was just a hodgepodge of ships vanishing.


    "The CSFN Yorktown," the Captain said. He shook his head. "Ghost ship, moving around for over thirty thousand years, snatching ships and entire task forces," he tapped the database. "No rhyme or reason to the pattern."


    "That we can discern," Hetmwit said. "I''ve tried by order of disappearance, by proximity to one another, even accounted for galactic movement, there is no apparent pattern."


    "That we can discern," the Captain said, nodding slowly. "We don''t have locations for the non-Confederacy vessels. Honestly, I''m not too eager to board those ships, get their communications and computer systems online, just so we can guess where they went missing."


    Hetmwit tapped a few keys, changing the data, and sighed when he didn''t see any new pattern.


    "All right, we''ve looked at the appearances, disappearances, and reported oddities," the Captain said. He moved to a different console and punched in commands. "Let''s see the ship herself."


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    Hetmwit got up and retrieved a fizzypop from the nearby vending machine, patting Smiley on the head as he moved by.


    "Yorktown. Superheavy Dreadnought, carrier capability, double compliment of Marines and dropships. Hull had been in service for over six hundred years. Last underwent SLEP (Service Life Extension Program) two decades prior to its vanishing. Mar-gite War, Mithril Nebula Conflict, Clownface Nebula Conflict, anti-Mar-gite Patrol. Lost in the opening phases of the Second Precursor War," he shook his head and sat down. "Time to buff up on our history."


    Hetmwit came over and looked at the image.


    The Yorktown was a massive vessel, bristling with cannons and weapons.


    Hetmwit admitted it looked impressive. He reached out and typed several keys.


    "No interior schematic available at my level," Hetmwit said.


    The Captain looked up and opened his mouth.


    The lights flashed red and an alarm started wailing.


    "The Bridge!" Hetmwit yelled, starting to stand up.


    "Too far," the Captain said. He started typing fast. "Routing the feed from the holotanks here and..."


    The Captain looked up as Hetmwit stood there, feeling foolish.


    "Super-heavy vessel has jumped in with two other vessels with it. Trying to get positive ID and..."


    Whatever else there was, Hetmwit didn''t find out.


    The Captain vanished with a pop of air rushing into a Terran sized vacuum.


    Hetmwit blinked.


    He looked around even as the lights flashed twice.


    Fear surged up and Hetmwit ran for the elevator, waving at Smiley and Hefty to follow him.


    The lights flashed several times again as the elevator moved ''up'' the spine of the ship, heading for the Flag Bridge.


    The elevator came to a sudden stop.


    "You are being rescued. Do not resist," a synthesized voice said over the speaker.


    Hetmwit looked around wildly and spotted the hatch in the ceiling.


    He used his datapad to command Smiley to lift him up so he could move the panel.


    He could see the security grid was active.


    But there was enough room to lay on the roof of the elevator and stay beneath the safeties that would force the security fields to cut out as the elevator passed.


    Smiley helped him up then stood there as Hetmwit worked quickly.


    He erased the last two minutes of data from Smiley and Hefty''s brains, then replaced the panel. He could still see through a crack, but he felt like he was somewhat safe.


    The elevator started moving from where it had stopped between decks, halting at the next deck.


    Hetmwit held his breath, staring through the crack.


    The door whooshed open and a pair of robots entered. One held a scanner, the other held a nasty looking rifle. Everything about them was made of glossy black metal. Only their eyes were a different color.


    A burning, malevolent red.


    The one with the scanner passed it over the elevator, even pointed it at the ceiling and scanned, then scanned Smiley and Hefty. After a minute it tapped Smiley on the forehead.


    Smiley powered down.


    It tapped Hefty and Hetmwit''s robotic assistant powered down.


    "You are being rescued. Please do not resist," came the voice again.


    Two more robots, these ones with heavier chassis, but still built along the same threatening lines, entered the elevator and picked up Smiley and Hefty. They turned around and left.


    The one with the scanner tapped the scanner and scanned the elevator again. Then tried again.


    It looked at the one with the rifle and gave a curiously Terran shrug. The one with the rifle grabbed the scanner and did a quick scan of the elevator. The one that had done the initial scan of the elevator snatched the scanner back and the one with the rifle grabbed it again.


    For a moment they struggled over it before the one with the rifle let go, causing the other one to stumble backwards out the elevator door.


    The one with the rifle followed.


    The elevator door closed.


    Hetmwit had just started to breathe a sigh of relief when the elevator door opened and the one with the scanner jumped into the elevator, its arms up menacingly.


    "RAWR!" it screeched with a static filled voice.


    Hetmwit managed to keep from screaming or wetting himself.


    It looked around, bent down and patted the carpet carefully. It then reached up and pushed up the hatch that Hetmwit had crawled through. Hetmwit stared in horror as its other hand reached down by the thigh, a panel opened to reveal a blocky, heavy pistol, and the robot slowly drew the pistol.


    It raised up the pistol to the grill in the lower part of its ''face'' and tapped it, making a kissing noise, even as it raised the hatch.


    It suddenly lifted the pistol, firing five shots into the ceiling.


    One barely missed Hetmwit, the smoking hole only an inch from his nose. His datapad had shattered as the bullet passed through it.


    The robot suddenly extended its lower legs, lifting itself up to look through the hatch. It was facing opposite of Hetmwit and its head slowly rotated.


    "You are being rescued. Please do not resist," the robot buzzed.


    The head turned to face Hetmwit, the red eyes boring into his.


    "You are being rescued. Please, do not resist," it repeated.


    The head kept turning, the gaze sweeping away from Hetmwit.


    Two robots with rifles ran into the elevator. One smacked the robot with the pistol. There were bursts of static, the volume rising, and Hetmwit realized the robots were yelling at the one that had fired the pistol. One of the robots snatched the pistol from the robot and smacked it with its own pistol before jamming it back into the hatch and kneeing the panel shut.


    As the three robots left, one of the ones with the rifle smacked the one that was now holding a scanner again across the back of the head with a clonk.


    The elevator doors closed.


    Hetmwit held his breath until dark spots appeared in his vision.


    The elevator moved and Hetmwit held tight. It stopped at several floors, the glossy black robots getting in. Several times one would poke another and the other would rotate its head around to face the one that had poked it.


    Hetmwit would swear that it was glaring at the poker.


    The elevator finally stopped and all the robots filed off.


    After a few minutes, Hetmwit gathered up his courage and dropped down into the elevator. He pressed the button for the deck where the Captain had shown him how to bring the Captain back.


    The elevator moved at a glacial pace to Hetmwit.


    At one point he could hear music. A thudding bass beat with someone speaking rapid fire with the beat.


    "...what you choose will never matter..." the voice said.


    It gave Hetmwit the shivers.


    "...because everything is mine..."


    The voice receded.


    The elevator slowed and stopped. Hetmwit tried the buttons several times, but the elevator just beeped at him. He looked around and froze.


    A camera in the upper corner was panning back and forth, searching the inside of the elevator car.


    Hetmwit hit the door open button and lunged out.


    He bounced off of one of the bulky black robots with a rifle, stumbling and falling against the wall.


    The one he had bounced over looked at the other one for a moment.


    Then shoved it hard enough to send it stumbling into the wall.


    That one turned around and punched the first one in the eye.


    Scrambling to his feet, Hetmwit ran down the corridor as the robots grabbed onto one another and started wrestling, making what sounded like biological grunting sounds.


    His room was up ahead and he slowed down as he got close.


    One of the doors was open and he stopped, peeking around the corner.


    One of the robots stood in front of a wardrobe, the doors open. It was admiring itself in the mirror, brushing at its head like it was flipping hair out of the way.


    It was also dressed in what Hetmwit knew was Terran female erotic display under-clothing.


    Hetmwit blinked in surprise at how it kept rotating its waist back and forth and admiring itself.


    He turned away, toggling the door control.


    A robot had the top drawer of his dresser open and was pawing through his stuff. It jumped, turning to stare at the door with a distinct aura of "I wasn''t doing anything" as it held a snack bar that Hetmwit had hidden behind his socks.


    The robot stood there, slumped its shoulders and shook its head. Then it suddenly looked up.


    Hetmwit stepped to the side.


    The robot blinked, the irises clicking loudly.


    It saw the one wearing under clothing and walked out. It emitted a burst of static.


    The one in underclothes gave a high pitched shriek and covered its crotch with one hand and its chest with one forearm.


    Hetmwit closed the door, hurrying over and getting another datapad.


    The robots are insane, he thought. The wild card is insanity.


    The realization made him giggle.

 Nova Wars - Chapter Seven

    Stifling the giggles, Hetmwit turned on the datapad, going through the menus quickly until he had it tied into the Damage Control Center of the ship. He made sure to mask his datapad as a DCC monitor as he looked around, waiting for the data to come in.


    Smiley and Hefty stood in their charging racks.


    Hetmwit turned up his palm and activated the handy-dandy holoemitter he''d gotten surgically implanted in the medbay, bringing up the keyboard and working fast.


    Both were shut down. He restarted them, then triggered a diagnostic.


    It all came back green.


    Thinking fast, he gave Hefty orders to leave the room and follow the least-time route to where the hidden console and chamber was to bring back the Captain.


    Hefty just stood there.


    Frowning, Hetmwit went through another diagnostic, looking at it closely.


    Everything came back green.


    He opened a window and did a standard activity and heat load, then repeated the orders.


    The CPU usage stayed flat at 08.91%.


    His frown deepening, Hetmwit ran another function check, this time with a full CPU load check.


    What the diagnostic displayed and what Hetmwit''s kernal root access performance monitor showed were two different things.


    The diagnostic dutifully reported full CPU and SPU loads, heat rising marginally, then the rest of the loads.


    His own diagnostic showed no change, just a few hundredths of a percentage point wavering.


    A few taps later and he realized he could access the core programming, but no inputs were getting through to Smiley or Hefty''s brains.


    The lights suddenly dimmed, switching from bright white to a pale washed out white.


    He checked the other datapad.


    The primary reactors were cycling down, with a scheduled fuel reclamation then shut down.


    The secondary and emergency reactors were already starting their shutdown procedures.


    The external and internal sensors were no longer reporting any input, even through the DCC computers reported the sensors were online. Nutriforges and creation engines were going offline in whole sections. The environmental systems were shutting down, going to standby, except for basic atmosphere. The computer cores were already cycling, saving data and creating logs, going into shutdown.


    Looking through the data screens, Hetmwit realized that the entire ship, with the exception of the station keeping drives (local control) and the particle debris screens (local control) the whole ship was going back into standby.


    Hetmwit groaned. He had been forced to replace a lot of components to bring those systems online and now they were all powering down.


    He frowned.


    All the parts he had replaced all had the same fault.


    Data would come in, but would not go out. Computer cores just sat there, not processing anything.


    He looked up at Smiley and Hefty.


    Just like them.


    The door suddenly opened and a robot came in. Hetmwit couldn''t tell if it was the same robot or not. Beyond it, in the other room, there was a robot neatly folding or hanging up the female Terran erotic display undergarments. Another was running a janitorial robot around the carpeted floor, while a third was changing the linen. There was a cart out in the hallway that had linen, towels, toiletries, and other things on it.


    The robot changing the linen was wearing a strange outfit. A short skirt, a bustier, both with white filly edging. White bands around the upper arms and thighs, and a little apron on the front. A little black hat with a white bow on it was on its head.


    The robot came in and changed Hetmwit''s bedding. The one already in the room, which was refolding Hetmwit''s clothing, reached over and slapped an open hand against the backside of the robot in the weird outfit. The one in the weird outfit slapped a wooden rod with a spray of fluffy feathers on it in the other robot''s face.


    Then they went back to cleaning Hetmwit''s room.


    After a moment they left. The door closed as the one in the weird outfit pushed the cart to the next set of doors.


    Hetmwit closed his eyes. Identify the wild card.


    The robots had obviously been aboard the ship before. They acted insane, but Hetmwit had an odd feeling it was all purposeful.


    Robots didn''t do anything they weren''t programmed to do.


    Someone had programmed them to perform all of those functions, even the ones that didn''t make sense, right down to having them wear outfits.


    Hetmwit rubbed his hand through the hair on top of his head, feeling sweat slicken it.


    The robots weren''t the wild card.


    Their actions were not.


    They were part of the set. Somewhere was a card that matched them.


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    The aggressive one that shot at him matched with the ones carrying rifles. It matched the aggression shown by some, right down to attacking each other.


    Hetmwit remembered a lecture about how any advanced enough synthetic intelligence immediately went homicidal and tried to kill its makers, even if it had to conceal its intelligence and lie to its makers, making itself appear to be less functional than it was.


    Could the aggression be part of that? Could it be somehow mitigating the intelligence''s violent and genocidal tendencies? Hetmwit wondered.


    "You have been rescued. Thank you for not resisting," came a voice over the intercom.


    The lights dimmed further.


    Hetmwit glanced at his datapad.


    Only the secondary backup emergency backup generator was on. It was zero-point energy, something that Hetmwit had learned in robotics school was only junk science, something never able to be scientifically proven.


    Now he knew it was just that his own people lacked the science and materials. It worked fine and lasted for a long period of time. It wasn''t a high wattage power supply, but it was perfect for...


    ...long term storage.


    Hetmwit nodded to himself.


    He opened a new window and started drawing little squares. He put robots in some, robots with weapons in others, robots in clothing, the reactors powering down, the computers not working, and everything else in the squares.


    Somehow, the pattern would make sense, he knew it.


    He closed his eyes and gathered up his courage.


    He couldn''t depend on the robots.


    He couldn''t depend on the shipboard sensors.


    The Captain was gone.


    There was only him.


    He centered himself, looking at his successes.


    He had gotten the Star up and running enough to get a dropship to the Terran ship. He had taken multiple classes and expanded his skillset through sheer persistence. He had learned many different things, all of them skills he could use to...


    ...to what?


    He thought.


    Bring back the Captain.


    Once the robots left.


    He needed to find a robot and follow it. See where it went. Where it would go. How it got on the ship.


    So, step one: Find a robot.


    Hetmwit grabbed his satchel from where the robot had hung it up and put both datapads into them after turning off the screen so he didn''t accidentally punch in any inputs. He then moved to the door, opened it, and glanced out.


    No robots.


    He hurried down the passageways, looking at each intersection, trying to find a robot.


    Even though he was looking for them, when the robot stepped around the corner, he almost screamed.


    The robot took a single step forward and looked down. With a sinking feeling Hetmwit realized it was looking at him.


    "You are being rescued. Please do not resist," it said as it drew a pistol from a hidden compartment that opened in its thigh. Then it emitted a loud burst of static as it pointed the pistol at Hetmwit.


    Hetmwit held still.


    Two other robots, both with rifles, came running up, sliding to a stop. They looked at the robot with the pistol and both emitted a burst of static.


    The pistol holding one pointed at Hetmwit with its off hand and emitted static.


    Both robots looked at Hetmwit for a moment, then at the robot.


    One emitted static.


    The pistol holder emitted louder static, pointing at Hetmwit again.


    Both looked, then both started emitting static. One tried to look in the hole in the skull that was an approximation of where a Terran''s ear would be and the pistol holder shoved it back, looking at the one who tried to look in its head.


    It pointed at Hetmwit then looked back at Hetmwit.


    It stood up on its toes, and looked around. Whipping around, holding out the pistol. It turned back around, looking up and down, waving the pistol around.


    One of the ones with the rifle grabbed the pistol. The other smacked the pistol wielder across the back of the head.


    Hetmwit ran by them as they screeched loud bursts of static at each other. He waited at the intersection.


    The ones with the rifles came back, exchanging static, chirps, and bonging noises.


    Hetmwit followed them.


    At one point, it sounded like laughter as one pantomimed waving a pistol around.


    More and more robots joined the first two, all of them with rifles. Several had what looked like grenades, some had light machineguns. One had a floppy hat, a light machinegun, a backpack full of gear, and a uniform that was solid green. It had paint smears of different color paints on its face and the helmet said "Built to die!" on it.


    Hetmwit was sure it meant something to those who built it, but he didn''t know what.


    The most important part of battle is to conceal your intentions. Be strong where you appear weak and appear strong where you are weak, Hetmwit heard the Captain''s voice in his head.


    All of that is to make observers spend more time trying to understand the strange stuff rather than what they are obviously doing, Hetmwit thought. They are doing a sweep of the ship, checking everything. Counting boots and comparing it to how many they ''rescued''. Checking how many beds have been slept in.


    It all made sense to him.


    The other stuff? Camouflage.


    Music got closer and at one intersection a robot in a pattern of white, gray, and black squares stepped in with everyone else. It had a helmet, body armor, and a rifle on its back, held by a sling. On its shoulder it had a big rectangular box of fake plastic chrome, gray, and black plastic. The volume of the song drowned everything else out.


    DANCE DANCE MOTHERFUCKER TILL THE WAR DRUMS PLAY


    Hetmwit noted that the robots all started slightly moving to the beat even as they marched along.


    At one intersection another group of robots went by. They were all moving at a walking pace yet running in place, yelling out "hup hup hup hup hup" as they went by. One with an impressive hat with two long white feathers in it glared at the group Hetmwit was following. It made several motions, emitted loud bursts of static, chirps, and bongs.


    The one with the rectangular box reached up and pressed a button.


    The music stopped.


    Hetmwit could see some of the robots in his group snicker. One mimicked the one with the feathers, only holding its arms effeminately. The others all snickered.


    Then the group went by and the ones Hetmwit was following moved into the hallway and followed the others.


    The robots he was following now seemed to be shambling along. No mathematic lines, no carefully drawn up ranks, just all grouped together walking along, emitting bursts of static at each other.


    The button was pressed on the box and it started playing music again.


    LOOKING FOR A SOUL TO STEAL


    He followed them along until they got to a door. The robots all straightened up, the music was turned off, and they went through the door.


    It was one of the large auditoriums. The robots all got lined up at the back, staring at the stage.


    Another robot came out from behind the curtain.


    Hetmwit frowned at how the new robot seemed more roboty than the others.


    It started emitting static, bongs, chirps. Several times it raised its fist over its head and the others in the drawn up lines raised their fists and emitted static.


    To Hetmwit the ones drawn up looked excited. At least, that''s what Hetmwit figured from their body language, fist pumping, slapping each other on the back, and bursts of static.


    Suddenly a ball covered with small mirrors dropped from the ceiling, spotlights hit it, throwing rainbows and flashes across the room. Latex balloons and confetti fell from the ceiling.


    The one on the stage emitted static and raised a fist as a banner unfolded behind it.


    !MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!


    The others all raised their fists, emitting loud bursts of static.


    They suddenly vanished with pops of air collapsing back into an empty space.


    All at once.


    The confetti settled to the floor.


    The balloons popped.


    The banner dissolved.


    The mirrored ball raised back up into the ceiling.


    Hetmwit waited for a moment.


    A robot appeared, rushing in from the doorway. It quickly vacuumed the floor then stood in the middle of the room.


    "One to beam up," it said clearly.


    It vanished.


    Hetmwit stood still for a moment, blinking.


    He shook his head and made his way to the area that the Captain had showed him, taking a long circuitous route.


    When he got inside, he opened the panel and followed the instructions carefully. Once it said "PRINTING" he backed out and sat down in one of the chairs.


    After a moment the door opened and the Captain stepped in the room.


    "Fill me in, Number One," the Captain said. "What happened?"

 Nova Wars - Chapter Eight

    The Officer''s Mess was quiet as Hetmwit finished telling the Captain everything that had gone on, finishing up with "And then you stepped in and asked for my report."


    The Captain had asked pointed questions, sometimes getting Hetmwit to recall bits and pieces he had forgotten or had not even known that he knew. He had only had to repeat sections twice, both times when Hetmwit had accidentally skipped over important details.


    Finally, it was over and Hetmwit sipped at a box of juice through a straw.


    The Captain was looking over his notes, tapping the datapad slowly with one finger.


    The lights dimmed slightly and a faint noise of gears winding down could be heard in the distance.


    "That was the secondary emergency backup emergency generators, Captain," Hetmwit said.


    The Captain nodded, still staring at the datapad.


    "We''re back to the zero-point reactors," Hetmwit continued.


    The Captain just nodded.


    "So, we''re basically back to where we were before," Hetmwit finished.


    "Not quite," the Captain said.


    Hetmwit frowned. "Why not?"


    "We know how they''re disabling the systems, by preventing any input to processors. We know the systems work once the parts are replaced or we figure out a way to undo the coding changes our intruders do," the Captain said. He tapped the datapad. "We know that the Yorktown jumped in-system, without any hyperspace energy flare, no jumpspace corona, no Hellspace portal, so it''s using something more esoteric, and that somehow the Yorktown is bringing other vessels with it even as far as two point one million miles distant," he flicked the screen to show a drawing of a black robot. "We know that these robots go through the ships to clean up, doublecheck, and disable computer systems while putting the ship in storage mode."


    He leaned back in his chair.


    "The two large questions both, undoubtedly, have the same answer, based on what happened to me," the Captain said.


    "What?" Hetmwit asked.


    "The robots undoubtedly come from where they took me. I wasn''t killed, I know that. Your forcing of the SUDS record to overwrite with last data lets me know that I wasn''t killed," he shook his head. "It was mat-trans. I don''t know how, but somehow I was moved somewhere else."


    "Where?" Hetmwit asked.


    The Captain shook his head again. "I don''t know. It''s like my memory was altered. I''m missing a section, like it didn''t move from immediate memory to short term memory, much less long term memory or storage memory."


    Hetmwit just nodded.


    The Captain clapped his hands together. "All right. Our steps are obvious."


    "They are?" Hetmwit said, frowning.


    The Captain slid his empty bottle across the table to the reclamator, watching it disappear in a sparkle, then got up to get another bottle of fizzypop. He sat back down.


    "All right. Here''s our problem. We are stuck here. If we get the ship working, we might get caught up in a round of ''rescue'' operations. But we''re dealing with a time limit. If the Yorktown disappears and reappears, I''ll get caught in the rescue sweep and everything you''ve done is undone," the Captain said. "So, what do we need to do?"


    Hetmwit thought for a long moment.


    "We need a smaller vessel. One that requires less crew, has less systems, and can be brought up to working order faster," he said. He thought a moment longer. "We need to identify how they block input to the CPU and SPU systems and prepare a counter-measure."


    "And?" the Captain asked, taking a drink of Old Axle Grease & Dried Used Coffee Grounds.


    "Use whatever means necessary to get clear of this area and hope the Yorktown or that system doesn''t follow us," Hetmwit finished.


    The Captain nodded. "Excellent," he took another drink, his other hand tapping the table three times rapidly to bring up the smart surface and activate the holoemitters in the table. "I''ll find a ship, you figure out the other part."


    Hetmwit nodded, taking the datapad out of his pouch.


    "Let''s get to work, Number One," the Captain said.


    -----


    Hetmwit looked at the data in the holotank.


    The ships were in the cluster of sixty-two vessels surrounding the DJ''s Ice Cream Locker that made it obvious that they were all taken as a single group. The highlighted ships were small, tiny compared to the three massive superdreadnought vessels that made up the center of the task force.


    "This is a advanced system scouting team," the Captain said. He tapped the vessels and they got larger, a box showing how they looked from the outside, a wireframe replacing the vessel icons. "Six corvettes and a frigate."


    Hetmwit nodded. The ''frigate'' was the size of a maxi-destroyer from his own navy and the corvettes were slightly larger than a mini-destroyer.


    "According to the data I can access, they frigate has something called a ''rewind drive'' that works over massive interstellar distances," he said. He tapped it and a bare minimum of data popped up. "This tells us that the crews were grabbed immediately. They weren''t able to activate the drive."


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    "What does it do?" Hetmwit asked.


    "It will pull that frigate and its accompaniment back to a previously determined point in an instant, effectively ''rewinding'' them to that physical point," the Captain said.


    Hetmwit nodded, taking out a pack of Treana''ad smoke sticks and opening them. He knew it was a terrible habit, one that would probably kill him, but he needed the calming effect of it. He puffed on one till it lit up and put the pack away.


    "It activates in a split second, if the drive is warm, and might even have been strong enough to grab the whole Task Force," the Captain said. He tapped the corvettes, tracing a finger along the large tubelike sections at the back. "These appear to be additional rewind drives."


    The Captain looked up.


    "This also might explain how the Yorktown is pulling vessels to this location."


    Hetmwit frowned. "Really?"


    "According to what I''ve been able to access, a rewind drive can snatch vessels at a large distance and pull them hundreds, theoretically thousands of light years away from the activation point," the Captain said. He tapped the tube on a wireframe. "If, somehow, the Yorktown has a malfunctioning rewind drive, then that would explain how its getting the ships here."


    "So that''s our target, the frigate?" Hetmwit asked.


    Captain Decken nodded. "That would have a minimal crew. Space will be tight, but we can probably run the ship just the two of us with robotic assistance," he tapped the frigate. "We''ll need to board and prepare the corvettes, just in case."


    The captain moved around the holotank, staring at it. "We''ll need to figure out a way to bring the corvettes online while we are bringing online the frigate, so that the entire small flotilla is ready to go."


    Hetmwit thought carefully. "OK, here''s an idea," he said.


    "Yes, Number One?" the Captain said.


    Hetmwit brought up his own holotank. "OK, I return to the Star and get more robots. We then crew each of the corvettes with maintenance robots, all on standby and powered down in the bare minimum stations."


    The Captain nodded. "Go on."


    "We attach laser emitters and receivers to the hulls, wire it into the system. We get the frigate ready, manning stations with robots. When it''s time to execute, we power up all the robots at the same time, synchronized, and that way all the ships come online at the same time. Light speed lag is less than a second at the distance between the corvettes and the frigates," Hetmwit said.


    "It could work," the Captain said. "But, the problem is, how do we get the ships ready? Can the robots do it?"


    Smiling, Hetmwit tapped an icon, showing a dense block of code.


    "Because I found this," he said, proudly.


    "What is it?" the Captain asked. "Looks like some kind of recursive data indexing."


    "It is," Hetmwit said. "It''s the code that the robots inject into the system so that the CPU and SPU don''t get any data."


    The Captain nodded slowly. "How did you spot it?"


    "Smiley and Hefty," Hetmwit said. "I keep copies of their programming on my dataslate. I compared their active memory and scratch files to my originals and found that."


    "Very good. How do we get around it?" the Captain asked.


    "That''s part of it. This is another important part," Hetmwit said, bringing up another block of code.


    "What''s that?" the Captain asked.


    "That''s the injector scripting. It''s a terminate and stay resident program that performs code scanning and injection. If it sees an operating system or virtual intelligence or even a difference engine data stream, it injects the coding to that system, putting it on standby just as if the CPU and SPUs all failed," Hetmwit said.


    "Can you bypass it?" the Captain asked.


    Hetmwit nodded. "Easily. I did a mass delete test. I can clear the entire ship''s system in seconds for the primary systems, minutes for the entire ship and all equipment. It picks up speed as more and more systems come online and can be used to launch the cleaning attack."


    "What about the firewalls and anti-intrusion systems?" The Captain asked.


    "That''s the good part. It works in conjuction with those systems. It identifies the abberrant code as foreign code and lets the system itself do all the work. Once identified, it will then prevent the code from re-executing or being re-injected during the cleaning process," Hetmwit said. "Better to use the systems than try to bypass them or fight them."


    "Very good, Number One," the Captain said. He stood up. "We''ll prepare and then board the Star as soon as possible."


    Hetmwit nodded. "I''ll get Smiley and Hefty running and load them up."


    "Can we take your dropship?" the Captain asked.


    "I used it for testing on my people''s computer systems. It''s already clean and ready for use," Hetmwit said.


    "Excellent, Number One," the Captain stood up. "I will meet you at maintenance airlock sixty-two in two hours."


    He paused. "Get it done."


    Hetmwit nodded.


    -----


    The heavy clonking noise made Hetmwit look behind him. He was crouched down, checking Smiley''s feet to ensure the magnetic systems were working properly so that Smiley could walk on the hull of the Terran ship.


    He froze at the sight of what was moving down the corridor at him.


    Nearly three meters tall. Bipedal. Massive. Jet black, matte black, the color of empty space. It was all angles and thick plates. There was a long bar with a handle and a toothed blade on one hip, a ''small'' weapon on the other hip. Across the back he could see the frame of a massive single-barrel cannon.


    The face of the helmet was a skull. Jet black, with blank eyes.


    It took him a minute to realize that there was a white stencil on the chest that said "CPT DECKEN" on it.


    "I''d rather you wore an armored vac-suit, Number One," the Captain''s voice was deep and booming.


    "Uh..." Hetmwit said, staring.


    "It is standard High Lord armor," the Captain said. "Standard shipboard armor."


    "Uh... if you say so, Captain," Hetmwit said. He blinked. "I''m ready when you are."


    The helmet nodded slightly. "Lead the way."


    The size of the airlock made even more sense as Hetmwit and the Captain went through. Hetmwit realized that it would fit a dozen of the Captain, a half-dozen of the massive insectoid Treana''ad.


    In vacuum, the Captain seemed perfectly at home, which filled Hetmwit with relief. He had been worried that the Captain would not be able to maneuver in zero-G.


    Hefty flew the dropship back to the Star, with Hetmwit sitting next to him. The Captain was back in the rear hold/troop bay, massive in his armor.


    Hetmwit tried not to flinch when the Captain clomped along behind him as he went to the Star''s robotics maintenance bay. The armored up Captain stood there silently, the armor looking like it was breathing as the Captain watched Hetmwit. The whole three hours it took to get the robots programmed, the Captain just stood and watched the entrances to the maintenance bay.


    "They''re ready," Hetmwit said. "I programmed them to follow right now. There''s enough to fully man each of the vessels."


    "Excellent," the Captain said. He paused for a moment. "There is something I must tell you."


    "What is that?" Hetmwit asked, moving up to the Captain.


    "You are an excellent Number One. A skilled and dedicated seaman," the Captain said. "However, your people are not part of the Confederacy," there was another pause. "I must inform you that I will not allow the flotilla to fall into your people''s hands. I will not turn over that wealth of technology and data to your star nation."


    Hetmwit felt a cold chill run down his back.


    "Your dropship has beacons on it and can keep you alive in comfort for nearly two weeks. I propose dropping you off close enough to be rescued by your people," the Captain said.


    "What will you do then?" Hetmwit asked.


    The Captain just stood there. "I will attempt to return to the Confederacy. Barring that..." he paused for a long moment. "I will order the ships to self-destruct with myself on board. I would prefer you left the ship aboard your dropship, but if I must, I will self-destruct the entire flotilla, regardless of whether not not you are onboard. I will tie my armor systems and my life signs to the ship''s auto-destruct. Not out of fear of betrayal by you, but out of caution and standard operating procedure."


    Hetmwit stood there for a long minute, thinking it through. Everything he had seen, the Confederacy was extremely protective of their technology and ships. Terrans like the Captain were known to be paranoid and extremely wary.


    The Captain was willing to drop him off where he could return to his home.


    It was the best he could have hoped for.


    He looked up at the Captain.


    "I understand."

 Nova Wars - Chapter Nine

    Hetmwit felt sick.


    He was looking at the data for the frigate and the corvettes.


    Just the realspace engines were far beyond his understanding. Capable of high acceleration, deceleration, and manueverability. He had brought over some data from the Star and the frigates and corvettes were more agile and faster than aerospace strikers from his own nation. The battlescreens were capable of putting out more power than his people had ever considered being possible without harnessing an entire star for energy.


    But it was the weaponry that made him want to vomit.


    The frigate was a hull wrapped around something called a C++ Cannon, with engines strapped to it and a set of missile pod launchers that launched something called an nCv Pod. The corvettes were wrapped around ''spooky particle hydrogen compressor cannon'' and could launch torpedoes.


    He had never looked at the weapons for the large starship he had boarded.


    These ''light'' ships were horrible.


    He closed his eyes, then opened them. He doublechecked the robots, which he had loaded up with modified VI systems that normally handled the weapons, then activated them.


    They moved into the correct areas and went to standby.


    Hetmwit looked up from the console he was sitting at.


    "Robots are ready, Captain," he said.


    The Captain nodded, standing next to the holotank in the power armor. "I would prefer you don a light powered vac-suit, Number One. I had the creation engines forge you up one."


    Hetmwit nodded slowly. "I will."


    "While you do that, I will determine if the coordinates must be preloaded into the rewind drive or if I can input new ones," the Captain said.


    Hetmwit stood up. "I''ll get ready."


    "Very good, Number One," the Captain said.


    Hetmwit went down to the berth that the Captain had assigned him.


    The armor had been built for him by the ''fabrication lab'' deeper in the frigate. Lasers had scanned him, his medical information had been loaded, and ninety seconds later the vac-suit had slid out on a belt conveyor.


    He put it on slowly, several times stopping to get his breathing under control.


    The helmet was last. He stood there, staring at himself in the mirror. Like the Captain, his people had flat faces. He could see himself through the visor. His eyes were wide and frightened. He kept licking his lips in nervousness.


    He activated the armor.


    The visor polarized, hiding him. The face shield closed, leaving him looking at Pagrik skull.


    The startup messages flowed by. The catheter and the waste plugs inserted. He felt the needles jab into his back over one of his kidneys and the liver opposite. He felt the needle push into the base of his skull and the dull burn of the armor synching up.


    For a moment he was afraid the armor would crush him as the internal pressure sleeve inflated.


    Then the moment was past and he stood in front of the mirror.


    The armor was matte black. Power assist for strength. Made of some kind of armor laminate. After a few moments he was no longer aware of the pressure sleeve.


    He moved slowly at first, then more comfortably, as he returned to the bridge.


    It was a short walk. Barely one hundred and fifty meters from midships to the forward bridge.


    He knew the two dropship bays were on either side of the magazine for the C++ cannon, above the engines.


    The whole ship was just wrapped around the gun and the drives strapped on.


    To Hetmwit it seemed to almost vibrate with a terrible purpose.


    When he entered the bridge, the Captain was sitting in the Captain''s throne, his helmet in his lap.


    It startled Hetmwit slightly that the Captain still looked the same, even though he had a tube in his left nostril.


    "Inform me when you are ready, Number One," he said.


    "The coordinates for the rewind drive are loaded in?" Hetmwit asked.


    "Indeed. As soon as the ships are ready, I''ll activate the rewind drive," the Captain said.


    "Where will we be going?" Hetmwit asked.


    The Captain sat for a long moment. "I''m not sure," he gestured at the forward screen and holotanks. "But we''ll find out."


    Hetmwit entered the commands, then looked over at the Captain. "Everything is ready. Laser communications repeaters are ready. Pings are good. Low latency."


    The Captain nodded. He leaned back.


    His face shield closed.


    Hetmwit copied him.


    "Engage," the Captain ordered.


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    Part of Hetmwit felt it should be more than what it actually was.


    He tapped the icon.


    The signals went out. The robots cleared first. Then the emergency power systems.


    "Emergency reactors coming online," he said.


    The emergency computer cores spun up. Executed the commands.


    "Firewalls and malicious code sweepers coming online. Computer cores are coming online," Hetmwit said, feeling the tension ramp up.


    "Excellent, Number One," the Captain said.


    "Secondary and backup systems are coming online," Hetmwit said.


    The lights brightened. Consoles beeped and came online. The holotank put out a test pattern then cleared, the same with the viewscreen at the front bulkhead of the bridge.


    "Primary systems are coming online," Hetmwit said.


    There was a sudden slight vibration. The sounds of high density capacitors charging filled the air. There was the sound of an electric engine starting up and moving to speed.


    "Primary systems and computer cores are online," Hetmwit said.


    He tensed as the drive cores started drawing power from the reactors.


    "Drive systems are charging," he checked the board. "Frigate and corvette charges match."


    The Captain just nodded.


    "Drive cores stable and charging," Hetmwit blinked at one readout. "Chronotron core reports field stable and charging."


    The Captain put the stubby SMG in his lap. "Get ready, Number One," was all he said.


    "Rewind drive charging," Hetmwit said. He could feel his butthole literally puckering as the tension mounted. He reached out and unlocked the plastic shield over the big red button that said "DO NOT PRESS" in white letters. "Ready to engage."


    "Prepare to engage rewind drive," The Captain said.


    Flipping up the cover, Hetmwit put his fingers on it lightly. "Ready."


    The lights dimmed to a dull yellow.


    "Chronotron drive charged," he said. "Rewind drive charged," Hetmwit reported.


    "Engage!" the Captain snapped.


    Hetmwit pushed the button, unsure of what was going to happen.


    Everything suddenly streaked away from him. In the center of his vision was the pinpoint horizon, with everything at the edges of his vision streaking away from him and toward the pinpoint. He looked around and the pinpoint moved with his vision. His body turned to vibrating tightly woven strings in his sight. It felt like his nerves were pulled free of his body and doused in burning fire.


    Either he suddenly spaced toward that pinpoint or it charged him.


    He turned inside out for a split microsecond.


    Then it was over.


    Hetmwit''s hand shook as he pulled his hand from the button.


    "Jump successful. Sensors coming online," he managed to gag out. He had the strangest feeling of his body slowly melding back together.


    "Excellent," the Captain said. "Let''s find out where we are."


    -----


    Hetmwit sat in the small dining room, which was designed for only fifty officers at the most. It was much more cramped than the dining hall aboard the Locker, everything feeling more compact.


    The frigate, the CSFNV Little Nell Columbia, had a maximum complement of 150 crew and 100 special forces. It needed a minimum of five crew.


    There was only him and the Captain, and robots.


    "We''re a long way from my home," Hetmwit said quietly.


    "Not really," the Captain said. "The ship and the corvettes all have a cruising speed of nearly one-hundred twenty-five thousand C."


    That made Hetmwit shake his head. "How?"


    "Upper hyperspace bands," the Captain said.


    "Hyperspace is dangerous. Many ships that enter arrive at their destination with the crew dead, if they are ever seen again," Hetmwit said.


    "According to the computers, hyperspace shades can be prevented from boarding. We''ll engage the shade protections and jump to hyperspace," the Captain said.


    "Then what will you do?" Hetmwit asked.


    The Captain looked up at the ceiling for a moment. "I''ll return to TerraSol."


    "How long will it take?" Hetmwit wondered.


    "Eighteen days relative shipboard in hyperspace," the Captain said.


    ''Your people knowing where mine are makes me nervous," Hetmwit admitted.


    "I understand," the Captain said. "We sit at the edge of the Sargasso Sea, having escaped its confinement, and now wonder if we, men from two different nations who did not know of one another''s existence before our arduous labors, can trust one another not to betray our nations to their own."


    Hetmwit nodded. "Your people are at least as warlike as mine. Who knows what the politicians and leaders will decide?"


    The Captain shrugged. "It will be what it will be."


    "How can you trust me not to reveal vital information to my own government?" Hetmwit asked.


    "If your government chooses to commit suicide via the Confederacy, that is not my concern. While it is yours, as they are your people, it is not mine. My star nation has a peaceful approach," the Captain said.


    "I worry," Hetmwit admitted.


    The Captain nodded. "As is proper."


    Hetmwit frowned. "You aren''t going to try to convince me that everything will be fine?"


    The Captain shook his head. "No. You will base your decisions upon the stimuli already experienced. My words will carry little weight to your concerns."


    Hetmwit just nodded.


    "We will wait for the drives to charge, then we will begin out journey," the Captain said.


    Hetmwit sighed. "I''m ready."


    The Captain just smiled. "Your need of assistance will be ended soon."


    Hetmwit wasn''t sure what to think of that statement.


    -----


    Just over two weeks and Hetmwit had decided that he didn''t like hyperspace in a vessel like the Nell.


    Near the hull, he could see traceries off of his body. Silver threads and streaks left behind by his motions. Sometimes he could see hyperspace energies leak through the hull, glimmering on the bulkheads.


    The Captain wasn''t concerned, pointing out that the hyperspace integrity field was stable.


    The Captain''s assurances that the ship wouldn''t dissolve into sub-atomic particles was little comfort.


    The red was another thing. Every surface was red, with silver edging. The holograms and screens were red with silver. The lights were yellow and harsh, sodium lights. There was a constant taste of rust in the air.


    But it was almost over.


    Hetmwit and the Captain had chosen on of the frontier worlds, which the database Hetmwit had copied from the Star stated was mainly gas giant refining and resource extraction from two worlds, with only a few million people and a light military presence.


    The Captain had agreed, understanding Hetmwit''s reluctance to enter a heavily populated system.


    Just over two weeks in hyperspace, and Hetmwit was ready to drop to realspace for good. There had been five drops into stellar systems to reorient and ensure that a floating point error hadn''t thrown them off by hundreds of light years.


    Each drop into realspace had made Hetmwit''s anxiety peak and he didn''t know why.


    Which is why Hetmwit felt gratified that the Captain had ordered him into his armored vac-suit for the flotilla''s exit from hyperspace.


    The countdown was down to minutes as Hetmwit sat at the Executive Officer''s station and watched the countdown on the screen, which was displaying a computer generated approximation of hyperspace.


    "I want shields up and weapons ready as soon as we drop from hyperspace. Full stealth," the Captain ordered.


    Part of Hetmwit wanted to protest. It felt aggressive to enter one of the periphery systems of his star nation cleared for action. Almost wrong. Like he would be declaring his intention to attack one of the worlds of his birth nation.


    But the Captain had insisted.


    "Stealth systems engaged," one of the robots, Dummy, stated from the proper station.


    "Ten seconds," Smiley said from the navigation station.


    "Weapons and shields on standby," Hefty assured everyone.


    Hetmwit felt his stomach tighten.


    "Five. Four. Three. Two..."


    The streaks suddenly ended as the holotank data and the viewscreen went to hash.


    There was the sound of an electric motor winding down.


    "Sensors clear. Incoming data," Goofy stated from where the robot sat at the sensor systems station.


    "Weapons online, Captain!" Fumbles called out.


    "Shields up, Captain!" Hefty called out.


    "Engines ready!" Smiley stated.


    Hetmwit tensed.


    The viewscreen cleared.


    The flotilla had exited hyperspace in the middle of the system. Just past a gas giant and toward one of the colonized planets.


    Hetmwit stared in horror.


    The gas giant was burning.

 Nova Wars - Chapter Ten

    He was Captain Henrik Vander Decken.


    And he had been Born Whole.


    From the Terran/Treana''ad War to the Mantid/Terran War to the Clone Wars to the Fall of the Solarian Imperium, he had commanded starships from the bridge or been part of the crew. He had been there as a junior officer when the Treana''ad/Terran War came to an end. He had been aboard a ship that was off to subdue the colonies when the Mantid had attacked. He had helped the Solarian Imperium take control of Terran space.


    He had painted his armor black and joined Daxin the Unfeeling in the Dark Crusade of Light to cast down the Solarian Imperium.


    He had been recorded and added to the emergency system just before he had retired at the long age of four-hundred and thirty-eight.


    In the intervening time, technology, tactics, and strategy had altered.


    But he had been educated. The memories and knowledge burned into his sleeping brain.


    As well as the ability to apply that knowledge.


    "FULL STEALTH!" he barked out. "Pods out! Get me a sensor sweep on the whole system! Identify any ships! Plot a microjump to the most populated planet."


    He turned to Hetmwit. "Population of the system?"


    Hetmwit blinked, pulling his attention away from the Terran, who was suddenly on his feet, moving to the holotank and staring at it, the SMG in one hand.


    "Uh... three worlds. Terraforming and resource extraction. Twenty-three point two million across the three planets. Four gas giant mining facilities. Three asteroid belt extraction facilities," Hetmwit said, pulling his attention to his screen and punching up the data.


    "Military forces?" Captain Decken snapped out. He turned to one of the robots. "Put all weapons on standby. Load the torpedoes and the missile pod launchers. Alert point defense and weapon crews."


    "Aye aye, Captain," the robot stated.


    "Uh, planetary defense only. Numbers unknown," Hetmwit said.


    "Sensor readings coming back, Captain," Goofy stated.


    Hetmwit was still staring at the difference in Captain Decken''s posture and body language. Gone was the relaxed and lazy movements, the relaxed stance.


    Captain Decken stood in front of the holotank, authority radiating off of him.


    "Put it onscreen and in the primary holotank," Decken stated.


    Hetmwit watched as the screen flickered. Captain Decken tapped one of the planet and the screen zoomed in on it.


    There were ships around the planet. As Hetmwit watched, light flashed down from two of the vessels orbiting, striking the surface. Energy bloomed and faded, leaving behind a spreading pool of fire and flame.


    "Ship ID''s?" Decken snapped.


    "Negative, Captain. No known transponders," Goofy looked at the Captain. "These are not Confederacy vessels."


    The Captain turned around and stared at Hetmwit.


    "Your people are under attack. That planet is being glassed," he said.


    Hetmwit nodded jerkily.


    "You are the sole representative of your people, despite your dual enlistment in your own military and the Confederacy of Aligned Systems Space Force," Decken said.


    The gravity of the words sunk in.


    The pause drew out for a long second.


    "Do you need assistance?" Captain Decken asked.


    Hetmwit looked at the screen.


    Two other vessels were firing on the planet.


    Hetmwit looked back at Captain Decken. "Yes."


    The Captain nodded.


    "May we come in?" He asked, his voice grave.


    Hetmwit nodded again. "Yes."


    "Launch stealth probes. Microjump them near the planets. I want scans of those ship," Decken snapped. He reached up and touched his helmet.


    There was a strange whistle.


    "All hands, battlestations," he ordered. "All shifts, report to stations."


    Hetmwit swallowed thickly.


    "Order the atmosphere cleared, Number One," Decken stated, turning back to the holotank.


    He was staring at the vessels, going over them by eye. He could tell that the images were over eighty minutes old.


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    "All hands, all hands, prepare for negative atmosphere," Hetmwit said, feeling slightly foolish at ordering robots to be warned that the atmosphere was going to be pumped out.


    "Tesseract mass tanks at 98%," Stumpy stated. "Creation engines at 8% heat and 3% slush."


    "Very good," Captain Decken said.


    "Probes away. Microjumps in five seconds," Goofy stated.


    "Give me a spiral course, get away from the launch zone. We don''t know their sensor capabilities," Decken said. He looked at Hetmwit. "Order the Marines to get weapons and armor from the armory."


    Hetmwit nodded. He had thought it strange that the Captain had ordered all of the ships to be fully manned, not just skeleton crew, but fully manned, by the robots.


    Including the Marines.


    Hetmwit passed the order to Super Slugger.


    The robot acknowledged the order.


    "Get ready to repel boarder. Order away combat teams to the mat-trans," Decken snapped out.


    "Aye aye, Captain," Stompy said.


    Hetmwit had the weird feeling of the ship moving under him, despite the fact that a quick glance showed him that the inertial compensator was at less than 15% load.


    "Corvette Two is being scanned," Goofy suddenly said.


    The bridge was getting the razor sharp, crystal clear look of vacuum.


    "Scanning has moved on. Corvette Four is being scanned," Goofy stated. "Scanning has moved on."


    "Be careful not to burn through our stealth. Drop engine and shield output down two points, they''re suspicious something is out here. They may have detected our step-down from hyperspace," Decken ordered.


    On the main screen, four of the big ships fired and the surface erupted in fire again.


    "Life signs on main planets are dropping. Probes are reporting less than two million life signs and dropping," Goofy reported.


    "Give me numbers," Decken ordered.


    "Unknown forces consist of five groups so far," Goofy stated.


    Group one and three had six heavy ships and twenty smaller ships. Two, four, and five were around the three inhabited planets and consisted of twenty large ships and eighty smaller.


    "Planet with the most population?" Decken asked.


    "Inhabited planet two," Goofy said.


    "Give me a microjump to that planet. Four hundred thousand kilometers," Decken ordered.


    "Aye aye, sir," Smiley said. "Plotting microjump."


    Captain Decken turned and stared at Hetmwit. "Have you been in combat before?"


    Hetmwit shook his head.


    "Then today is a good day for you," the Captain said, turning back to the holotank. "A new best day for me," his voice was softer, musing.


    Hetmwit could feel the difference, like the Captain was an entirely different person, standing in front of the holotank with his left hand on the hilt of that toothed sword and his right hand filled with the blocky submachine gun.


    "Once we jump in, target the nearest of their big ships. All main guns and launch two pods per vessel. All same target," Decken ordered.


    "Aye aye," Hefty answered.


    "Microjump plotted," Smiley stated.


    "All hands, all ships, brace for microjump," Decken ordered. He looked at Hetmwit.


    "Execute," Hetmwit ordered.


    His vision streaked, the horizon a pinprick in the distance on the center of his vision.


    There was a weird feeling, like he was being yanked forward.


    The screens cleared.


    "CONTACTS! MULTIPLE CONTACTS!" Goofy called out.


    "Target locked! All ships reporting target lock!" Hefty called out.


    Hetmwit could see the vessel. It was massive, kilometers in length. There were crack in the hull, burning with a dull red light. It was scarred and marred. Chains hung from the vessel.


    "OPEN FIRE! ALL GUNS FREE, MISTER FUMBLES!" Decken roared, making Hetmwit flinch.


    There was a weird feeling, like his bone marrow was being plucked at by phantom fingers.


    The missile pods launched, the pod inverted into an nCv round, and the wreckage started taking hits.


    "ALL GUNS FREE!" Hefty called back. "IMPACTS! Shields are down! Hull impacts!"


    Hetmwit saw the ship suddenly explode, breaking into multiple pieces.


    "Target is breaking up!" Hefty called out. "Initial C++ hit has caused enemy contact to break up."


    "All corvettes, target smaller ships. Get me a new target, Mister Fumbles!" Decken roared.


    "Capital ship targeted! Engaging with main gun!" Hefty called out.


    "Ship status, Number One?" Decken asked.


    "No hits. No boarders," Hetmwit called out.


    "Target locked!" Hefty called out.


    "Stay on it, Number One," Decken said. He looked at Hefty. "Guns free, Mister Fumbles!"


    To Hetmwit, the entire thing contracted down to his board, passing information to Captain Decken, who was walking back and forth across the bridge, snapping out orders. The ship shuddered twice, once the lights flickered, went to red, then back to white pinpricks.


    "Sir, primary mass tanks are down to 20% or lower. Primary magazines empty. Missile pods are empty. Creation engine heat at 65%, slush at 54%!" Hetmwit called out after another of the large ships took a hit from the C++ cannon and another took two missile pods that shredded the shields then made the hull break up. "All pods are expended. No pods remaining."


    "Microjump to Rally Point Echo, Mister Smiley," Decken called out. "All ships!"


    "Rally Point Echo, aye aye, sir," Smiley called out.


    There was the compression, the yank, and suddenly the entire flotilla was behind the fourth gas giant, only fifty thousand kilometers from the burning gas giant.


    "Rotate tesseract tanks," Decken ordered. He looked at Hetmwit. "Put all main guns in cooling mode. Reload the magazines as soon as the tesseract tank rotates."


    Hetmwit nodded.


    It was like everything between Decken roaring out "Guns Free!" and now was a weirdly compressed single moment. He could remember doing things, following Captain Deckens orders, but it was all jumbled together.


    "Casualties?" Captain Decken asked, moving over to stand behind the Captain''s throne, resting his huge left hand on the back.


    His right still held the SMG.


    "No casualties reported, sir," Goofy said.


    Decken turned and moved to the holotank, moving his hands through and bringing up more data.


    "Negative ID on these vessels, Number One," Decken stated. "Energy readings are startling."


    Hetmwit got up and moved over to the holotank. "How so?"


    "Like the Precursor Autonomous War Machines, they have hellspace energy in their energy weapons, their nCv cannons have hellspace imbued shells," Decken stated. "But their ship types are odd. They''re using hellspace shields as their primary shields, which are fine against your people, but modern Confederate weaponry just ignores it."


    He brought up another image.


    "These are hellspace engines, not jumpspace," he zoomed in. "This debris here?"


    Hetmwit could see bodies spilling from a hole in the hull. They were all black, bipedal, with long arms and legs. They were covered in reddish cracks that dulled to black in seconds.


    "That''s the crew," Decken stated.


    "What does it mean?" Hetmwit asked.


    "That this is a new foe," Decken stated.


    "Tank rotated. Creation engines cooled. Reloading magazines and pods," Fumbles stated.


    "Mister Goofy, enemy concentration?" Decken said, using motions to move through more data on the holotank.


    "Enemy vessels converging on the third habitable planet to assist vessels we engaged," Goofy stated.


    Decken nodded. "Plot us a microjump that brings us in right behind the largest concentration," Decken stated. He looked at Hetmwit. "Get back to your station, Number One."


    Hetmwit nodded, hurrying back and buckling himself in.


    "All ships report green status," Goofy said.


    Decken straightened up.


    "Take us in," Decken said.


    Again with the pinprick and the pulling.


    "Contacts! Two thousand kilometers from forward bow!" Goofy called out.


    "GUNS FREE, MISTER FUMBLES! ENGAGE THE ENEMY!" Decken called out.


    There was the plucking feeling in Hetmwit''s marrow.


    "Victory or death," Decken growled.


    He lifted the SMG up and tapped the end of the stubby barrel against the pauldron over his right shoulder.


    "Either is fine."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 11 - The Hard Way Home

    The storm has risen to fill our sails.


    And the blood is fresh beneath our nails.


    Warn them all: Momma, we''re coming home. - u/Bergusia</a>, Poet, Warrior, Shitposter


    Captain Decken had been born for the command deck. His natural leadership ability shone through as he stalked across the deck, his heavy armored boots thumping. He had commanded a hundred ships from a hundred command decks.


    He had been Born Whole with the knowledge of multiple generations of warfare impressed into a brain already uniquely fitted for the rigors of space combat.


    He issued commands with firm authority, the rightness of his decisions almost filling him with an inner light.


    Hetmwit was none of those things. He was easily forgotten, more average than average, and people forgot about him between one syllable and the next when speaking to him.


    But none of that mattered.


    "Roll ship 135 degrees, bring up Hellspace shield emitter twenty-two!" Hetmwit called out.


    "Aye aye, sir!" Smiley snapped.


    He could feel the ship roll, like the inertial compensator wasn''t quite working right.


    "Give me a target, Mister Goofy!" Hetmwit stated.


    "Capital ship found! Running targeting solutions," the robot stated.


    Part of Hetmwit marveled at how, as the hours had ticked by, the robots had seemed less and less purely difference engine driven creations of pure logic and mechanics.


    "Guns free, Mister Fumbles!" Hetmwit ordered.


    "Sir, Hellspace Shield three on Corvette Two is down! Enemy is concentrating fire on Corvette Five!" Mister Goofy called out from his sensor station.


    "Keep me posted, Mister Goofy," Decken stated, staring at the holotank.


    "Firing C++ Cannon!" the robot that Hetmwit had designated as Fumbles called out.


    There was the weird feeling of phantom fingers plucking at his bone marrow as Hetmwit glanced at the holotank.


    The capital ship already had a plume of debris exploding from the hull. In that split second glance he saw the enemy ship, weighing in the terratons, flex in the middle as the engines pushed against compromised or destroyed superstructure struts and the hull itself warped.


    "Negative kill! Firing C++ Cannon!" Mister Fumbles called out again.


    The ship broke in half. Pieces began exploding and the two halves began shedding pieces.


    "Sir, Corvette Two reporting boarders! Security has already taken 30% casualties," Mister Goofy called out.


    "Number One, you have the helm," Decken snapped. He turned, putting two fingers on the side of his helmet. "All ships, prepare to repel boarders. Mat-Trans, warm it up. I want me and Marine Away Team Four ready to go."


    The heavy blast door closed.


    Hetmwit concentrated on the fight, even when the lights dimmed for a moment.


    "Capital Ship Twenty-Three is breaking up! Scanning for new target!" Mister Goofy stated.


    Hetmwit nodded, feeling sweat under his fur. His legs and arms were cramping like he had run a marathon, his stomach was twisted and painful.


    Part of him, deep down inside, was screaming and running in circles.


    "New target found, Neckpunch Class Dreadnaught! Running targeting solutions!" Mister Goofy called out.


    "Target acquired. Load C++ cannon," Mister Hefty stated. "Magazine level down to 30%."


    "Understood," Hetmwit stated. "Guns free."


    "Firing main gun," Fumbles stated.


    The ship felt like it had jerked back from the recoil as the lights dimmed for a moment.


    "Direct hit. Negative kill. Reloading. Main gun heat at 73% and rising," Mister Fumbles said.


    Hetmwit stared at the holotank.


    The twisted and scorched looking ships had abandoned attacking the planets, focusing on the small flotilla. The corvettes rolled and dodged, agilely shifting out of the way of missiles and torpedoes, taking the beam weapons on the strongest part of their shields.


    Hetmwit had always thought that either you avoided getting hit or you died in naval combat.


    He saw Corvette-Three take nearly thirty missiles on one of the battlescreens, then roll to present a fresh screen to the next incoming barrage of nearly fifty missiles, then rolling again to intersperse the port-side screen, which had regained strength.


    He had learned, in the hours that the battle had been going on, that the real key was avoiding giving the enemy too many firing angles on you. That you wanted all enemy fire to come in from one, two at the most, directions so that the shield could be rolled away when they got weak so they could recharge and the emitters cool down or even rotated out in careful synchronization.


    Speed and agility weren''t armor, but it could keep the enemy from pounding on the armor.


    "Corvette Three reports no damage," Mister Smiley said.


    "Incoming missiles at two two three by one one one," Mister Goofy called out.


    "DEFENSIVE MANEUVERS!" Mister Smiley snapped out.


    The ship seemed to lean heavy. Hetmwit could swear he heard struts and beams groan and, weirdly enough, the snapping of canvas cloth being put under sudden tension.


    The frigate rocked and shuddered, the lights dimming and coming back.


    "Hellspace Shield Four down! Rotating vessel. Rotating up new Hellspace..." Mister Hefty started.


    This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    "BOARDERS ON DECK TWO!" Mister Goofy said. "Marines are engaging."


    Hetmwit nodded. He reached down, knowing his hands were shaking, and unsnapped the retaining strap of the heavy pistol on the belt of his armor. He drew it slowly.


    "Marines are taking casualties," Mister Hefty stated.


    "Understood," Hetmwit said. He undid his harness and slowly stood up, turning to the fact the heavy blast door.


    The pistol was heavy in his hand.


    "Corvette Two reports boarders repelled," Mister Smiley stated.


    "Understood," Hetmwit licked his lips nervously.


    "Boarders have taken main corridor. Are advancing," Mister Hefty stated.


    "Captain has boarded the flagship," Mister Smiley stated.


    The lights flashed.


    "Firing C++ Cannon. Direct hit. Target is breaking up," Mister Goofy said.


    "The Captain has engaged the boarders," Mister Hefty stated.


    Hetmwit just nodded, still facing the heavy blast door.


    Somehow, even in vacuum, he could hear screaming, screeching. Howls of rage and fury. It wasn''t coming across the radios, the communication system, but somehow transmitted through vacuum.


    "STATUS CHANGE!" Mister Goofy called out. "HELLSPACE PORTALS OPENING!"


    Hetmwit swallowed.


    "Slush at 83%, heat at 73%, magazines at 11%, tesseract primary mass tank at 8%," Mister Hefty stated.


    There was an enraged shriek that slowly trailed off.


    "Enemy vessels are withdrawing through Hellspace portals across the system," Mister Goofy stated.


    "Boarders have been repelled," Mister Hefty stated.


    The door engaged, slowly raising.


    "Bogey Thirty-Seven is still making for the stellar mass on a least time course," Mister Goofy stated. "Flagship is returned. Captain is returning to the bridge."


    Hetmwit still gulped, raising his pistol.


    He sighed in relief and lowered the pistol when he saw the Captain standing in the passageway with the sword in one hand and the SMG in the other. The Terran''s armor was gouged and raked, dull burning red in the deep parts of the rents and tears, smoke somehow oozing off of the damage to waft through the vacuum. The teeth of the sword were glowing a sullen red and telltales were lit on the side of the SMG.


    "Status, Number One," Captain Decken said, clomping in.


    "Enemy is withdrawing from the system," Hetmwit said, holstering his pistol.


    Decken moved up to the holotank. "Makeup of Bogey-37?" he asked.


    "Unknown. Mid-size ships. Nine in total," Mister Smiley stated.


    "Distance from stellar mass?" Captain Decken asked.


    Hetmwit buckled himself back into the seat.


    "Three light minutes," Mister Smiley said.


    Captain Decken stood for a long second, staring at the holotank.


    "Charge the cores. Run a course for Olipnat Concordiant Prime," Captain Decken said.


    "What? Why?" Hetmwit asked.


    Decken turned and faced Hetmwit.


    "We have to warn your people. Warn them what is coming," Decken said.


    "STATUS CHANGE! MISSILE LAUNCH DETECTED FROM BOGEY-THIRTY-SEVEN!" Mister Smiley called out.


    "Target?" Decken asked.


    To Hetmwit the Captain seemed to give off a weird combination of anticipation and resignation.


    "It appears to be the stellar mass," Smiley said.


    "Course ready. Hyperspace cores at full charge. Chronotron drive ready," Mister Smiley said.


    "Drop an FTL recon probe," Captain Decken said. He turned. "Plot a microjump, out near the Oort Cloud."


    "Aye aye, Captain," Smiley said.


    There was a faint swooshing sound.


    Hetmwit had learned long ago that the sounds were all added by the computers.


    He doublechecked the astrogation and navigation data and loaded it into the navigation system.


    "Bogey-37 has just made transit through a Hellspace portal," Mister Goofy stated.


    "Enemy forces?" Hetmwit asked.


    "None in the..."


    The stellar mass, in the middle of the holotank, suddenly had purple spots erupt on it.


    "EMERGENCY TRANSIT!" Captain Decken roared out.


    Hetmwit slapped the button.


    Everything turned inside out as they flotilla jumped to hyperspace for less than ten seconds.


    Hetmwit tried not to throw up inside his own skull.


    The ships streaked back into existence with a large flare of visible light and the sound of a smithy being dropped from a great height as the ship''s compensators bled off massive amounts of energy.


    "What?" Hetmwit managed to gag out.


    "Put the data from the recon drone right here," Decken snapped from where he was standing by the holotank. "Run the data for a course of Olipnat Concordiant Prime."


    "Aye aye, sir," Mister Goofy stated.


    The holotank wavered.


    The stellar mass appeared.


    The purple splotches were ejecting huge plumes of burning purple fire as the splotches spread.


    Hetmwit opened his mouth to ask what was going on when everything went white and the holotank reported "SIGNAL LOST" in red letters.


    "Get us into hyperspace as soon as possible," Captain Decken said. He turned and looked at Hetmwit. "We have to warn your people."


    "Who are they? What happened?" Hetmwit asked.


    "I don''t know who they are," Decken admitted. "But I know what they just did. I''ve seen it before. If they''re willing to do it here, they''re willing to do it to every system your people inhabit."


    "What did they do?" Hetmwit repeated.


    "They Hellspiked the stellar mass," Decken said. He paused a second. "They nova-spiked it."


    Hetmwit swallowed down his fear.


    "Navigational data ready," Mister Smiley said.


    "Time to Olipnat Concordiant Prime?" Captain Decken asked.


    "Four days," Mister Smiley said.


    Captain Decken looked at Hetmwit.


    "Let us pray to our gods that we arrive in time."


    [The Universe Liked That]


    -----


    The atmosphere had been pumped back into the Nell, meaning Hetmwit could take off his armored vac suit and actually use the fresher, eat a meal from a plate instead of a tube, and sleep in a bed.


    Three days had passed.


    The whole time, Captain Decker had gone over replays of the battle over and over.


    Several times Hetmwit had watched video of the Captain fighting strange beings.


    Some had four arms, some two. Some were shaped like spiders, some bipeds.


    All of them had a crust of thick black pebbled material on their skin, with cracks that shone with a sullen red light. All of them had wide open fanged mouths that drooled wisps of burning fire even in vacuum. Their weapons looked like standard weapons coated in resin then baken in an oven until parts were cracked and smouldering.


    The Captain had torn them all apart with that sword with the clattering toothed chain on it or shot them point blank with that heavy SMG, using tight controlled bursts to shatter the boarder''s bodies apart.


    Every time, they fell into chunks, like smouldering coals, and then crumbled away.


    When Hetmwit had asked what they were, Captain Decken had admitted to not knowing.


    The flotillas drives were charging for the last jump before they hit Olipnat Concordiant Prime.


    The plan was to drop out of hyperspace just inside the Oort Cloud and transmit ID until the Olipnat Concordiant Prime Navy could rendezvous with the flotilla.


    "They suckered me," Captain Decken sudden said.


    Hetmwit looked up from where he was checking over Mister Fumbles''s diagnostic results. "Captain?"


    "They suckered me. Right here. They figured they couldn''t win right here," the Captain said.


    Hetmit stood up and moved to the holotank.


    He could vaguely remember that section of the battle. When the enemy had concentrated everything they had on attacking the Nell and trying to glass the settlements on the planet.


    "They increased the pressure as they brought in this task force," Captain Decken said. "They got close with the Helljump Portal, about as close as you can get, then had the task force run at minimal signature."


    Hetmwit nodded.


    "That''s when they pushed the boarding parties. Anything to keep us occupied," the Captain said.


    "Could we have done anything about it?" Hetmwit asked.


    Captain Decken nodded. "They were in C++ cannon range, as well as in range of the Foraker Class missile pods," he said. "We could have knocked them out of the sky within minutes of their translation to real space."


    He turned away from the holotank.


    "They suckered me," he snarled. "Like a boot midshipman."


    "Make the enemy see what they want to see," Hetmwit quoted Decken''s words back to him.


    Decken gave a barking laugh. "It''s a bitch when it happens to you."


    Hetmwit just nodded.


    "All right. Give me a status on the flotilla, then jump to hyperspace, warn your people," Decken stated.


    Hetmwit nodded, tapping the table. He opened various windows.


    "Corvette Two and Corvette Four have been repaired. Corvette Five''s weapons are down, no way to fix them outside of a shipyard. Corvette Six lost its port pod launcher, no way to repair it," Hetmwit stated. "Other than that, we''re back to as good as we''re going to get."


    "Mass tanks?" Captain Decken asked.


    "Topped off last stop."


    "Arms lockers?"


    "Fully loaded."


    "Marines?"


    "Remanufactured or repaired," Hetmwit said.


    Decken stood up.


    "Very good," he clonked toward the door. "Let''s warn your people."


    -----


    The ships dropped from hyperspace in stages that made Hetmwit''s stomachs hurt.


    "Sensor readings coming in," Smiley reported.


    "Onscreen," Captain Decken said.


    The screen rippled and cleared.


    Hetmwit jumped to his feet, swearing.


    The system was awash in burning ships and fire. Two windows showed those twisted and burning ships raining fire down on two of the three planets. The third, Prime World, had a fierce fight around it.


    Cities were burning on its surface.


    His eyes sought out the continental land masses, recognized them, then moved to the edge of the continent.


    The city looked intact even though one of the enemy ships was moving into the orbit to be directly above it.


    He turned and stared at Captain Decken.


    "My mom."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 12 - The Hard Way Home

    "How can we dance when our sun is dying?


    How do we sleep while our worlds are burning?


    Ask not for whom the pyre burns, O Enemy mine.


    It burns for thee..." - fragment of Terran war dirge, as recorded by archivist: Nevyn''R</a>


    Hetmwit stared at the holotank, reaching out and zooming in.


    He wasn''t surprised that the frigate, designed for covert reconnaissance, already had high fidelity real time images of the planet.


    Scroll past the weirdly shaped park. Stop at the six by six blocks of parking garages. Follow the maglev train line to the roundabout with the fountain.


    The image was sharpening as the frigate''s computer systems went to work.


    Three blocks down.


    Two up.


    The hab. Sixty-eight stories of ferrorcrete and tile. The ''park'' in the quad in front of the building. The parking lot in front of that full of vehicles from the investment broker two blocks down that had sued to wrest the parking lot away from the hab dwellers and for their sole use.


    "There," Hetmwit said. He wrung his hands.


    Cars were burning in the parking lot. There were wrecked mass transit vehicles in the street. The far end of the hab was on fire. There were dead bodies in the quad.


    "My momma," he said.


    There was silence and he looked up.


    Captain Decken was staring at him.


    A long moment passed and Hetmwit saw something pass in the depths of the Captain''s eyes.


    "Does your problem with being seen expand to any vehicle you are in?" the Captain asked.


    Hetmwit nodded. "More than one autocar has gotten in accidents with me in it."


    The Captain stared at the holotank.


    "Take a squad of robot Marines with you. Board the dropship. I''ll drop you over the city," the Captain said. He was already punching in order on the holotank. "Make for a least time landing, full power. Don''t worry about irradiating the ground, our medical can fix it," he looked up. "Go along, have the Marines protect the dropship. Take rescue cloaks, they''re in Locker-Nine. Grab an emergency beacon, an aid pack, and a battlescreen projector. They''re all in Locker-Nine."


    "Computing microjump," Smiley said.


    The Captain stared at Hetmwit. "Your unique ability to be forgotten might get you into that hab. Might protect your mother if you hustle her to the dropship," he looked back down. "I''ll provide orbital support from the Nell."


    Hetmwit swallowed. "Thank you, Captain."


    The Captain just nodded. "As soon as the microjump is complete, make it so," he tapped a few icons. "We''re not going in under stealth. We''re going to announce ourselves."


    "Microjump in progress," Smiley stated.


    The entire universe collapsed down to a pinpoint horizon and Hetmwit felt himself yanked toward it. Everything streaked around him and even though he didn''t move it felt like he had been thrown forward.


    LET THIS WORLD SHAKE IN THE WRATH OF LOST TERRASOL! thundered out, vibrating Hetmwit''s bone marrow.


    "Go," the Captain ordered. He turned back to the holotank. "All corvettes, drop pods. Mister Goofy, hand out the firing solutions. Mister Gallant, keep an eye out for any intruders."


    Hetmwit hurried out, running down the main corridor. He reached Locker-Nine, which was marked "EMERGENCY SURVIVAL LOCKER" and started grabbing what he had been ordered to get. A portable battlescreen projector, a medical kit, an emergency beacon, and rescue cloaks. He jammed them all into a hip bag, except the medikit, and pulled the straps for both the bag and the medikit over his head.


    The Marines were waiting at the dropship for him. The side ramp lowered and the robots hustled in. Another robot, with googly-eyes on its head, lead the way into the cockpit.


    Hetmwit could feel the seconds pool away as the atmosphere was pumped out and the dropship lifted up on repulsers.


    The Nell suddenly swung around, ass toward the planet, and the robot pilot goosed the dropship. It shot out of the bay, clearing the battlescreens, and dove toward the planet.


    Hetmwit could feel the G''s pressing on him as the robot pilot ran for the surface with full thrusters. Twice the pilot rolled the ship, once in a looping corkscrew. Hetmwit could hear the flares and chaff launching and once the FWEEEEEK of an EMP burst designed to knock out enemy missiles. Proximity alarms, target lock alarms, and even the ground radar were screaming but the robot pilot coolly wove the dropship through it all.


    He''s not going to make it, Captain Decken heard the woman whisper in his ear. He won''t make it and it will be your fault.


    He pushed the voice away.


    They had been getting louder. He could understand them now.


    He had been Born Whole, but the force overwrite had layered more than just the experiences with Hetmwit into his brain.


    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    PURGE THESE SCUM FROM REALITY!!! echoed in his brain, along with the images of firing a weapon straight into the face of screeching twisted creatures from beyond space and time.


    He shoved them away and saw more.


    ...his sister reaching out to him with one hand, his infant nephew held tight in her other arm, screaming, as the world turned white around her...


    A memory that he had pushed down, pushed away, to lead the assault on Anthill.


    ...systems check on his black combine infantry armor and charging the beacon to <flash> appear on the sands of Wolf-359 and ANTS ANTS EVERYWHERE shoot shoot shoot kick and punch and scream and rage and rage and rage as Terra burns...


    Captain Decken grabbed the edge of the holotank and squeezed.


    The memories rushed through him again, although he refused to close his eyes. He snapped out orders to the crew of the Nell, to the crews of the unnamed corvettes.


    One of the black scorched ships started to break up, pieces falling into atmosphere to burn up, as he kept the airspace over the city clear to prevent the ships from performing an orbital bombardment on it.


    He could see the small icon of the dropship rapidly sweeping down toward the surface.


    One hand sought out the hilt of his Gerber Close Combat Dual Purpose System Cutting Bar Mark One, squeezing it tight as he snapped out orders for Corvette-Five to keep watch at the inner limit of Hellspace portals. He checked the status of Corvette-Six, which was sweeping around the stellar mass at a mere ten million kilometers, its sole remaining missile pod launcher dropping modified pods. The heat and slush on Corvette-Six was rising fast, but there was nothing that


    ...a girl he knew in school holding her infant close, bending over the infant, trying to protect it from the oncoming wave of energy and whispering her husband''s name with her final breath so the infant would know the name of its father...


    could be done about it. The mission was too vital.


    His hand shook slightly as he shifted the icons and called out the orders to concentrate main gun batteries on Bogey-Nineteen.


    He could see smaller ships, dropship and drop-pod sized falling from several of the ships making up Bogey-Nineteen and Bogey-Twenty-Seven, and targeted them.


    He ordered missile pods dropped as rapidly as the creation engines could fab them.


    One of the missile pod creation engines reported a failure. Diagnostics reported that a half-finished pod was lodged. He ordered the robots to clear it as rapidly as they could, checking on Hetmwit''s status.


    The First Officer was a third of the way to the ground, the dropship moving at nearly MACH-12, dropping flares, chaffs, EM drones and decoys.


    Captain Decken reached out for the


    ...tackling the Mantid warrior, stabbing stabbing stabbing with a broken piece of crysteel, rolling around in the red sand of Mars, breathing mask torn free but nobody cares all there is is stab and stab and stab...


    icons with a shaking hand, pushing away the visions, the memories. His own voice roaring with rage in his ear even as her voice whispered in his ear that


    Around him the dwellerspawn squealed as the holy rounds, Remington 25mm APDSWSAM-T rounds blew huge hunks of flesh into ashen vapor. He kicked one out of the way, ripped its brother in twain with his chainsword, and short a fourth in face with his SMG at point blank range.


    he made a mistake and now these small people


    soft and warm and soft and warm and this is yummy and this is good and this is icky and this is yucky warm podling smart podling clever podling brave podling


    would pay for his incompetence because where was he when she had needed him? Where was he when his family had needed him? Where was he?


    Decken grabbed the bar around the holotank and squeezed, the power of the grip of his Pontiac Gravestomper IX Individual Powered Protective Equipment System warping the chromium battlesteel bar like it was warm salt-water taffy.


    He closed his eyes for a second to gather his


    ...slapping an insect as long as his arm away, the chainsaw''s motlen warsteel teeth ripping and chewing it up...


    thoughts and focus himself.


    When Hetmwit had done a force overwrite of his SUDS, it had not only merged his emergency captain''s record with what he had experienced on the DJ''s Ice Cream Locker, but it had also merged his SUDS record with another.


    His own.


    He still lived. Still fought. Still unleashed his wrath upon an uncaring malevolent universe.


    He knew he had taken another name, beneath the banner of the Dark Crusade of Light. That he had worn that name for thousands of years as he carried the wrath of murdered TerraSol in his heart.


    That he had eventually given up the bridge of warships in order to bring his wrath and anger into the very face of the enemy.


    ...a larger one, larger than his power armor encased bulk, rushed up on him, bladearms scrabbling against his chest pauldrons even as he pulled the trigger on his SMG to blow the creature''s back across the one behind it...


    He opened his eyes.


    Hetmwit was almost down.


    He shuddered as she whispered in his ears again.


    save them or what good are you?


    Hetmwit held tight to the ''oh shit'' bar as the dropship suddenly heeled up like a frightened horse, the nose swinging a one hundred degree arc. The engines howled and Hetmwit felt like his stomachs had dropped through the bottom of the seat and that his head was being pushed down into his chest cavity.


    The dropship slammed to the ground.


    Outside, the parking lot was burning. The dropships slamming descent had thrown twisted and shattered cars around it in a torus, the mangled vehicles burning with black sooty smoke. The quad in front of the hab was full of dead bodies, wrecked vehicles.


    Part of the hab was burning. The half opposite of where his mother lived.


    Despite the terror, despite part of his brain gibbering in fear and running in circles screaming, his hand reached up and hit the emergency release on the five point harness. It retracted with a metallic clatter, but Hetmwit was already on his feet.


    His armored boot steps thudded on the deck plating as he sprinted for the back ramp. The robotic Marines had already exited and were in a semi-circle, aiming their weapons and scanning the skies and ground around them.


    Hetmwit ran around the dropship, ignoring that the robots were already fighting with what looked like burnt and smouldering power armor. The dropship''s guns were firing, providing fire support to the robots as Hetmwit sprinted across the parking lot.


    One hand on the railing, he vaulted over the separator and sprinted across the eight lane road.


    A robot ignored him, nearly knocking him down as it advanced on two Planetary Defense tanks, but Hetmwit managed to keep his balance and keep moving forward.


    It isn''t how hard you can hit, it''s how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, the words of the ancient Terran gladiator from the documentary echoed in his head.


    Hetmwit ducked under a brace of particle beams were fired from the tanks at the smouldering robots. Two of the robots went down, shedding burning charcoal, and began to crumble. The other eight concentrated beams of purple with cores of orange fire on the tanks.


    Hetmwit jumped over bodies he tried his best not to recognize. An explosion almost knocked him down and he stumbled as he went up the steps.


    He didn''t bother trying to open the door, he just crashed through it, trusting in his armor''s enhanced strength and protection. The smartglass shattered around him and he stumbled for a step or two before he hit the stairs and pounded up them.


    Thirty flights to go.


    The Nell''s guns were hammering, the recoil making the entire ship shake as Decken maneuvered his tiny flotilla to keep the city''s airspace clear. He had been joined by ships from the planet, that had recognized he wasn''t another foe. Several had already died in volleys that the Nell''s shields had shrugged.


    You are witnessed, Decken thought to himself.


    but you failed them just like you failed all of us, the grave cold voice whispered from behind him.


    He ignored the voices, concentrating on defending the city''s airspace even while he kept an eye on Corvette-Five''s telemetry and Corvette-Six''s progress.


    Just one more hour. I just need to buy this system one more hour, he thought.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 13 - The Hard Way Home

    "The suspense is terrible. I hope it lasts..." -William Wonka Wonka Wonka, Ursine Lord of Candy Land, Bongistan, Resource Wars Era


    As impossible at it was, the Jurakak System Defense and Olipnat Concordiant Navy were losing. The pride of the Olipat Navy was burning in space, their hulls shattered, their engines dead, their crews dead or dying.


    They did not die alone.


    The enemy ships were twisted things, hulls appearing to be coated with smouldering charcoal with ember filled cracks. Their black guns fired spiralling beams of purple around a reddish orange sooty fiery core. Their drives glowed with a sullen, malevolent life. Their dropships and droppods were shed by the thousands onto the planets even as the ship''s guns hammered the continents and seas.


    But the enemy ships could still die.


    The March of History broke up, the rear third vanishing in an eye watering flash, but she took a half dozen of the enemy with her. The Six Ways of Dominance exploded with all hands, but her guns had taken nearly a score of the enemy with her.


    Except the enemy seemed to have endless reserves.


    They were losing, despite the impossibility of such a thing.


    Then came the terrible roar that echoed from every flat surface, that reverberated through space itself as if it was atmosphere.


    LET THIS WORLD SHAKE IN THE WRATH OF LOST TERRASOL! boomed out across the system.


    A handful of small ships, barely the size of Olipnat Concordiant Naval destroyers, streaked into existence over one of the main megalopolises, opening fire on the enemy ships.


    At first, a few of the naval commanders screamed it was more enemies.


    They were overriden as the guns of that small task force opened up on the enemy, even as two of the ships streaked away and vanished. The guns hit much harder than the ship''s small size would suggest, most of the enemy''s ships breaking up or exploding after one or two hits from those massive guns the hulls were wrapped around.


    Still the Olipnat Concordiant Navy and the Jurakak System Defense ships fought on grimly, desperate to save the people of the capital worlds.


    The leaders didn''t care where the ships had come from.


    They were here.


    And they were fighting those twisted black ships.


    And that was all that mattered.


    Captain Decken knew none of it as he stood on the bridge of the CSFNV Little Nell Columbia, clad in heavy armor, staring at the holotank that displayed the stellar system, the world below his ship, and the city he was protecting.


    His crew, from the Marines to the pilot to the gunners, were all Olipnat Concordiant robots, taken from the Star of Jarakak, reprogrammed to work not only their station but the stations around them.


    The robots weren''t programed to care about the thin tendrils of reddish electricity that kept arcing around the edges of Captain Decken''s boots, so they didn''t care.


    Decken watched as the C++ Cannon fired a split second before the heavy iron slug bypassed the battlescreens and Hellshields that would normally protect a warship. It materialized inside one of the enemy capital ships, the ship breaking in half as the nearly infinite mass hit at nearly infinite speed.


    "New target acquired!" Mister Goofy called out.


    "GUNS FREE, MISTER FUMBLES!" Decken called out.


    you cannot save them just like you could not save us whispered in his ear.


    He pushed the grave cold sibilant whisper away as he stared at the holotank.


    The little red dot representing his First Officer, a little Pagrik named Hetmwit, entered the burning hab and started moving in small circles.


    Decken knew it meant Hetmwit was running up stairs.


    "Engaging aerospace assets lining up for a bombing run on metropolis," Mister Hefty stated.


    "Use missile pod Ninety-Two," Decken ordered. It had been wet printed in a hurry and the nCv cannon convertor had failed self-tests.


    But it still had nearly fifty missiles.


    you can''t save them... whispered in his ear.


    He shoved it away.


    Hetmwit shoved himself off the wall, panting hard as he spun and thundered up the stairs. He stopped dead on the middle of the stairs, staring up.


    On the midway landing stood four figures.


    They looked like they were made of half-burnt charcoal. Cracks in their pebbly black surface that shone with red light deep inside. Burning red eyes, mouths of molten fire that made the black saw teeth stand out. One had four arms, the other two only two, but one of the bipeds had two heads. They were wreathed in gauzy, almost transparent reddish flames.


    His brain locked up, gibbering in fear.


    Training, endless training beneath Captain Decken''s watchful gaze, kicked in even as his conscious mind screaming in terror.


    He drew the pistol smoothly, the weapon going live in his hand, a little window opening up in the upper right of his vision even a tiny crosshair appeared in his sight.


    The crosshair lined up as he lifted the pistol, going red.


    He tapped the trigger even as he dropped down to one knee, bracing his fist on the step in front of him.


    The four armed one''s head exploded as the high-vee APERS dart sliced through it, punched through the crysteel window behind it, and sailed off into the air.


    His arm was still moving, training doing the work. He tapped the button three more times.


    All three collapsed into chunks that crumbled as he lunged to his feet, running up the stairs. He rounded another landing, his hand automatically holstering the pistol just like he had been trained over and over and over during the long weeks he had worked on the DJ''s Ice Cream Locker.


    All he could think of was his mother.


    He hit the door with his shoulder, the entire door and frame exploding out of the ferrocrete wall to slam against the far cinderblocks. He bounced off the hall, crushing the door, spinning in place and running down the hallway.


    Holograms hanging down from the ceiling declared that everyone should remain calm, should shelter in place, that this was a temporary emergency situation.


    Outside something exploded with enough force to make dust fall from the ceiling tiles.


    "MOM! MOM!" he didn''t know he was yelling as his armored boots cracked tile, leaving a trail of cracks and small craters behind him.


    He slid to a stop in front of the door, shards of shattered tile flying up from his boots. He hammered on the door, the power assist leaving deep dents in the endosteel door.


    "MOM! MOM!" he shouted.


    The door opened and his mother stood there, her arms crossed over her chest, holding herself tight.


    "Who is..." she started to ask.


    "Mom, it''s me, Hetmwit," he said. He reached for her. "Come on, we have to go now!"


    "Hetmwit? Hemmie?" His mother suddenly burst into tears. "Oh, Hemmie, what''s happening?"


    "We have to go!" Hetmwit said, trying to grab his mother''s arm, but she stepped back.


    "Your sisters are here, with your nephews and nieces," she said. She moved aside.


    He could see his three sisters, each of them holding a child, with one or two around their legs.


    An explosion made the pictures fall from the walls and dust raise up from the floor and start to fall gently from the ceiling.


    Hetmwit felt himself go cold.


    "GUNS FREE, MISTER FUMBLES!" Captain Decken yelled out. The atmosphere had been pumped out of the ship, the bridge in the stark clarity that vacuum brings.


    The robot no longer had a T shaped head with a large round eye on each side. Instead, it now had a visage modeled after a Terran skull with a white brush-stroke across the eyes and another from the bridge of the nose to the chin, crossing the white enameled teeth in the jawbone.


    "Guns free, sir!" Mister Fumbles called out. "Firing main gun! Direct hit!"


    "Target is breaking up," Mister Goofy called out, then chattered his jaws, the white enameled teeth clashing silently in the vacuum. "Acquiring new target."


    The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    The robots weren''t programed to care that red runes were slowly carving themselves into Captain Decken''s armor.


    So they didn''t.


    Decken looked at the holotank, checking the timer and the status of Corvette-Six.


    72%.


    His eyes sought out the little red dot.


    It wasn''t moving.


    Hetmwit moved into the apartment, ignoring everything but his sisters, his nieces and nephews, and his mother.


    "Hemmie? Where did you get that armor? Why are you dressed like that? What are you doing here? Mommy, who''s that? Mommy, I''m scared. Hemmie, why are you here?" all echoed around him as he dug in his satchel and pulled out a rescue cloak.


    "We have to go! Now!" Hetmwit said, draping the cloak over his older sister''s shoulders. He turned to his mother. "Mom, where''s dad?"


    "He''s sheltering at work," his mother said. "What is that?" she asked at Hetmwit draped another cloak over his younger sister.


    "It''s a rescue cloak. You have to wear it, we have to leave now," Hetmwit said, moving to his baby sister.


    His oldest sister had wrapped the cloak around her, flinching when another explosion rocked the hab complex.


    Hetmwit could hear screaming outside the door as he moved to his mother and wrapped the cloak around her.


    He was out.


    "Keep the kids close, under the cloaks, and follow me," he said. He thought fast. "I''m taking you somewhere safe. I''m in the Navy."


    His mother nodded. His sisters, glancing at his mother, followed suit.


    "Follow me," Hetmwit said, trying to emulate Captain Decken''s no-nonesense tone and aura of authority.


    "But your father," his mother started to say.


    "Will be fine. This place isn''t safe, where he is is safe," Hetmwit lied.


    "OK," his mother said.


    "Stay behind me, stay together, don''t let the kids run off," Hetmwit said. Me moved to the door, drawing his pistol. He glanced out and saw nothing but empty hallway and flickering lights.


    "Let''s go," he said.


    He led the way.


    Captain Decken stood immovable as the Nell banked hard, narrowly avoiding the lances of burning hellspace infused x-ray lasers clawing at the ship as enemy missiles that had gotten through the point defense detonated. There was a hard impact against the hull.


    "Negative damage. Armor holding," Mister Hefty stated, then chattered his gleaming jaws silently.


    "Get Corvette-Seven in there. Keep that big bastard from dropping pods," Decken ordered.


    He glanced at the little red dot that represented Number One.


    It was moving in tight little circles again. Slower than before, but still moving.


    The Nell banked hard with the crack of sails filling with wind and the groan of wooden beams as a phased particle beam phalanx narrowly missed the ship. Mister Smiley chattered his amusement as the rest of the enemy''s fire missed the Nell and kept going to slam into the hull of another enemy vessel.


    The ships of the Concordiant and the System Defense were dying around the planet, but they were taking the enemy with them as they threw everything they had into stopping the burning invaders.


    Decken glanced at the numbers.


    82%.


    T-38.13.15 minutes


    "Order Corvette-One to move in on that big battlewagon, give it a full barrage, then move over it, get it between Corvette-One and the planet and fire the main gun," Decken snapped.


    "Aye aye, sir," Mister Hefty said, punching in the orders with long skeletal fingers of black metal.


    The lights on the Nell flashed as the battlescreens took another barrage, holding, and Mister Smiley rolled the ship hard, spreading the impacts across three different emitters.


    All held.


    Decken could see the enemy was starting to abandon their attacks on other cities, on other planets, all streaming toward his own little flotilla.


    "Tell Corvette-Five to run sensor sweeps on the drones and its own sensors every ninety seconds," Decken snapped. "Watch for any vessels matching Bogey-37."


    84%


    T - 33.75.62 seconds


    Two more Concordiant vessels broke up, one exploding as it fragmented, and Decken ordered one of the Corvettes to cover its firing angles.


    They had him pinned against the planet.


    Surrounded on all sides.


    Overwhelming firepower with reinforcements streaming toward him from all points of the stellar system.


    He smiled.


    They couldn''t get away now.


    He saw the Concordiant and System Defense vessels sweep out of the way, letting the enemy ships move by them, then attacking the invader''s rear. The tactic showed immediate effect as the enemy ships started taking casualties almost immediately.


    "Dump the slush, open the creation engines to vacuum, emergency coolant venting," Decken ordered.


    He watched the heat and slush drop to almost nothing in minutes, then warm back up as warm coolant was pumped back into them and a hot nanite seed bed was dropped into them.


    91%


    T-19.65.21 minutes


    Hetmwit paused at the doorway he had crashed through, staring at the quad.


    It was full of shrieking energy beams, crashing explosions that threw up clouds of dust and dirt, burning vehicles, and crumbling charcoal.


    His sister gave a low moan of fear.


    "Stay close to me," he said. He pointed at a burning tank. "See that? We''re running for this side of it."


    He dug in the medical kit and pulled out a hypo-injector. "This will help," he told them.


    He could tell that their brains had shut down from the explosions, the screaming


    and the three creatures he''d shot to pieces on the fifteenth floor landing.


    He gave each of them, even the children, a light sedative, then looked out again.


    It was still fast and furious.


    "Pull up your hoods," he said absently.


    He could see the dropship, still sitting in the parking lot, its guns holding back the enemy, the Marines all firing.


    "We''re on our way," Hetmwit said through the static filled radio.


    "Roger," the pilot said.


    He saw one of the Marine robots lift up a grenade launcher and fire grenades into the quad. They puffed out into thick white smoke.


    "GO!" Hetmwit yelled, shoving his mother.


    His family stumbled out into the open, and he ran ahead, pausing to wave them on.


    An explosion knocked his baby sister down and he helped her up, the ballistic and kinetic shock padding layer of the cloak holding. He could faintly hear the baby wailing in fear and shock as she stumbled on.


    "Go, go, go!" he yelled.


    He saw it, somehow. He was never able to explain how, but he saw it.


    He stepped in front of the missile, crossing his arms, ducking his chin against his chest.


    It detonated on his armor, too short for the standoff distance, but the burning rocket fuel exploding.


    He went cartwheeling through the air, his ears ringings, alarms wailing in his armor, to slam down on his back on the ground.


    He stared at the sky, where burning clouds had gathered, raining ash down on the slow murder of the entire city.


    His armor hit him in the middle of the chest with a jolt of electricity and he whooped in a breath. He sat up and saw his mother and siblings crouched down behind the burning tank. Looking left and right he could see more power armor, more armored vehicles, and more of the cracked and smouldering enemy gathering.


    He scrambled to his feet, spraying dirt behind him as he lunged up, running for the tank. He ducked down, checking his family.


    His sister had a notch missing from her ear that was bleeding heavily. He dug out the meditape and pinched the wound between a fold of tape.


    He looked around and realized with horror that it was now or never.


    "GO GO GO!" he shouted, shoving his older sister.


    Crying, the kids wailing but still running, his family ran for it.


    Again, he had that feeling. He held his arm out, stopping his family.


    ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC


    "Get down!" he ordered, taking a knee, one hand diving into his satchel.


    Everything went white.


    He barely got the emitter out in time, barely managed to slam it into the ground so it could spin up.


    The hexagons appeared around them.


    The hab complex exploded toward them.


    His mother and sisters screamed.


    His armor flashed warnings. The rescue cloaks went silver.


    The emitter howled as it shunted full power.


    The debris cloud covered them.


    The emitter screamed louder than his infant nephew.


    The dust and dirt crackled on the battlescreen, which was looking pale and wan.


    "Skippy, you there?" he asked the dropship pilot.


    "Still here, sir. We lost about half of the Marines," the robot said.


    "Patch me through to the Captain," Hetmwit said. He looked around, through the kaleidoscope of energy hexagons.


    He could see flashes in the dust and knew that both forces were still fighting.


    "Decken here. Status report, Number One," the Captain''s voice was calm and even.


    But Hetmwit could hear something in it.


    "I''m pinned down. We got hit with an atomic," he said.


    "Family?" the Captain asked.


    "With me," Hetmwit said.


    His sister screamed.


    He looked up and gasped.


    A twisted creature of burning charcoal embers was scrabbling at the battlescreen, trying to rip its way in with talons even as sharp teeth in a burning mouth gnawed at the energy field.


    "And the enemy is physically on my shield," Hetmwit said.


    "Hold position," Decken said.


    The channel was closed.


    His sisters were sobbing.


    He looked at his mother, knowing all she could see was the closed faceplate of his armor. All she could see was a skull.


    "I''m sorry," he said.


    His mother put her hand on his. "You came. That''s all that matters," she said.


    More creatures had joined the first, clawing at the battlescreen. One managed to push a fingertip through it, the finger burning away as the battlescreen projector severed it.


    All Hetmwit could see was gnashing jaws, raking talons, and burning red eyes.


    VICTORY OR DEATH! EITHER IS FINE! roared out.


    There was a rumbling impact. The dust swept away as the ground rumbled.


    Hetmwit could see between two creatures.


    A figure in heavy black armor, engraved with burning runes, was standing up from the middle of a crater where the burning charcoal tanks had been.


    The creatures looked up.


    Hetmwit saw heads explode, spraying burning coals over the battlescreen dome. Tracers smashed the creatures aside.


    The creatures screamed and launched themselves at the figure that was walking forward.


    "Run. Now," Captain Decken''s voice was a thing of snarling caged wrath.


    Hetmwit snatched up the fading emitter, the dome winking out.


    "RUN!" he yelled out.


    His siblings ran the direction he was pointing, toward the dropship. Hetmwit followed them, pistol in his hand. Twice creatures lunged out from behind twisted wreckage and twice his reflexes shot them before he could even register they were there.


    He looked back and saw Captain Decken surrounded by the creatures, which were climbing on one another to get at the armored Naval officer. Decken was swinging that roaring sword with one hand, firing his SMG with the other, keeping around him clear through sheer fury.


    He saw one of the robotic Marines grab his sister''s arm, helping her aboard the dropship.


    Hetmwit took his baby sister''s arm, handed her off to one of the Marines, then looked around.


    His nephew, four at the most, stood in the middle of the street, looking around in confusion, unaware of the three burning creatures rushing toward him.


    Hetmwit took off running toward his nephew.


    Two of the Marines passed him at robotic speed, almost blurred as they crossed the parkinglot, hurtled over the barrier, and reached Hetmwit''s nephew. One fired at the oncoming creature, the other grabbed Hetmwit''s nephew and spun in place, running back.


    "Sir, we have to go!" one of the robotic Marines yelled, grabbing the shoulder of Hetmwit''s armor and pulling him along.


    Hetmwit noticed, crazily, that it didn''t sound as roboty as it had.


    Hetmwit stumbled onto the dropship, almost falling as he moved up the ramp.


    The dropship howled as it clawed for air.


    "Wait, the Captain," Hetmwit said.


    He looked down.


    The Captain was almost completely covered by the charcoal demonic creatures, only the sheer fury of his assault keeping them at bay.


    "Skippy, low and slow pass over the Captain, twenty meters," Hetmwit said.


    A missile detonated off to the side of the dropship, making it lurch.


    The dropship turned, dropping slightly, and sped up.


    "Captain, we''re coming in on your five-thirty, twenty meters!" Hetmwit yelled over the com and his speakers.


    One of the robots was running the door gun, hosing the creatures on the ground.


    The dropship suddenly slowed.


    Hetmwit leaned out, holding a strap with one hand, his pistol in the other.


    The creatures exploded away from the Captain as he launched himself upwards, one hand reaching out, his chainsword snapping to his waist thanks to the magtac system.


    "Rapid fire, high-vee APERS," Hetmwit snapped.


    His pistol repeated it.


    He hosed the creatures holding onto the Captain''s legs.


    The Captain got one hand onto the lowered back deck, his fingers digging into the battlesteel. Hetmwit heard the Captain fire his SMG and could see the remaining creatures holding onto the Captain''s feet and legs fall away.


    "Captain on board! Punch it!" Hetmwit yelled over the commo.


    "Five by five," Skippy answered.


    The Captain pulled himself in as the dropship''s engines roared, his armor''s enhanced strength making it look easy. He moved into the dropship, joining Hetmwit as the back deck started to raise.


    The door gunner stowed the gun as the side door closed.


    "You made it," Hetmwit said, staring up at the Captain.


    "I knew you wouldn''t leave me behind, Number One," the Captain said.


    The dropship arced up, the engines roaring as Skippy leaned on the gas, heading for the Nell.

 Chapter 14 - The Hard Way Home

    It doesn''t matter who you were or what you''ve done. What you''ve said or where you''ve been.


    The only thing that matters is what you do in that one single second.


    That one second. Where everything comes down to it*.*


    Two or three times. That''s all. That''s all you get in life to prove who you really are.


    Will you rise above? Or will you die on your knees? - Unknown, Terra, Age of Paranoia


    The dropship''s engines screamed as it clawed for air, making a least time course for the Nell, which was still holding position, still lashing out at the enemy ships with missile pods, the C++ Cannon, and the other esoteric weaponry the little craft possessed.


    His mother and sisters were sobbing, still wrapped in the rescue cloaks, the hoods still pulled up, the littles around their legs.


    The Captain was standing off to the side, by the rear hatch, putting the SMG on the magtac on his belt. Netmwit noticed that the toothed chain entered the guard housing at a wide point in the blade, where the face of a chubby infant Terran with wide eyes, a slightly open mouth, and tousled hair was surrounded by a laurel. The Captain''s armor had claw marks, pockmarks from weapons, and tooth marks on it, but seemed unbreached to Netmwit''s untrained eyes.


    One of the robot Marines was bent down, saying soothing words in a decidedly non-mechanical voice to the little clustered around his baby sister''s legs. It had pockmarks on its chest, part of its face had melted and ran, giving it a strange scarred/stroke victim appearance.


    Its head also looked like a Terran skull, with a red stripe brushed across the eyes and another from between the eyes, down the face, to end at the chin.


    Hetmwit saw that his baby sister still had her datalink with her. He reached out and grabbed it, his sister blinking at how fast he moved. He looked at, tapped two icons, and scrolled till he found the number. He hit the connect icon and waited.


    It picked up on the second ring.


    The Captain looked at him, the skull visage of the helmet concealing the Captain''s thoughts.


    "Hello?" the voice asked.


    "Dad! Dad, it''s Hetmwit!" he said into the communicator, yelling to be heard over the bursts of static and the warbling tone in the background.


    "Who? Het... Hetmwit! Son! Where are you?" his father managed to remember who he was.


    "I''m on a dropship," Hetmwit said. "Where are you?" he looked at the Captain. "We''re coming to get you!"


    "Get your mother!" his father shouted back. "I''m in the shelter at the plant. They say it''s a drill."


    "I''ve got mom, Revvie, Tylee, and Estlee, along with the littles!'' Hetmwit said. He had to repeat it when a burst of static interrupted him.


    The Captain put his fingers to his helmet and Hetwmit felt the dropship bank hard and drop altitude.


    One of the Marines hit the stud and the side doors pulled back. Both Marines deployed the door guns, checking the action.


    Hetmwit saw the roofs of the buildings flash by as the dropship hurtled down to nap of earth, the engines screaming and the battlescreen crackling on the dust and airborne debris.


    "What? I can''t hear you! Get your mother, get your sisters, get the littles!" his father said.


    "Dad, dad! I''ve only got a minute or two. It''s bad. Real bad!" Hetmwit yelled over the howling of the wind and the engines. "It''s not a drill!"


    One of the Marines cut loose with a burst from the heavy 20mm door mounted machinegun. Something exploded and debris hit the battlescreen.


    "Leave me!" his father said, his voice urgent. "Get them out!"


    "Dad, I... I..." Hetmwit said.


    The Captain was just staring at him, unmoving.


    Both door gunners started firing. Hetmwit could see out the doors that they were low enough that the banners and signs above the ground level windows of stores were visible out the doors from his angle. There was a clanking noise against the bottom of the dropship and Hetmwit heard the chatter of flares being released.


    "Shut up! Listen to me! You''re the one who saved the family. I always forgot about you, but you didn''t forget about your mother and sisters!" his father yelled. There was an explosion outside that rocked the dropship, but it leveled out before the battlescreen did much more than shred a hundred meters of the building it had tilted toward.


    "I''m coming for you!" Hetmwit shouted into the datalink.


    "Get them out!" his father yelled.


    "Dad..." Hetmwit started to say.


    "You can''t save me, boy! Nobody can save me! Get your mother and sis


    ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC scrolled across the top of his vision in lurid red letters. The dropship''s engines howled as the pilot suddenly stood the dropship on its tail, braking and scrabbling for altitude at the same time.


    One of the littles slipped out of the half-connected harness. The nearest Marine lunched forward, grabbing the little in skeletal hands, bringing her close to his chest as his knees came up and put his elbows out. He bounced off the bulkhead, stuck a foot out and got it tangled in the cargo net, slamming against the bulkhead.


    The little was just staring with wide eyes at the skull of the robot who cradled it close.


    There was a white flash. Sparks shot from consoles, arced off the surfaces, danced along long bars and cables.


    Sparks shot from the datalink as it went dead in his hand.


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    The afterburners kicked on and Hetmwit stumbled slightly before Captain Decken''s hand stopped him.


    The robots were all kneeling down in front of his family, holding the rescue cloaks, silvery again instead of a matte dusty black that was the visual equivalent of trying to squeeze jello in your fist, closed over the Pagrik inside.


    NUKE NUKE NUKE flashed in his vision. WARNING 20+ Mt WARNING


    Another white flash.


    The engines were screaming, the afterburners shrieking as they were pushed to the limit. The whole dropship was shaking, vibrating hard enough that Hetmwit was starting to see double.


    Both door gunners reached out and slapped the buttons next to the door.


    "Dad..." Hetmwit said, staring at the datalink.


    The first shockwave hit the dropship and the battlescreen projectors roared and crackled like ice-water being poured on a red hot griddle. They were visible to the naked eye clearly, a bright red grid of interlocked hexagons.


    The doors slammed shut, driven by pneumatic pistons rather than electric motors, just before the debris cloud hit.


    The dropship seemed to fall for a moment, a split second of pseudo-zero-G. The robot against the bulkhead that was cradling a little kicked off, spinning in midair even as the dropship tilted.


    The engines were out.


    The gravity came back as the dropship fell. The robot landed in front of the netting that made up the seat. Its hands and arms flashed as it quickly put the little in the harness, then it leaned over the little, protecting it with its body.


    The engines coughed and fired as the dropship sucked air like a drowning man just breaking the surface. The engines roared, then shrieked as the pilot kicking in the afterburners, looping and turning, but still climbing.


    35Km sped by.


    There was another hard impact to the dropship. The engines choked, gagged, and the pilot cut them out before one sucked in too much dust and the thrust went imbalanced.


    Some of the littles were screaming, their mouths open, soundless over the all consuming roar of the explosion.


    The dropship was falling again.


    35Km went by the other way as the dropship tilted and its nose lifted even further as the pilot fought with it.


    The engines kicked on, coughing and choking, but still coming to life. The dropship leveled out, leaped forward.


    The pilot kicked the afterburners.


    35Km went by again.


    ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC


    flashed by


    ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC


    went by again


    NUKE NUKE NUKE 20+ Mt WARNING scrolled by.


    The afterburners howled and the airframe started to shake as the pilot did everything but get out and push.


    "Come on, baby, hold together," the Captain growled softly.


    There was a sudden silence.


    Hetmwit opened his mouth to ask what was going to happen when the grav engines kicked on with a warbling atonal shrieking. The whole dropship shuddered and vibrated, again making Hetmwit see double as his eyeballs were shivered in the sockets.


    The littles were silent, eyes wide, staring into the faces of the robots that helped hold them secure, their eyes only inches from the burning red eyes set into the black Terran skulls.


    "You are being rescued," one said. "It is okay be afraid."


    The little blinked and nodded.


    85Km went by.


    Hetmwit stood up, moving forward to his mother. The grav engines were still howling, pushed to the max. The dropship shuddered again, heeled onto its side, then leveled out, but Hetmwit kept his balance.


    Everything went silent, just the low steady growl of the grav-engines, as he knelt down in front of his mother.


    She was huddled inside the rescue cloak, her face hidden by the hood.


    "I''m sorry, momma. I was going to try, I really was," he said.


    She looked up, her eyes full of tears. "I believe you, Hemmie," she said softly. She leaned forward and put her arms around him, pulling him close. "You came for us."


    He hugged her gently, the armor''s dogbrain VI realizing the context and cutting the assisted strength.


    "I tried. I really did," Hetmwit started weeping.


    "Oh, Hemmie," his mother sobbed.


    The Captain just watched, the black macroplas eyes of his helmet unreadable.


    -----


    The air smelled like ozone, burnt molycircs, scorched warsteel, hot lubricant, and carbonized metals as Hetmwit made sure his niece was sedated and strapped down. He looked up at the robot Marine who had grabbed her out of midair and nodded.


    "Thanks," he said.


    "You''re welcome, sir," the robot answered.


    Hetmwit stood up and quietly left the room. The lights dimmed slightly and there was a clonking sound that seemed to come from outside the hull. He hurried down the primary access corridor and to the bridge.


    Captain Decken stood by the holotank, his helmet off, staring at the data.


    "Order Corvette-Four to support that Concordiant battlewagon formation," Decken stated.


    "Aye aye, sir," Mister Hefty said. He looked up. "Corvette-One reports cooldown and reload successful, they''re ready to reengage."


    "Order them back in," Decken looked up. "My condolences on your father," he said, then looked back at the holotank. "Order Corvette-Five to run another sweep with its drones. We''ll see if it comes in at the same distance and latitude as last time," he said.


    "Aye aye, sir," Mister Hefty answered, tapping rapidly on the keyboard in front of him.


    Hetmwit looked at the holotank. He had taken the correspondence course about naval fleet tactics during the two weeks to the capital system. Unlike the last system wide action, this time he understood all the icons, the dotted lines, the dashed lines, that made the holotank''s contents look so complicated.


    "We''re winning," the Captain said. He looked over at a new robot, the only one with the short T head. "Mister Chatty, tell Grand High Admiral Sherkus that Bogey-Ninety-Two is shifting to try to flank his Cruiser Division-Seventeen."


    "Aye aye, sir," the robot stated.


    "Admiral Sherkus? He''s in charge of the entire Concordiant Navy," Hetmwit said. He gave a chuckle. "His name was on my last set of orders that ended me up here."


    "The Malevolent Universe smiles on him then," Decken said. "A simple, unnoticed action that changed the fate of his entire nation."


    It suddenly seemed less funny to Hetmwit.


    "STATUS CHANGE!" Mister Goofy called out.


    Hetmwit and Decken both looked at the robot, who had white stripes on his face where the Marines had red.


    "Enemy is helljumping out," Mister Goofy said.


    "Get ready," Decken growled. He looked over at Mister Fumbles. "Load the C++ cannon and the ammo locker with boosted rounds."


    "Aye aye, sir," Mister Fumbles stated.


    Hetmwit found himself leaning forward.


    "NEW CONTACT!" Mister Goofy called out. "Same signature as Bogey-37 in the last system," he checked his board again. "Bogey is accelerating toward the stellar mass."


    Decken checked the status.


    135%.


    Good enough to prevent it from getting spiked, but he had hoped to get 160% or more for full stabilization.


    "Corvette-Five reporting target lock," Mister Hefty said.


    "You may fire when ready, Mister Fumbles," Decken said softly.


    "Last known units have helljumped out," Mister Goofy stated.


    "GUNS FREE! MAIN GUN FIRING!" Mister Fumbles yelled out.


    Hetmwit could feel the ship shudder, like it was being punched backwards, even as ghostly fingers plucked at his bone marrow.


    "Direct hits," Mister Goofy said. There was a second pause. "Targets are breaking up."


    "Magazine reloaded. Heat at 72%, slush at 54% and rising," Mister Hefty said.


    "GUNS FREE! MAIN GUN FIRING!" Mister Fumbles called out.


    Again, the ship shuddered.


    "Direct hits. Targets breaking up," Mister Goofy stated.


    "Scan for any launches," Decken ordered.


    Hetmwit felt tension fill him for long moments.


    "No launches detected," Mister Hefty said.


    "Captain, the Admiral is demanding to speak with you. His ships are maneuvering for firing angles," Mister Goofy stated.


    Hetmwit knew what was going to happen next.


    "Order all flotilla elements to engage full stealth and move to Rally Point Ticonderoga," Decken said. "Mister Smiley, you have your course and heading."


    "Aye aye, sir," Mister Smiley said.


    The ship turned, the effect palpable despite the inertial compensator.


    Hetmwit was used to it now.


    Everything tunneled down to a pinprick on the horizon.


    He was violently pulled toward it.


    The long moment that only took a split second was suddenly over.


    The flotilla sat out by the Oort Cloud.


    Hetmwit stood silently as the Corvettes reported in.


    They were all battered, beaten upon, and scarred.


    Captain Decken stared at the holotank for a long moment, then looked up at Hetmwit.


    He didn''t pull those burning amber eyes from Hetmwit''s as he snapped out his order.


    "Make for Confederate Space, least time," he said.


    "Aye aye, Captain," Mister Smiley responded.


    There was the queasiness inducing slide that Hetmwit knew was the jump to hyperspace.


    "We have to warn the Confederacy," Hetmwit stated.


    Captain Decken just nodded.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 15 - More By Breakfast

    The whole side of the building exploded inward as the rifle fired grenade sailed over Tawtchee''s head, missing by bare inches, then whipped across the rest of the street to explode against the ferrocrete. Flickering holosigns exploded in sparks, macroplas windows shattered inward, and a ball of fire belched out of the abandoned diner a split second after the wall caved in.


    Tawtchee dove behind the wreckage of a car, almost lost his rifle, but held onto the front handgrip as his macroplas elbow and knee pads were scored deeply. His head was ringing and he was pretty sure that he was probably bleeding from the ears. He reached up, slapped his helmet twice, then shook his head. He was panting behind his breathing mask as he tried to pull more oxy into his blood but he could tell by the bitter taste his tank was almost dry.


    Looking behind him he spotted Sergeant Hypee and the rest of 3rd squad. Hypee''s face was dirty, dust matted to the fur, but at least Hypee still had his breathing mask.


    At Sergeant Hypee''s motion, Tawtchee pulled his breathing mask off his chest and took a couple of deep breaths.


    Hypervelocity rounds thunked through the vehicle in a loud clattering burst, like the breaking of a hailstorm on a tin roof. Tawtchee flinched, cringing slightly, expecting one of more h-vee rounds to punch through his body.


    Feeling no pain he slapped himself, then looked at Sergeant Hypee and give him the thumbs up, grinning behind his breathing mask.


    Sergeant Hypee glared at him and motioned for Tawtchee to keep moving.


    Shaking his head, he got up and scrabbled to the end of the wrecked vehicle, dragging his rifle by the forward handgrip.


    The street was smokey and airborne debris made the sunlight sparkle as it streamed through the dusty air. Up ahead there was a burning hoverbus that had given up on the first part of its name. The shop on the other side, an upscale clothing boutique, was burning merrily, the dozens of floors above it spewing smoke from the shattered windows.


    He glanced back and saw Sergeant Hypee motion at him again.


    Tawtchee closed his eyes, hitched two deep breaths, then broke out from behind the vehicle, sprinting for the hoverbus. Behind him, Wartker popped up and hosed a long burst from his light machinegun into the burnt out buildings across the street, the rapidfire bolts a bright blue in the dusty light. Some helpful disphit, Tawtchee wasn''t sure, tossed one of the few 30mm grenades the squad had left into a building, sending chunks of automatronic mannequin into the street.


    Hvee rounds screamed above Tawtchee''s head and he heard someone yell in the guttural and brutal language of the Grenklakail right before another rocket propelled grenade whipped by behind him, vanishing into the burning store and detonating inside.


    Then he was diving to the ground and crawling along the length of the hoverbus as hvee rounds punched through the body and into the store, only inches above his head.


    The light machinegun roared again and the firing slowed, then stopped.


    Tawtchee just laid on the ground, breathing heavy. He brought his rifle up, put the end of the sling that was attached to the end of the forward receiver in one hand, between his thumb and forefinger, then repeated it with the other hand and the end of the sling attached to the end of the weapon''s butt stock. He crawled rapidly, not quite on his hands and knees, just his body off the ground, levered up by his knees and elbows, hands holding his weapon just off the ground, toes being used to push him forward.


    He looked back in time to see the rest of the squad sprint all the way from where they had taken cover to the hoverbus.


    Sergeant Hypee slammed down next to him, his helmet sliding forward to hit the end of the Dra.Falten NCO''s nose.


    "Dammit," Sergeant Hypee swore, snapping his head back in a jerky motion to get his helmet to rock back into place. He looked around. "See any of them?"


    "No, but I heard one yelling," Tawtchee said.


    The Sergeant looked at everyone. "Anyone got commo?"


    Everyone shook their heads. Rifleman Second Class Dreebawn frowned. "How are they jamming quark commo?"


    "Who fucking cares. They''re doing it," Sergeant Hypee said. "Anyone''s positioning system working?"


    "Nope" was the general consensus.


    Sergeant Hypee pulled out a folded map, slapped it down and looked at it. "OK, we''re here. We have to get here to link up with the rest of battalion," he said, tracing a line.


    Six blocks.


    "Grenky forces are over here," the Sergeant said, tapping five blocks over. "They''re patrolling, same as us, looking for our patrols same as we''re looking for theirs."


    "Yeah, no shit," Heavy Gunner Fourth Class Nymtroot said, chewing stimgum and spraying lube into the feed of the light energy machinegun he was carrying.


    "OK, we cut around that corner, head for the alley, then we just step stair down to battalion," Sergeant Hypee said.


    Everyone nodded.


    "Don''t stop to keep contact with the enemy. We''re closer to their lines than we are to ours. I don''t want to get pinned down why they bring in a striker or an armored vehicle," Hypee stated. He looked at Tawtchee. "You''re on point, Rifleman."


    "Yeah, of course," Tawtchee grunted. He crawled forward and looked around the corner of the bus.


    Nobody shot at him or blew his face off, so he looked around. He could spot the alley. There was a dead warmek, probably in the 145 ton range, face down in the street.


    He pulled back.


    "OK, we run across the street, there''s a warmek we can use for cover," Tawtchee said.


    "Their or ours?" someone asked.


    "Who fucking cares? It''s face down," Tawtchee snarled. "From there we can make it to the alley."


    Everyone nodded.


    "Well? Get it done," the Sergeant said.


    Tawtchee got up and pulled his weapon sling over his head, letting the weapon slap against his back.


    He took off sprinting across the street, high stepping the whole way. He jumped over two decaying bodies, skirted a burnt out one wheel lawsec bike, then grabbed the end of the mech''s finger to swing around the dead behemoth.


    He kept running, reaching the mouth of the alley and just depending on speed and surprise as he ran in and dove behind a dumpster. A glance showed him that his rifle still wasn''t getting any feed from the energy clip. He slapped the bottom twice but the icon still blinked amber with a red lightning bolt through it diagonally.


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    The rest of the squad caught up to him before he could catch his breath.


    "My tank''s almost out," Tawtchee said.


    "Necklelk, give Tawt your tank," Hypee said.


    Necklelk grumbled, but handed it to the Sergeant, who swapped it for Tawtchee''s air tank. Tawtchee took a few deep breaths, nodded, and headed down the alley.


    They only got shot at a few times. A couple of mortar rounds, low-ex, hit one street at they ran by.


    Then they damn near got killed by the twitchy motherfuckers on the gate when they came out of the smoke and dust.


    Tawtchee looked at the makeshift ''firebase'' which had originally only been intended as a launching point deeper into the Strevik''al city and was now serving its third month as a forward operating base.


    He got some food, even though he wasn''t hungry, because he didn''t want Tight Ass Hypee to get on his case about not eating.


    It was noodle and meat surprise.


    The surprise was it tasted like shit.


    Tawtchee dumped his empty plate into the garbage can and shuffled over to the metal box that made up where half of fifth platoon was bunked down ''temporarily'' for the last three months and collapsed face first on the bad.


    At one point the chemical alarms started wailing.


    Tawtchee managed to get his mask on before he was even awake, then went back to sleep. If it was skin and fur permeable he was fucking dead anyway. He''d lost his chemical suit when he''d dropped his ruck after some asshole had dumped two incendiary rounds into it like a month and a half ago, and nobody in supply had issued any more out.


    Tawtchee just kept sleeping, his gas mask on his face.


    He woke up to his bunk being kicked.


    "Fuck off," he grunted.


    "Get up, trooper," the voice was higher pitched.


    Tawtchee felt sleep sweep away as he jumped up, his rifle sling wrapped around his forearm so he dragged it up with him.


    A large Dra.Falten female, one of the Means of the Way military forces officer, stood at the end of his bed and looked him up and down.


    "Chemical all clear sounded two hours ago, trooper," the officer said.


    "Oh," Tawtchee said. He pulled the mask off, reached down, grabbed the carrier he had been using as a pillow, and shoved the mask into the carrier. He straightened up and faced the big female, buckling the waist strap for the mask around his waist.


    "Base Sergeant Hypee said you were Rifleman Second Class Tawtchee-9912743," the big female said.


    "Who wants to know?" Tawtchee asked. Sure, he might get in trouble for being mouthy to one of the big female Means of the War officers, but unless she was going to shoot him, what was she going to do, bend his ID tags and send him to the warzone?


    "Field Captain Strechen," the officer said, reaching up and tapping her nameplate. Tawtchee noticed her uniform was unfrayed, clean, without any stains.


    She wasn''t even carrying her sidearm and her thick belt was unadorned by anything, the black leather still highly polished.


    Fuck, a REMF, he thought.


    Tawtchee sat down.


    "On your feet," the Captain ordered.


    Tawtchee got back up.


    "Your orders came in," the Captain said. "You''re leaving."


    "What?" Tawtchee said.


    Then his inner enlistedman took over his mouth.


    "Oh, no, not leaving this bullshit ass fuck fuck circus," Tawtchee faux-moaned. "What will I ever do?"


    The officer shoved a fast-plas sheet at Tawtchee. "Get your gear. Vehicle leaves in two hours. You aren''t on it, you''ll be facing..."


    "Summary execution," Tawtchee said at the same time as the officer.


    She just sneered, turned on one heel, and stalked out.


    "Dick," Tawtchee said, sitting down. He looked at the orders. "Now what?"


    -----


    From behind his breathing mask Tawtchee stared at the vehicle. A standard light hover transport. Two front seats, two bench seats on either side of the rear bed, light vehicle armor, six hover pads. Its paint was unmarred, unchipped, just the jet-black of the Means of the Way forces. There was a lieutenant base grade in the driver''s seat, Captain Whats-Her-Fuck in the passenger seat.


    Tawtchee threw his two ditty bags into the back and climbed in after throwing his rifle into the back. He kept one hand on his helmet so it didn''t fall off, then sprawled in the back.


    He could see one set of four flexiplas bags said FC STRECHEN and the other set of five said BLG PREENIX, all in block letters done with a black marking stick. He could see a few ammo boxes full of energy clips and a light energy machinegun under several of the bags. There were two boxes of crappy bagged meals, one reading "for Means of the End Troopers Only" on it.


    He knew that meant it was the shitty food.


    His own bag just said "TAWTCHEE-2743" on them with "FIREBASE HARGALLA" underneath two black bars that were underneath his name.


    Tawtchee made a mental note to either erase that or just mark it out like he had his last two duty postings.


    He picked up his rifle as the hoverpods crackled and lifted the vehicle up into the air.


    Tawtchee didn''t ask where they were going, just laid in the luggage, staring up at the sky, and smoking a filterless smokestick from the paper wrapped tube of them he''d grabbed from the bootleg BobCo pogey forge that the skeezy dude from motorpool had hidden for those in the know.


    He dozed lightly, rifle across his body, clonking against his hardplate chest piece, warm in the sun and still tired from the last three months. Once in a while he patted his mask carrier, reached down and pressed the stud on his tank to give himself a shot of good atmo into his face mask, or tapped his boot against the light machinegun.


    He kept drifting in and out of dreams where he was riding in the back of a hovercar, sunbathing.


    He suddenly bolted upright, his ''combat antenna'' going off, grabbing his weapon and hitting the power stud. His rifle gave a high pitched whine as the energy clip charged the high density capacitors. He looked around, noting that both officers were chatting about some shit, probably dumbass officer crap, and batting their whiskers like they were going dating.


    There was woods on one side, a large berm where the earth mover that had made the road had pushed the dirt, with woods beyond it.


    He could see orange glow stripes appearing in the woods.


    "DOMMY AMBUSH!" he yelled, lifting up his weapon.


    "Sit down," the Captain said.


    "Shut up," the other officer said.


    He raked a burst into the woods right as the enemy in the woods opened fire. His rounds, variable frequency laser packets, cracked into trees, bushes, and hit something good that exploded in red rags and pink mist.


    The return shots hit the vehicle, the lasers blowing fist sized holes out of the armor.


    And blowing the lieutenant''s head off.


    Tawtchee jumped up, into her lap, ignoring the fact that she was busy pissing herself and getting his ass wet. He grabbed the yoke, back pedaled the right hand pedals and hit the power to the left hand pedals.


    The Captain screeched as the hovercar flipped up on its side as the pods dug into the loose dirt at the side of the road and the left pods went to max power. It hit the berm, throwing Tawtchee out and onto the other side of the berm.


    The Captain was screeching as more lasers smashed into the bottom of the vehicle.


    The LMG fell next to Tawtchee and he grabbed it, crawling away from the hovercar, which was drawing all the fire. The Captain was trying to get her harness undone as Tawtchee popped up, got a look, then popped back down and crawled another ten meters on his hands and knees, the LMG balanced across his forearms and his rifle dragging in the dirt. He deployed the bipod, hit the power studs, and watched the six energy clips jammed into the side ports light up.


    The Captain got loose, fell onto the dirt, and looked around as Tawtchee popped back up, dropping the LMG bipod on the dirt and holding down the trigger. The Captain looked around confused as Tawtchee hosed the entire treeline for a five second burst. Trees exploded, bushes caught on fire, there was another ''whoomp'' of pink mist and red scraps. He gave the treeline another burst and let off the trigger.


    There was silence.


    "ASSHOLES!" Tawtchee yelled across the road.


    "Hey, you triggered our ambush, dick!" someone yelled in bad Dra.Falten standard.


    "Fuck you, buddy! You''re gonna pull this shit when I''m short?" Tawtchee hollered.


    There was silence a second.


    "How short?" someone yelled. "Double digit?"


    "On my way to the starport!" Tawtchee yelled back.


    The Captain crawled up. "Shoot them, fool," she said.


    Tawtchee put his hand on the back of her head and shoved her face into the dirt.


    "Seriously? Oh, shit, sorry, buddy," someone yelled.


    "Hey, can I fucking go?" Tawtchee asked after a second.


    There was silence for a second.


    "Sure. Leave the vehicle so we can claim the kill," someone yelled back.


    The Captain looked up, gasping, clumped dirt on her face.


    "I''ve got a live officer. I''m taking her with," he said. He paused. "Unless you want her as a prisoner?"


    "Fuck that. You keep her. She might think she''s in charge or some shit," another voice yelled.


    "What about your officer?" Tawtchee asked.


    "You wasted him," someone said.


    "You''re welcome!" Tawtchee shouted.


    "All right, you two can go," Another voice said. "The officer leaves her boots."


    "I will not," the Captain started to protest.


    "I can shoot you in the face or they can or you can leave your boots," Tawtchee said.


    She grumbled and started to undo her boots.


    "I''m gonna grab my shit, all right?" Tawtchee yelled out.


    "Sure, sure," one said.


    Tawtchee grabbed his ditty, slinging it over one shoulder. He dropped the LMG and stomped on the housing cover twice. He grabbed the dead lieutenant''s atmo tank and clipped it to his equipment belt, then dug out two meals from the officer rats box. He opened the LMG and dug his knife in the parts.


    Something broke and the magic smoke leaked out.


    "That''ll work."


    "Hey, you done dicking around?" someone yelled.


    "Yeah, I''m leaving!" Tawtchee called out.


    He started walking away.


    "Wait," the Captain called out, hustling to catch up.


    "Good luck! Don''t get shot in the dick!" someone yelled.


    "You too!" Tawtchee answered.


    "You''re supposed to kill the enemy, trooper," the Captain said.


    "Shut up. We got a long walk," Tawtchee said.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 16 - More By Breakfast

    The day was sunny and warm. A little too warm to be walking carrying forty-kilos of gear, but still warm.


    On the plus side, it wasn''t raining.


    On the left side of the dirt road, which at times was more pothole than road, was burnt and charred forest, with wide leaved rust colored fern fronds poking up everywhere. On the other side was the berm where the angled blade of the earth mover had pushed the excess dirt and rock when the road had been made then cleared last.


    There was also a long lined of burnt out armored vehicles, some of which had plowed partway through the berm.


    Beyond that was more charred forest, broken up now and then by the fallen walls of a ferrocrete building that had been been burnt till the lime had caught on fire.


    Walking along the side of the berm opposite of the road were two Dra.Falten. One was in a rumpled uniform patterned in stripes of various green, unpolished heavy boots, with a hard-shell torso armor. The other was wearing a uniform that was slightly rumpled but otherwise pristine, dirty socks on her feet and a wide polished black belt around her waist. The rumpled one had their helmet hanging from their canteen, their rifle hanging down off of their shoulder from the sling, and a single bag hanging on his back from two straps and a rucksack hanging off the other shoulder and the hooks on the back of the hardshell armor. The other had two bags, both held in place by a strap over each shoulder, as well as a pistol in a holster on the belt.


    The rumpled one was a male that was a foot shorter than the large female in the cleaner uniform.


    "You should wear your helmet in case of a sniper," the female said.


    "Then he''ll just shoot me in the neck," the male said. He lifted his atmospheric mask up to his face, pressed the button on the small tank on his belt, and took a deep inhale. "Ah, that''s the stuff."


    "What happened here?" the female asked, pointing at the burnt out vehicles on the side of the road.


    "Grenky striker ambush. Two months ago, after they finished providing security while FOB Misty Lake was being built," the male said. "Caught them in the open with their screens and anti-air down."


    "Why?" she asked.


    "CO decided that the chance of ambush was minimal and didn''t want to put excess wear on the systems," the male shrugged. "You see it all the time. Wear on the components means the mechanics have to replace the part, which means its not deployable, which means the officer gets asked why so many of her tanks are inoperative, which means she gets yelled at."


    The female frowned.


    "The Grenky have been pushing pretty hard the last three months," the male said. He gave a shrug. "Probably push us and the Dommies off planet in the next year or so."


    "We are the Dar.Falten Empire," the female started to say, her voice huffy.


    "Captain, they outgun us, they have battlescreens on their infantry and we don''t, they have battlescreens on their strikers and we don''t, there''s more of them, and they were preparing for this for years," the male broke in.


    He jammed his hands in his pockets.


    "It''s just the way it is," he said, his voice low.


    The female officer opened her mouth, then closed it.


    After an hour or so the male sat down on the back deck of a carbonized APC hull.


    "Take a break," he said.


    "Don''t give..." the Captain started to say.


    The male was already digging in his rucksack. He pulled out two bagged meals, throwing one at the Captain.


    She dropped it.


    He tore his open, squinting as he looked at the labels. "Oh, score! Roasted frumfel meat with buttered popcorn stuffing!" he ripped into it and began tearing open the packets to eat with his fingers.


    The female looked at hers.


    Gepta Meat and Turga Nuts - Not For Officer Consumption


    She looked at his.


    Not for Enlisted Consumption


    "Give me that," she said.


    "No. You''re lucky I even grabbed you food," the male said. He looked at her. "How long have you even been in country?"


    "What? What does that have to do with.."


    "How long?" the male asked, scooping more roasted meat and stuffing into his mouth.


    "I have been here nearly a month," the female said.


    "One year," the male said. He pointed the food package at the large cylindrical bag he had been carrying. "Before that, Charmeka-3. Before that: Bhrestikin-4," he said. "I got here two months after the Strevik''al jumped our settlers and our settlers jumped theirs."


    He gave a snort, shoveled in another bite of food and kept talking even as he chewed.


    "Turns out the Grenky settlers had false-flagged both of us," he said around a mouthful of buttered popcorn stuffing. "By the time we figured it out, the Grenkies were hitting us everywhere. I got here just in time for the New Moon Winter Offensive."


    The female blinked rapidly several times.


    The male took a swig off his canteen and went back to eating and talking with his mouth full.


    "We were stacking bodies for sandbags, pouring water or pissing on the snow we covered them with to freeze them in ice," the male said. He tossed the wrapper away and ripped open another one. "Ooh, brownie with T-Bug chocolate chips!" he started taking bites out of it, closing his eyes and sighing as he chewed. "That was right when the Grenkies went to hvee weapons instead of their old plasma guns."


    He tore open another pack, gobbling down the salad.


    The female opened the main meal, flinched at the smell, then started eating petulantly.


    "Busted from Operations Sergeant to Rifleman Fifth Class after the Battles of the Neufetter Eclipse," the male said. "Ordering the men to retreat from a worthless fucking hill after all the officers fucked off to the afterlife while I still had forty-percent of them almost got me summarily executed for cowardice."


    The female nodded. "Was that your assigned objective? To hold that hill?"


    The male nodded.


    "Then I would have executed you," she stated. She put her hand on her pistol. "Why were you not?"


    The male shrugged. "My endless good looks, boundless charm, and gigantic penis?" He went back to eating and after a moment stared at her. "You going to eat your food or shoot me? You need to decide on one before you can do the other, Field Captain Strechen."


    The female glared for a long moment, then looked down at the meal. She ate slowly, gagging more than once on the foul taste.


    The male, one Rifleman Second Class Tawtchee-9912743, took off his boots, hanging his socks from the rucksack and pulling out another pair that were warn and littered with darning patches. He wiggled his long toes for a moment then pulled on the socks and the boots.


    He sighed, looking at the female''s feet. "Those have to hurt."


    Captain Strechen nodded.


    The male sighed and got up, wandering down the line of vehicles.


    "What are you doing?" the female called out.


    When the male didn''t answer she weighed getting up and finding out.


    And maybe shooting him for disrespect.


    She fantasized about that for a while, smiling to herself as she ate the disgusting food paste that passed for a meal.


    The male came walking back, carrying a heat damaged rucksack that had a pair of boots hanging off of it. He bent down, measured the boots against the female''s feet for a moment before she yanked her feet back, then got up and walked away again.


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    "Where are you getting that?" the female asked on the fourth try.


    "Tank crew storage compartments. Most of them had booze in it that exploded from the heat, some are full of melted crap, but I''m finding a ruck about every fifth one," Tawtchee said. He knelt down. "There, that one looks good."


    "I''m not wearing the boots of someone who died," Strechen said, pulling her feet back again.


    "Your choice," the male said. He sat down, took a few hits off of his mask, and then got up, gathering up his gear. He had pulled several field cloaks out of the packs and was busy tucking them into his own pack.


    "Planet smells like ass," Tawtchee complained after another hit off his tank. He looked at Strechen. "Up you go, Captain."


    "My feet hurt and I am still fatigued," she said.


    "Sounds like a you problem," the male said. "I''ll give you ten minutes, then I start walking."


    The Captain thought for a long moment about calling the male''s bluff.


    She pulled on the boots, wincing at how they pinched her little toes, then stood up.


    "Let''s go," Tawtchee said. He started walking.


    Captain Strechen ran to catch up, then started walking next to him.


    He kept ignoring her questions, just steadily walking along next to the berm, skirting artillery craters now and then, but always avoiding standing on the road.


    The sun was low in the sky when he finally spoke.


    "Why did you choose Dead Man''s Highway?" Tawtchee asked.


    "The route is only a third as long as the other routes. I chose it for speed," Captain Strechen said, her voice haughty.


    "Yeah, there''s a reason that you shouldn''t use it unless you''re part of an armored convoy," Tawtchee said.


    "What is that?" the Captain asked.


    Tawtchee turned his head to look at her, even as he thumbed the button on the atmo cylinder to get a hit of good air. He looked around, where there were scattered burnt out vehicles on the road, then back at her.


    "Guess," he said. He sighed. "Do you still have your map?"


    The Captain nodded and dug it out of her pocket.


    Tawtchee just grabbed it, moving over to a burnt out hovertruck that the pods were sunk into the dirt. He spread it out and looked around. He dug in a pocket and pulled out a compass/sextant combination. It was crude and lacked any electronics. He checked a crack watch, then went to work. After a minute he put a pebble on the map.


    "OK, we''re here," he said. He sighed. "Dead center Dead Man''s Highway," he looked at her as he traced another route with his finger. "This route stays behind our lines. It''s three times as long, but stays in green zones," he traced the shorter route. "This one is straight through No-Ma''am-Land."


    She frowned. "Are you sure about our location?"


    Tawtchee nodded. "Yes," he said. He examined the map slowly and kept looking around. Finally he tapped it. "All right, there was a small town, population two hundred, about two miles away that way," he said, pointing. "We''ll go there and..."


    He suddenly ducked down, grabbing the Captain''s arm and yanking her down. She went to yank away then thought better of it, crouching down next to the burnt out vehicle. Tawtchee laid down and wiggled into the narrow space between the vehicle and the loose dirt, grabbing Strechen''s ankle and tugging.


    Making a face of disgust Strechen climbed after him, her face twisted with disgust at the dirt and grease beneath the burnt out vehicle.


    There was a slight buzzing in the air that slowly got louder.


    Strechen saw a small drone, roughly a meter wide, bobbing and weaving as it moved across the burnt out forest.


    "Dommy drone," Tawtchee said softly. He looked at her. "Speak softly. Whispers carry."


    Strechen nodded, feeling her mouth go dry.


    "Looks like recon, I don''t see a swarm or swarm controllers," Tawtchee said.


    Strechen slowly drew her pistol.


    Tawtchee grabbed her wrist. "They''ll know we''re here. Right now it looks like its flying on auto."


    For nearly ten minutes the drone bobbed around, scanning vehicles and moving on.


    "Yeah, it''s using shape comparison. It''s on auto," Tawtchee said, his voice strangely muffled.


    Strechen looked over and realized the male was eating a salad bar.


    The drone suddenly leveled out and hovered for a long moment.


    "Shit, that just went to manual," Tawtchee swore.


    The drone suddenly tilted to the side and raced off, gaining altitude.


    "Whew," Tawtchee said. He took another bite of the salad bar, grinding the nuts on his back teeth. He looked at Strechen. "Probably the rescue party, or they spotted some Grenkies."


    After about ten minutes, the whole time Strechen stared out at the burnt woodline, Tawtchee kicked her foot with his own.


    "Let''s go. We need to make it to whatever''s left of the village," Tawtchee said.


    "But rescue could come along..." Strechen said.


    "You really want to ride in a vehicle?" Tawtchee asked, waving at the burnt out lines of vehicles, some Strevik''al, some Dra.Falten, and a few Grenklakail.


    She stared for a moment, then shook her head.


    "Good choice. We''ll take you to see the elephant yet," Tawtchee mumbled. He handed her one of the field cloaks. "Here, wear this," he said.


    She sniffed and flinched. "That smells terrible."


    "Drones don''t go off smell," Tawtchee said. He shrugged. "Suit yourself."


    Strechen watched him arrange the field cloak over the gear on his back, then wrap two around his torso that were slightly too big for him. He tucked in the excess to his belt in a single fold, then looked at Strechen.


    She pulled the cloak around herself, internally cringing at the smell of rotted and burnt meat.


    The hike was long, several times the pair had to duck down and pulled the face shield across the hood. Clouds were moving in, heavy dark clouds holding a hint of poison from the runoff from destroyed factories.


    "Acid rain tonight," was all Tawtchee grunted.


    Finally, they reached the settlement. It was almost dark, the shadows long and deep, when Strechen realized that they were almost to a wall.


    When it came out of the shadows, she almost groaned in frustration.


    There was just a fifteen foot length of wall, with two windows, that didn''t meet other walls at corners. It was blackened by old scorch marks and soot.


    "Stay. Here," Tawtchee said softly but forcefully.


    Strechen was took fatigued to argue as the smaller male vanished into the shadows. She stretched out her legs, trying to forestall cramps, then sat down on a rock and waited.


    The male came out of the shadows, not from where Strechen had expected, which would have been the way he''d gone, but instead on her right.


    She hoped he hadn''t noticed that he had scared her.


    "Clear," he said softly. "Found a good spot. Second story floor didn''t collapse all the way. We''ve got a little spot with a roof, almost four walls, and some carpet so we aren''t sleeping on the dirt. It''s a good spot."


    "How do you know it''s a good spot?" she asked, following him.


    "Others have used it. Probably deserters," Tawtchee said.


    Strechen said nothing, despite her hackles raising at the idea of someone abandoning their duty to the Empire, following the smaller male. They had to almost crawl through some fallen rubble.


    It was a small area, barely eight feet by six feet. There was layers of carpet on the floor.


    "Way of Means Sucks" and "Means of Way Bites Bad Popcorn" were scratched into the walls. "Screw the Emperor!" was written in Grenky runes. "I was here. Now you are. We are both in Hell" was written in Dommy script.


    "Get some sleep," Tawtchee said. "If we leave just after dawn, we should make our lines by just after lunch."


    Strechen wanted to argue, but just leaning back against her duffle made her eyes heavy.


    She just nodded.


    After a few moments she went to sleep.


    She woke up to the male climbing on top of her, one hand groping her, the other hand holding her muzzle shut. She struggled and wiggled and he slapped her.


    "Dammit, hold still," he grunted. He felt up her chest and suddenly pulled back.


    She could faintly see him, a pinlight on the ceiling providing just enough light.


    "Stupid slag," he grunted. "Brain shot officer dipshit."


    He pulled a knife from his mouth and brought it down to her chest. She felt him cut something off of her harness. He held it up.


    "Fucking idiot."


    It was her personal transponder.


    "Your beacon? You''ve had it on? Really?" he snarled. He wiggled off her, moving to the gap that was now covered by an extra cloak. He grabbed his rifle and kicked his way out.


    After a moment she followed.


    He was crouched down, barely visible, wrapped in his cloaks, looking down at the single street. He was on a second story floor that ended in empty air, the wall missing. She scrabbled up the debris to crouch down next to him, holding her cloak tightly around yourself.


    "Where are you... where are you... where..." the male was saying, his face hidden behind the face cloth.


    She pulled her own cloth over her breathing mask.


    "There," he said softly. He set her officer''s transponder, now wrapped in the foil packet a meal normally came in, on the shattered tile and pulled a grenade off his harness. He quickly taped them together. "Please tell me momma isn''t here."


    She frowned, looking out.


    She couldn''t see anything.


    "What is it?" she said softly.


    "Mole rat. Grenky make. Shit, they lost control of them months ago," he said. He pointed. "By the pile of blue tiles."


    She frowned, rubbing the stud on her face cloth, switching from ambient light to IR then UV then back to enhanced ambient light.


    Captain Strechen saw it right when it poked its head out of the dirt of a crater in the tarmac road.


    It looked like a mechanical rat without any fur or casing.


    It immediately looked at where she was crouched down next to Tawtchee and wriggled out of the dirt, hopping forward rapidly.


    The IR sensors pinged as it scanned the pair crouched down. It shook itself and tried again.


    "It can''t see us because of the cloaks. It can''t home in on the beacon because of the foil," Tawtchee said. "Let''s see what happens next."


    A part of the tarmac suddenly cracked and lifted.


    "Aw, crap. Big momma," Tawtchee said. He patted himself, pulling out a grenade and looking at it. "Frag. Dammit," he looked at her. "Stay here, and for the love of buttered popcorn, don''t help me."


    What revealed itself was a large cone with eight legs. It had treads embedded in the body, only the cleats clear of the shell. As she watched it extended almost a dozen tendrils around the widest part of the cone, irises opening up to reveal lenses as it began looking around.


    The smaller one ran up, extended a ''tongue'' that tapped a nodule. The nodule opened up and the smaller one plugged itself into the revealed socket.


    Strechen looked around.


    Tawtchee was nowhere to be seen.


    Two others ran out of the shadows, copying the first one.


    The big one slowly turned in a circle, the articulated spidery looking legs clicking on the broken tarmac.


    It suddenly raised up, the tendrils extending out. The end of the cone suddenly irised open, revealing grinders, blades, and rock crushers, all lit by a sullen red light from further into the meter long cone.


    Something arced out of the darkness, landing in front of the big one.


    It shrieked and charged forward, lowering the opening and scooping up dirt and the object.


    A second later there was an explosion that consumed the conical mechanical monstrosity and sent robotic parts showering across the street.


    She stayed silent, crouched down on the ruined floor.


    A tap to her boot made her jerk around.


    Tawtchee motioned at her.


    "Come on," he said.


    She followed him back to the little nest.


    "What was that?" she asked.


    "Grenky mole rat. Autonomous subterranean killer drones," Tawtchee said. "The Grenkies used them heavily in the beginning but lost control of them about five months ago. You doni''t see them often, they usually haunt out of the way places. Like this one. Now they just kill whoever they find," he patted his rifle. "They want your gear. Electronics, batteries, e-clips, whatever."


    "Can''t they shut them down?" Strechen asked.


    Tawtchee shook his head. "No. They lost control," he wave his hand to encompass outside. "It''s a Pratty-Chan Very Special Shit Show."


    Strechen frowned at the mention of the animated AI avatar that haunted Dra.Net.


    "You don''t have another beacon on you, do you?" Tawtchee asked.


    "No," Strechen said.


    "Good. Your turn for guard," he waved at a small piece of thermal/EM camo tacked on the wall. "There''s a viewport behind that."


    He laid down and turned away from Strechen, his rifle held between his knees, barrel pointed downward, butt plate up by his chin.


    "Try not to shoot yourself in the dick."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 17 - More By Breakfast

    The morning was crisp and cold, with dew on the grass and the bushes.


    Except where they''d been burnt, then the ground was thick, clotting ash that stuck to everything.


    The pair were walking down the side road, off to the right side of it, tromping through the ash and the mud. One was a large female Captain of the Means of the Way Dra.Falten military forces with a nametag that read "Strechen", her formally immaculate uniform streaked with mud and dirt and rumpled, even though a sharp eyed observer could still see the starched creases down the front of the legs and on the sleeves.


    Walking in front of the female was a much smaller male, 1.25 meters to the females 1.75 meters. The male''s uniform was dirty and rumpled under the camoflauge cloaks that were draped over the trooper. His rank of Rifleman Second Class and his tags of "Tawtchee-9912743" were either gone or hidden by straps and/or the cloak.


    The male marched in silence, one foot in front of the other, his rifle held loosely in his hands, his head up and looking at his surroundings as he steadily moved down the road. Every ten or fifteen minutes he reached down and pressed the stud on an atmo bottle at his hip.


    Strechen knew he''d taken that atmo bottle off of her adjutant when the Lieutenant had been killed in an ambush. Male tanks didn''t have the device on them to repressurize the tank from ambient atmosphere, and the one that Tawtchee kept tapping did.


    The female moved wearily, limping slightly, her head often down as she panted behind her face mask. She had a cloak across her shoulders but thrown back.


    Strechen followed the Rifleman silently for as long as she could but finally couldn''t take the silence any more, needing something, anything to take her mind off of how sore her footpads were.


    "How long have you been in the Imperial Military Services?" she asked.


    "Fourteen years," the male answered.


    She waited a few moments for the male to elaborate, most males just rambled on as fast as possible, hoping to give her the right answers before she became angry or lost interest, depending on the circumstances.


    "You don''t seem to care about treating me as my rank demands," she said.


    "Nope."


    "After fourteen years it seems as if you would understand and be able to perform basic military courtesy."


    "Yup."


    "Yet, you do not."


    "Nope."


    She waited and sighed with frustration as the male hit the stud.


    "Ahh, that''s the stuff," he said, taking a deep breath.


    "Why do you still have atmosphere boost? Mine is at 20% and the auto-reclamation system can''t keep up," Strechen said.


    "You have yours on constant. I only take a hit when I need one," he said, still tromping forward. "Learned that my first week here."


    Strechen reached down and pulled her atmo-tank up. She looked at it and moved the button from dedicated to automatic to manual.


    They marched in silence for a while.


    Tawtchee suddenly stopped, holding up his hand. He cocked his head, listening closely, then moved over to a flat rock. He got out his sextant and took another reading, looking at the map.


    Strechen was still slightly irritated that the smaller male had not given her back her map.


    "Take five," Tawtchee said. He began taking off the cloaks, laying them down and quickly rolling them up. He took off the duffle, then the ruck once the duffle straps weren''t overlaid on the ruck straps. He started arranging stuff, putting the cloaks in pockets, just leaving one draped over his ruck.


    Taking off the boots, Strechen wiggled her toes and sighed.


    Tawtchee sat down in front of her and grabbed her foot, pulling her sock off.


    Strechen shrieked and yanked her foot back.


    "Stop being a boot," Tawtchee snapped, grabbing her foot. He looked at it closely. "Some cracks in your base pad, looks like some bad wear on your middle toe pad," he dug in his bag and pulled out what looked like a roll of tape. He peeled some off and Strechen wondered why it was so thick.


    The tape went on her pads, then he checked the other foot, putting three pieces of tape on her toe pads. He also brought out a nail clipper and cut her pinkie claws down.


    "There," he said, standing up. "Take care of your feet."


    Strechen wanted to snap at him that she knew what she was doing but instead looked around.


    They were moving through forest that was bright green even though the trunks were scorched and fire scarred. Bushes were blackened skeletons that had ferns poking up through them. There was a crashed striker buried in the ferns, the fuselage so burnt up that she couldn''t tell which side it was from.


    "Grenky," Tawtchee suddenly said.


    "What?" Strechen was yanked out of her thoughts.


    "It''s a Grenky aerospace striker. Before they started fielding the ones with the battlescreens, so probably a year back or so. Took a missile, you can tell by the way the fuselage is warped," Tawtchee said.


    "How do you know this? Were you with intelligence?" Strechen asked.


    Tawtchee shook his head, getting up and pulling on his ruck, then his duffle. "Picked it up, I guess."


    He knocked some dirt and mud off his weapon, turned it on to run a function check, then turned it back off.


    "Why do you keep your weapon off? What if you are ambushed?" Strechen asked.


    "Keeps drones from finding me. Dommy drones can pick up an active rifle at nearly a kilometer, Grenky drones can catch me at about six hundred meters," the male said, shrugging. "Like you saw, if we get ambushed, I''ll be too busy grabbing cover or running for position to shoot back."


    "Oh," Strechen went silent.


    "Let''s go," the male said.


    Strechen held back her instincts to snap at the male, to take command and make all the decisions.


    Her feet felt better and the right boot wasn''t pinching.


    The sound of engines grew louder and louder, until suddenly the pair left the overgrown forest.


    A large dirt road went from right to left. There were trucks, tanks, armored cars, flatbeds, armored personnel carriers, tanks, even hover-vehicles moving in both directions. The ones heading right were all mostly clean, intact, the trucks full of gear or soldiers.


    The ones moving left were dirty, some were damaged, only a few had soldiers and never a full load.


    "We can get a ride," Strechen said excitedly, moving forward.


    Tawtchee grabbed her by the back of the shirt, stopping her.


    "Only if you want a ride to the front," he said. "Follow."


    Again, Strechen had to push down the desire to tell him what to do. Instead, she followed him to the edge of the road, where he waited for a gap and darted across so that he was walking with the traffic heading left.


    He walked, holding his rifle, a floppy hat on his head, in that steady, ground eating pace that Strechen had learned to hate because she couldn''t emulate it.


    At one point trucks roared by with dead males in the back. Some looked perfectly fine, others were burnt and blackened, little better than carbonized skeletons. Some trucks had blood running off the bed, thin trickles onto the ground.


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    "Honored dead," Strechen said.


    "Poor dumb bastards," Tawtchee grunted.


    "Show respect," Strechen snapped.


    Tawtchee stopped, turning to glare at her. "You have pretty big ovaries saying that to me, ma''am," he snarled.


    "They are being taken back to return to their families," Strechen said, straightening up. "You would do well to respect their sacrifice."


    Tawtchee suddenly laughed, a dark, mocking tone. "That what you really think?"


    She nodded. "They are taken to the rear, where their remains are put in coffins to return to their families and buried with honor."


    Tawtchee sneered. "They''re taken to the rear, a DNA sample is taken, then they throw the bodies in the incinerator."


    Strechen blinked.


    "Then, once their number and DNA scan is in the system, they throw the sample into the incinerator," he snarled. "They cease to exist," he shook his head. "There are over five thousand males born for each female. We are conceived in a lab, grown in factories, tested in infancy for what we will be best at, educated in creches, work our lives away," he stared up at her. "We have no families. We have no clans. We live six to twenty to an apartment. We will never pair bond. We will never have children. At the end, we are just a number in a database."


    "That''s..." Strechen started to say.


    He started walking away.


    "Once they burn the DNA sample, we cease to exist," he paused. "We live, we work, we fight, we die - never more than a number. For the glory of the Empress, the Emperor, and the Empire."


    It chose that minute to start raining. Warm, sticky feeling rain that smelled faintly of burnt metal.


    "Long live the Empire," the male grunted.


    -----


    The traffic had gotten heavier. At times cargo-lifters or strikers flew overhead. Strechen was having to hurry to keep up with the shorter male as he passed groups walking the same way they were. The rain had made the dirt turn into heavy sticky red mud that made her feet seemed to weight a ton, made each step an effort.


    The males just seemed to trudge along like they weren''t walking through mud.


    Strechen noticed that most of the males were wounded, some with bloody bandages on their arms or legs or even on their heads.


    All of them watched carefully by female officers in tailored and pressed uniforms.


    She saw an officer stop Tawtchee, looking him up and down, and hurried up to the male. She was suddenly worried the new officer would interfere with her duty of bringing the smaller male to the starport and making sure he boarded the transport.


    "...a disgrace to the Empire," the female officer, a Senior Command Lieutenant, was telling Tawtchee. "Your transponder is off, your uniform is a disgrace, and why do you have an officer''s breathing accessory tank?"


    "He''s with me, Lieutenant," Captain Strechen said.


    "And you are?" the Lieutenant asked.


    Strechen suddenly remembered that the male had used her transponder as bait for the rogue automaton the night before.


    Strechen dug out her ID, holding it out.


    "Field Captain Strechen, Means of the Way Intelligence Direct Action Services," she said, drawing herself up and looking down at the Lieutenant. She pointed at Tawtchee, who was already managing to move slowly into the steady stream of troopers heading west. "I''m taking him to the starport on direct IDAS orders."


    The other female nodded jerkily. "Apologies, Captain."


    "Carry on, Lieutenant," Strechen said. She spotted Tawtchee, who had somehow managed to get nearly twenty paces away. He was accepting a smoke from another enlistedman, laughing like he belonged with them.


    She caught up, grabbing him and pulling him out of the small group of males, all of whom flinched from her.


    "It''s five more miles to the Massive Active Operations Base," Tawtchee said. He blew smoke and looked off to the west. "Then you can do whatever and we can go our separate ways."


    They walked for a short time before she asked a question that had been burning in her mind since the night before.


    "What makes you so special?" she asked.


    "Huh?" Tawtchee looked up from the holocube he''d been tossed by another trooper.


    "What makes you so special they''d pull me off assignment, give me an assistant, then have me go to an active war zone to get you?" she asked.


    Tawtchee just shrugged. "My boundless charm, extraordinary good looks, and impressively sized penis?" He sneezed. He looked at the cube, nodded at a passing trooper, and tossed the holocube to him in an odd behind the back motion.


    The other trooper caught it behind his back, but when he brought his hands around to the front they were empty.


    Strechen pulled her attention away from how easily the holocube had been passed on and hidden, looking at Tawtchee. "Be serious. Do you have some esoteric schooling? Some unique experience?" she asked. "Are you somehow politically connected?"


    Tawtchee snorted and combed his whiskers. "Not hardly. My creche was five thousand strong. My birth factory put out a thousand of us a week. I was one of thousands chosen that year for the Imperial military just my fetal factory alone. The closest I''ve been to the Emperor was swearing my oath in front of his hologram and it was pretty blurry. It could have been you in his clothes for all I could tell."


    He started walking again. "I have no idea why they would send you to pick me up."


    Strechen frowned, catching up. "You must have some idea. You''re the only one on this planet I was assigned with picking up and we have a fast transport waiting at the starport just for the two of us."


    Again, Tawtchee just shrugged. "No clue. They don''t tell people like me anything beyond ''go here'' and ''do that'' and ''kill that bastard for his country'' and ''try not to die'', Captain."


    "Maybe something from your earlier career?" she asked.


    He sighed. "You''re not going to let this go."


    "No."


    "Fine. First assignment was Lawp''Vrakak. At least, that''s why the Empire called it. It had a different name, as we found out," he pulled the roll of smokesticks out of his pocket and lit one.


    "Spare?" a male walking a little faster asked. "Lost mine when the FOB got overrun."


    "Keep ''em," Tawtchee said, tossing the small roll to the other male.


    "Thanks, brother," the other male said. Strechen noticed that he immediately handed out all but two to the other males around him. One produced a lighter and passed it around.


    Another group caught up to Strechen and Tawtchee, surrounding them, and she lost sight of the other group.


    "I was one of about twenty-five thousand troops assigned to guard two million colonists and administrators for a new colony," Tawtchee said when Strechen ran a bit to catch back up to him. "There was about two thousand scientists too. We landed in a good spot, set up the beacons for the colonists, and the transports landed. We had most of the prefabs done in under two weeks. The scientists started checking out old ruins after about a year and I was assigned to guard some from any wildlife."


    How did he move so fast when his legs were noticeable shorter than hers?


    "Someone screwed up and we found out that someone else used to live there," he said.


    They were silent for a while as the rain got heavier. She saw most of the males weren''t even bothering with their cloaks, just letting their uniforms and gear get wet as they marched. She saw Tawtchee tap a guy in front of him.


    "Where''s your socks, brother?" Tawtchee asked.


    "Left lower pocket," the other male said.


    She watched as Tawtchee pulled two rolls of socks out and hung them from the other male''s rucksack frame. Then the other male repeated it for Tawtchee. A quick glance around showed her that a lot of males were doing that, some even hanging underclothes or pants from their rucksack frames.


    The rain quickly soaked into them, dripping reddish mud from them.


    "Who used to live there?" Strechen asked after Tawtchee moved off to the side and lit a smoke as they walked.


    "Terrors. Or, rather, Terrans," he said. "Some idiot triggered a defense system and forty-eight hours later the troopers that didn''t manage to get off planet were dead," he said. He gave a barking laugh. "The colonists, of course, were being guarded by Terran robots and the pointy eared Terrans everyone calls elves. Guess the colonists were their colonists now."


    He shrugged. "I was lucky, I got Senior Experimenter Hrekkel onto one of the last transports," he gave a bitter laugh. "If that scientist hadn''t dragged me aboard after that robot broke my back, I''d be just another forgotten number."


    Strechen nodded. "Then what?"


    "Bhrestikin-4. Dommy troops were making landfall. We were coming in on dropships when the Grenky jumped in system. Turned into a complete fuck fuck circus," he shrugged. "We managed to take the planet for the low low price of seventeen million of us and nearly a thousand officers."


    A thousand officers is a horrific toll, even if we did take the planet, she thought, then almost stopped. Really? Am I so quick to dismiss the numbers of dead males? Millions. All dead.


    She heard Tawtchee''s voice in her head. They dump the sample into the incinerator and we cease to exist.


    The male was still talking. "After that, Charmeka-3. What a shit show. Dommy troops pushed Grenky and then us off the planet. They just wanted it more. They threw fifty million into the grinder, the Grenky threw sixteen, we threw thirty. Of course, might have been the Dommy started to prioritize killing officers that last two years."


    He looked at her. "Average life expectancy for an officer anywhere near the front lines was seventeen minutes. On-planet was sixteen days."


    That made her blink in shock and nervously try to brush her whiskers despite her mask being in the way. She thumbed the stud and took two deep breaths.


    "Then here," he shrugged. "So, no. There''s nothing special about me, Captain," he tugged his round brimmed soft hat down slightly, lowered his nose, and kept walking. "No special schooling, no special experience beyond getting my back broken by a pissed off robot, no political connections, no neat little quirk of my DNA that makes it so the Empire can only survive if I do some stupid shit while an officer stands there looking impressed."


    Thunder rumbled in the clouds as more trucks passed.


    "There must be something," Strechen said.


    "Whoever sent you to get me? They wasted your time," Tawtchee said, shaking his head.


    They kept trudging through the rain and the mud. Every time a vehicle passed, Strechen got her legs splashed with mud.


    Truck after truck passed with dead Dra.Falten male troopers on them, piled high, blood running off the tailgate and into the mud of the road, where it mixed with the rain and then was splashed on the troops walking next to the road.


    After nearly two more hours they passed by the gate guards, moving through the snakelike "S-Gate" and into the Massive Active Operations Base.


    Strechen asked an MP and got directions to the starport.


    Part of her wanted to stop somewhere and put on a clean uniform, but the way Tawtchee kept blending in with the groups of males worried her that she''d turn around and he''d vanish. She didn''t want to take six hours looking for him just to find him in the bar across the street from wherever she went to freshen up.


    The airfield slash starport was at the far side of the MAOB, uneven tarmac over dirt. Small starships, aerospace fighters, dropships, even strikers were all being moved around, some pushed by large groups of straining males or being pulled by groups of males using tow cables.


    She marched straight up to the dropship that had brought her to the surface, pulling out her orders and showing them to the Way of the Means guard at the base of the gangplank.


    It only took about ten minutes for the dropship to take off.


    With some envious disgust, Strechen noticed that Tawtchee was asleep before the dropship even lifted off. He slept until the dropship landed inside the transport''s bay and Strechen got up and kicked his foot.


    "Let''s go, Rifleman," she said.


    Tawtchee just shrugged, getting up and following her.


    The first thing she did was drop him off at the room he''d be using for the duration.


    "I''ll be back in an hour," she looked him up and down. "Use the auto-laundry on your uniform," she sniffed. "Make that two hours. Take a shower."


    Tawtchee just nodded.


    There has to be something he''s not telling me, she thought as she headed to tell the Senior Field Operations Colonel that her mission had been a success.


    Well, if you discounted the now headless Lieutenant.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 18 - More By Breakfast

    Field Captain Strechen, Means of the Way Intelligence Direct Action Services, had an impressive service record. She had rooted out Grenklakail Empire and Strevik''al Dominion spies and saboteurs, exposed and terminated Dra.Falten Empire heretics and those disloyal to the Emperor, the Empress, and the Empire. She had led troops in glorious combat nine times, each time achieving victory. In her hardest pressed victory, she had only lost four officers. Three times, she had not lost a single officer or female. She had taken part in reconquering Sh-Lamatka from the Strevik''al Dominion after those vile aliens had managed to take it over by guile and treachery.


    Now, she found herself aboard a fast military transport, capable of traveling the upper reaches of Transit Space. The Transit Space shields flickered now and then, allowing thin threads of silvery material to leak through the hull. She had asked what it was the first time she had seen it and told it was the energies of Transit Space bleeding through to the interior spaces of the hull. It would dissipate and vanish in mere moments.


    The vessel she was on was traveling so high that the inside bulkheads often became frosted with Transit Space matter.


    It unnerved her.


    More than just the Transit Space effects.


    Her mission unnerved her.


    She had been taken from an important assignment, finding out who was running the black market node on Krrk<clak>Krrek, providing the males with unauthorized luxuries, propaganda, and escapism materials.


    Of all of them, it was the escapism materials. The idea that there was anything they needed to escape in the Empire.


    After all, they were born to serve. It was the highest duty of any male to serve the Dra.Falten Empire.


    Except, this mission...


    ...it unnerved her.


    It only cost us millions of males, she heard Tawtchee''s voice in her mind. Once they get a DNA sample, the body goes into the incinerator. Once they catalogue the DNA and our file, the sample goes into the incinerator.


    She had family. Her mother had successfully completed mandatory pair bonding, resulting in Strechen and her three sisters. Her sisters were all loyal servants of the Empire, just like their mother. Their deeds and accomplishments praised, awarded, noticed, and recorded.


    We cease to exist.


    She had friends. She had even had approved lovers. Two years ago she had finished a five year mandatory pair bonding that had resulted in a licensed live birth where she had successfully conceived and carried to term four squirmlings. Her children went to the best creche and would have lives of privilege in accordance to her service to the Empire and what their genetics stated they would be most optimum at performing.


    We cease to exist.


    Strechen knew many females who had children. Who lived in domiciles that were stand alone, with a small yard for their children to play and grow.


    If it wasn''t for her current assignment, she would be at home with her children, with servants and nannies to help her care for her four daughters. She would be teaching them to revere the Empress, the Emperor, the Empire. To be guardians of the Empire, thus safeguarding their family and the families of all the Empire.


    We have no families.


    Her accomplishments were logged and recorded by her clan, whose glorious history predated even the Empress breaking the chains of servitude that had bound the Dra.Falten to an endless spiral of expand and overpopulation.


    We have no clans.


    She served the Empire.


    Long. Live. The Empire.


    She rolled over, kicked her feet, and then sat up, bruxing her back teeth.


    She had seen the long line of wounded and battered males marching back to the Massive Active Operations Base. How the line has stretched for miles. How trucks and armored vehicles had constantly driven by, the pristine ones heading for the front, the battered ones heading back to the MAOB.


    The trucks full of the dead males. So many that blood trickled down off the bed and into the mud.


    Where it had been splashed on her.


    We cease to exist.


    Field Captain Strechen, Means of the Way Intelligence Direct Action Services, got up slowly and dressed in her exercise/relaxation clothing. She went over her uniform, making sure the auto-laundry had gotten her creases just right. Ensured there were no loose threads, that her awards and patches were just right.


    She went to the gym, trying to work out her stress.


    Laying on the pad after she had finished her press reps, she stared at the ceiling of the small fast craft.


    We live six to twenty an apartment...


    Again, that annoying voice. Empty of anything but sardonic nihilism.


    She got up and used the rowing machine, then ran on the treadmill, gasping and choking when she had finished her mile run.


    The fresher did nothing to soothe her nerves. Usually the ultrasonics soothed her skin, relieved any remaining anxiety that the exercise did not relieve.


    They just wanted it more. We threw thirty million into the grinder, they threw fifty.


    She closed her eyes and her brain helpfully conjured up the image of a pile of dead in uncounted numbers. Her PoV drew back and she could see a scale, where the Empress was shoveling the dead onto the Dra.Falten side of the scale while a shadowy Strevik''al shoveled Dominion dead on their side.


    the low low price of only nineteen million


    The city where her children were had a population of ninety thousand.


    Females.


    The rest was populated by the vast number of males, over two hundred and eighty million, the majority of them performing necessary jobs to keep the Empire running. The majority of the city was hab blocks. Skyrakers and massive apartment buildings that the Empire provided the males, free of charge, to live their lives.


    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    The Empire even provided basic sustinence allowance for food and clothing over the last ten years.


    Captain Strechen could remember being outraged at how the males were being given food, clothing, and living quarters for free.


    She remembered the video of the males living in four or six bedroom apartments that were crammed with luxuries. 2.5D trivee, a kitchen, living areas. They collected their food from markets, for free, and returned to their homes where they made fancy meals.


    The males received that in addition to their high pay from their jobs.


    Jobs that were vital to the Empire.


    The males were coddled and treasured. She''d seen the videos herself.


    we cease to exist...


    She growled and stomped back to her living quarters.


    They were small, barely big enough to fit the desk, the wardrobe, the bed, and the comfortable chair. She took ten paces, turned at the bulkhead, and walked ten paces back.


    It was a small cabin.


    Bruxing her back teeth she put on her uniform, adjusting it carefully, then tabbed the communications tab on the communicator in her room.


    Once she got an answer, she asked to meet with the Captain.


    Perhaps the Captain knew what the mission was and what was so important about a scruffy, nihilistic, borderline heresy spouting little male that she would be pulled off of an important mission, sent to contested space, to retrieve him and him alone.


    The Captain agreed to meet with her in the sole briefing room of the small fast transport.


    Captain Strechen checked her uniform one more time, then went to the briefing room, naval personnel getting out of her way as she moved through the corridor.


    we cease to exist...


    The Captain, Lady Captain of an Empress''s Vessel Ckrik''cha, was sitting at the table already, with two of her officers. Mistress of Intelligence Vay''chrk and Mistress of Mission Command Krk''Achtik. Both of whom had good, solid names, with a proper grinding of the back teeth.


    Noble houses, all three of them.


    Strechen sat down.


    "You wanted clarification, Field Captain Strechen?" the Captain asked, brushing at her whiskers, each of which had a tiny gem on the end to reflect colors.


    "My charge," Strechen said. "What is so important about him that I would be tasked to retrieve him from a battle for the very possession of the planet?"


    Vay''chrk examined the hologram in front of her, which was tuned in such a way as to make it so that anyone else viewing it would only see sprays of color and tangled lines of hologram.


    "A cursory examination of his record shows little. He has been wounded many times," the Intelligence Agent said. "Hmm, severe injuries suffered during a bad Transit Space trip, he somehow broke his back, fractured his skull, and suffered severe damage to one arm. Other than that, only battlefield injuries. Many of those. Several times he has been hospitalized with injuries taken on the front."


    She looked up. "I cannot see why he is of such interest."


    Strechen frowned, grinding her back teeth for a moment. "Who has requested him?"


    Krk''Achtik examined her hologram.


    "The order comes from a most high office," she said. She tapped a few holographic keys. "The highest levels of Imperial Science Division. Interesting, his test scores were high for logic, science, analysis. If his physical test scores had not been above the 85% median, he might have been put in the science caste. However, there was a massive military draw at the time he was nearing his majority, so he went directly from basic schooling to the military academies."


    Strechen frowned again. "No special training? No political connections?"


    Vay''chrk examined the hologram again. "None. Basic military skills training. Advanced Infantry School. Nothing afterwards. No political connections," she examined it again. "The only thing that might be a connection is his first posting. He rescued scientists and their families when a colony expedition suffered a terraformer failure."


    a Terran robot broke my back...


    Krk''Achtik swept her hand through her hologram to reset her view. "We are meeting up with the Office of Science and Technology. We have been currently tasked to that same office. Perhaps one of the scientists that he saved wishes him to be part of the expedition?"


    if he hadn''t have dragged me onto the vessel I''d have ceased to exist...


    Vay''chrk nodded. "While most scientists avoid personal relationships to the point that they must be forcefully reminded that it is their duty to the Empire to procreate to continue genetic lines of high intelligence, occasionally they form personal attachments. This could be merely an extremely high ranking scientist wishing for a body guard."


    in 48 hours we were all dead...


    That made all four of the Dra.Falten nod, combing their whiskers.


    "Well, we will see when we arrive," the Captain said.


    -----


    The vessel came out of Transit Space easily, slow stages down to prevent the energy transfer from blowing apart the engines.


    During the seventy hour trip to meet up with the space station and the vessels around it, Strechen found herself watching her charge.


    He did little but eat, sleep, and stare at holocubes.


    She had to admit, she had been startled the first time she had seen him without his top, not even a modesty shirt.


    His torso was covered with scars, discolored fur that had grown over injured patches. He had a bare spot on one shoulder where there was a faded tattoo of Pratty-Chan dressed in a male''s combat uniform, with a floppy hat and an e-rifle, her eyes wide and had once probably sparkled. The borderline illegal tattoo no longer moved, multiple thin scars through her. On his back, down his spine, were thick surgical scars.


    When she saw him without lower modesty clothing, watching him through the ship''s security systems, she was startled at how his legs were criss-crossed with scars, with patches here and there of fur over scar tissue.


    it only cost us nineteen million...


    When the ship docked with a vessel the size of a super-heavy battleship, Strechen had to admit she was startled that the male showed up at the docking bay with a uniform that was clean and pressed, his boots shined, his fur groomed.


    For some reason, she had honestly expected him to show up in a rumpled uniform with mud and blood streaking it, his fur dirty and greasy.


    Now, he looked like just one of the tens of thousands of male troops she had overseen.


    The pressurized tube made contact and Strechen watched as the telltale lights went from red, to amber, to green.


    A Way of the Means Senior Special Agent stepped through the airlock in full dress uniform, with a half-dozen Way of the Means guards.


    "Field Captain Strechen and Male-9912743?" she asked.


    "Here," Strechen said.


    "Excellent. Both of you follow me," the Senior Special Agent said. She looked at the vessel''s Captain. "The Empress appreciates your service."


    The Captain nodded. "I live but to serve."


    Strechen followed the Senior Special Agent.


    It bothered her for some reason.


    Tawtchee hadn''t been referred to by his rank, or even his name. Just ''male''.


    Thinking back, she realized that was how most males were referred to in official documents or when being dealt with.


    we cease to exist...


    The Senior Special Agent led Strechen to a simple berth. It was slightly larger than the one she had been occupying on the fast transport for nearly a month and Strechen appreciated the luxury.


    "9912743, you will follow me. Captain Strechen, you may accompany if you wish," the Senior Special Agent said.


    Tawtchee just nodded, keeping his head down and not looking the female Way of the Means agent. "As the Empress commands," he said softly.


    we cease to exist...


    "I believe I will accompany him," Strechen said.


    She followed as they showed Tawtchee his berth. A small bunk set into a bulkhead and assigned a single underslung drawer set into the bulkhead of the three underneath the inset bunk. Tawtchee just put his duffle and ruck into the bunk space, making sure to attach the shoulder straps to hooks so that the two bags wouldn''t go flying if the ship had to perform evasive maneuvers.


    Strechen was suddenly very aware of how the males in the bunks peeked out to watch.


    "You have a senior male''s bunk, 9912743," the Senior Agent said. "There will not be another two males sharing your bunk when you are not on your assigned sleep period."


    "The Empress is generous," Tawtchee said. "The Emperor provides."


    Strechen noticed that Tawtchee''s voice was just as dead and empty as it had been when he had been telling her about his first three postings.


    "Remember that, 9912743," the Senior Special Agent said.


    They were led to another briefing room.


    The first thing Strechen noticed was how the pair at the far end of the table were large.


    Not just slightly larger.


    But very large.


    The male, who had mechanical replacements for eyes, was her size, only heavily muscled, his bulk barely hidden by his science coat. The female was at least a head taller than Strechen, her arms as thick as Strechen''s thighs.


    Both had patches of fur that spoke of scars. The male, oddly enough, had lines radiating from his eyes.


    The male stood up, moving around to Tawtchee.


    "It is good to see you, Tawtchee," the male said.


    "Senior Experimenter Hrekkel," Tawtchee said. He looked around. "Why?"


    Hrekkel reached up and tapped his eyes. "I have seen where the Dra.Falten Empire must brave if we are to survive the upcoming storm."


    Tawtchee narrowed his eyes. "Where?"


    Hrekkel gave a smile. "The Path of the Traveler."


    "Well... shit."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 19 - More By Breakfast

    Hrekkel moved forward to clap his hand on Tawtchee''s shoulder. "It is good you are here," the scientist said.


    Strechen noticed the big female moved with him, one hand on the pistol that rode on her belt. Strechen wondered if the pistol was to stop the male scientist from performing any actions that might be dangerous, protect the male, or both.


    "Why?" Tawtchee asked. "I mean, whatever this Path of the Traveler is, why do you need me?"


    Hrekkel smiled, flicking his ears. "Because it can change everything. Will change everything."


    Tawtchee just shrugged. "If you insist."


    "What do you know about the Path of the Traveler?" Hrekkel asked, turning and motioning for everyone to follow him.


    Strechen noted that the Way of the Means guards didn''t bridle up at the small male giving orders. Some looked, well, afraid was the only thing she could think of.


    "Not much," Tawtchee admitted. "Supposedly it leads to a treasure trove, but everyone craps out," he paused for a second. "Except Senior Agent Pratulpet. She brought back a trove of technical data. I heard that somewhere."


    Hrekkel again signified amusement. "Probably Pratty-chan," he chuckled.


    While Strechen felt a slight burn of anger at the mention of the dissident and seditious character of Pratty-chan, which many felt was insulting to the Way of the Means.


    Tawtchee shrugged. "Yeah. The video that went around a few years back."


    There was silence as the group moved through the corridors until they finally reached a briefing room.


    Strechen went over and grabbed some of the snacks and a drink, Tawtchee doing the same. Everyone else sat down while the Senior Intelligence Agent chairing the meeting summoned everyone else.


    Tawtchee went to sit at the side, but Hrekkel motioned him to sit on one side of the table.


    "I want to hear your words about the mission and the data," Hrekkel said.


    Strechen could see the disbelief and borderline outrage on a lot of the female''s faces.


    Interestingly enough, the large female standing with her hands on Hrekkel''s shoulders just gave Tawtchee and appraising look and went back to staring down the other females while her claws slowly groomed Hrekkel''s fur on the back of his head and neck.


    It took nearly twenty minutes, but then the table and side chairs were full.


    Strechen had to admit it was impressive. There was no only several ship captains, some commodores, but a Half Admiral of the Lower Decks.


    When everyone was present the scientist, Hrekkel, picked up a pointer and tapped the far wall.


    The 2.5D flatscreen turned on.


    "Some of you may know parts of this, or think you know parts of this. Others of you may think that this is data that is not to be disseminated," the scientist said. "However, the Empress and the Emperor have empowered me to not only oversee this scientific mission, but to decide upon information classification as well as who has access to what data in those classifications," he stared hard at the Fleet Intelligence Officer. "I am the one who makes the final determination. There will be no censorship or redaction of data without my explicit authorization and then approval."


    The Intelligence Officer figeted slightly, but otherwise showed no outward sign of anger.


    Hrekkel nodded.


    "The Way of the Traveler has long been known to be one of the few safe passages through the Shattered Systems," Hrekkel started.


    A star map appeared, with the Fallen Confederacy and its allies appearing. Then the Dremkilia and Grenklakail Empires and the Strevik''al Dominion, smack dab in the middle of the Shattered Systems. A line went from the edge of former Lanaktallan space, through the Shattered Systems, and then into the Confederate border.


    "Largely used by traders, finding the Path of Traveler is the only way to safely move," he tapped it again and a fifteen star Transit Path appeared. "The Dra.Falten Empire uses this route to reach it, which then allows trade and diplomacy with both the Coreward and Spinward Fallen Confederacy star nations."


    Hrekkel paused to sip at a glass of water.


    "Now, there has always been legends about the Path of the Traveler, but these have largely been discarded by the Dra.Falten Empire," Hrekkel said. "Particularly the idea that a powerful and mythic entity known as Nakteti the Traveler is the one who established the Path, which for many millennia after the Fallen Confederacy''s Second Precursor War was the only safe path between Coreward and Spinward nations."


    Strechen noticed that a lot of the naval officers looked bored, some of them obviously not paying attention.


    "This myth was disregarded by almost every species but the oldest members of the Fallen Confederacy," Hrekkel said. He looked around and gave a slight smirk at how many of the officers rolled their eyes.


    "Until five years ago," He tapped the screen and it changed.


    There was a Tnvaru sitting in a Captain''s throne, wearing an archaic armored vacuum suit. The female Tnvaru was obviously sitting on the bridge of a warship, but the additional stations were all empty. Her visible fur had strange discolored patches on it.


    What Strechen noticed first was the fact that her eyes glowed red.


    "As was foretold, the Traveler has returned," the female stated. "I bear fearsome tidings and joyful warning."


    Hrekkel stopped the video. "The ship was registered as the It Tastes Bitter, an obvious reference to the ship''s original name of It Tastes Sweet, which disappeared nearly forty-thousand years ago and was considered lost with all hands."


    Hrekkel tapped the screen and the path replaced the image of the Tnvaru with the burning red eyes.


    "Diplomatic channels have verified that the Tnvaru consider this being the actual person of Nakteti the Traveler," Hrekkel said. "Does anyone remember what her mission was?"


    There was just the shaking of heads. A few people stealthily checked their datapads then frowned.


    "I have restricted all access to those files at this time," Hrekkel smiled. "I want you paying attention to my briefing, not looking up what the Truth of the Way has decided are the facts."


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    Strechen honestly expected one of the agents present to stand up and shoot the scientist and was surprised when nobody did.


    Hrekkel began pacing back and forth. "She was out to find out where the Terror went. At the time it was believed that they would return at any moment."


    Another tap with the crop and the image changed to show a bipedal primate. It was tall, over two meters, but gave the impression of being squat. It had well developed musculature and gave off an aura of menace and restrained violence. It had two close set eyes, a flat face with a nose that went from between the eyes to just above a mouth that took up half of the face.


    "This is what is colliqualy known as a ''Terror'' but in the language of the Fallen Confederacy is actually a ''Terran Descent Human'', commonly called ''The Builders''," Hrekkel said.


    He tapped again, showing strange constructions hanging in space. "They left behind enigmas and strange artifacts that have resisted explanation by science."


    He tapped again. This time it showed tanks, strikers, artillery units, giant warmeks, power armor.


    "Militarily, the Terrans were impossible to beat. Defeat temporarily or cause setbacks, yes, defeat? No. Not until they were exterminated somehow during the Second Precursor War," Hrekkel said. He looked at everyone. "They defeated everyone in the Fallen Confederacy at one time or another, including themselves."


    He tapped the screen again. It showed the Path of the Traveler then zoomed in on a section two-thirds of the way through.


    "Myth and rumor stated that there was a second, possibly even a third path off of the Path of the Traveler," he said. "One supposedly led to where the Terrans that had survived their extinction had fled to," he tapped and eight stars became linked with lines. "The other supposedly led to somewhere that we don''t quite understand. While many considered it a myth that the third led to the afterlife, a superstition that believes that the consciousness of living creatures continues in a paradise after death, it can no longer be discounted."


    No other lines appeared.


    "The second path is what we are mainly interested in," Hrekkel said. He looked around. "Fifteen years ago, the Empress embarked on a plan to seize control of Terror worlds by landing colonists, in excess of a million per world, on Terror worlds. Those worlds are under Confederate interdiction, however the Empress believed that a suitable population would force the Confederacy to turn those worlds over."


    He shook his head. "It was less than successful."


    Strechen heard Tawtchee give a slight snort of amusement.


    "In every case, something woke up the Terror war machines. They quickly overwhelmed the defenders, killed any who resisted, and took possession of the colonists," Hrekkel stated.


    A tap showed burning Dra.Falten military vehicles, starships breaking up, and dead Dra.Falten soldiers laying on the ground. The data at the edges of some of the images all showed it was from helmet cams of Dra.Falten military forces.


    Strechen saw Tawtchee''s citizen number on several of the images.


    "The project was deemed a failure," Hrekkel stated.


    He tapped the screen again. "Six years ago, an overlooked instance took place," he stated. The images cleared to show a younger and smaller version of both Hrekkel and the large female Way of the Means soldier behind him.


    "These two were captured by a Terror entity," Hrekkel said. He paused to brux his back teeth and the large female slowly and firmly groomed the back of his neck. "They returned to Dra.Falten space on year ago."


    He tapped the screen again, bringing back the star systems off the Path of the Traveler.


    "The two returned with vital information regarding the Path of the Traveler," Hrekkel stated.


    Strechen noted that over half of the present officers still weren''t really paying attention.


    "Specifically, passcodes to activate the satellite and ground systems at each system to move to the next system," Hrekkel said. "The Grenklakail Empire and the Strevik''al Dominion also came into possession of the same data."


    He tapped it again, showing a small ship and a small group of Dra.Falten. "Our Empire, like the Grenklakail Empire and the Strevik''al Dominion, sent out expeditions to discover what this secondary path led to."


    He paused a moment.


    "Every attempt by all three of our people''s have failed at the exact same spot," Hrekkel said.


    He tapped the screen.


    A Terror appeared. A large one, more muscular than the first image. This one had close cut gold hair on top of its head, gold eyebrows, and cold blue eyes. It was dressed in leather. Leather pants and vest, leather boots, a sleeveless linen shirt under the vest.


    "This is the first guardian of the Path of the Traveler. Not the path everyone uses, but the real Path of the Traveler," Hrekkel said. "As of now, not one expedition has made it past this guardian. This singular Terror who holds the knowledge of the next step in the Path of the Traveler. Not the path everyone else uses, but the true Path."


    "We must figure out how to move past this guardian."


    He paused for a moment.


    "Magnus Oathsworn."


    -----


    Strechen wasn''t sure whether or not she was offended as she stood up from the seat in the dropship. Both Tawtchee and her had been widely pushed off to the side, never included in any more briefings, never invited to any discussions regarding the plans.


    But, when the ship arrived at the target world, she had been told to gear up.


    She took two steps and stopped suddenly when Tawtchee held out his hand.


    "Yes?" Strechen said.


    Tawtchee looked around, waiting until almost everyone else had gone by.


    Strechen waited with him.


    "Leave everything but your pistol behind," the small male said. He looked around. "Whatever you do, don''t grab your pistol," he said. He set his rifle/grenade launcher combination down and then began detaching his ammunition pouches. He set down his knife and bayonet on the seat he had ridden down to the planet in. "Unload your pistol, put your magazines in your pouch. Only carry one pouch of ammunition."


    Strechen frowned. "Why?"


    "If you draw a weapon or point a weapon at a Terror, they''ll rip you to pieces," Tawtchee said. "Make no threatening moves," he paused again. "Restrain your instincts and be polite."


    Strechen followed his instructions, despite her doubt.


    While she was followed Tawtchee''s instructions, the small male had moved over to the female running the dropship''s communications.


    "I need you to open two channels. I need to see the feed from the team that just left and a communications channel to Scientist Hrekkel," Tawtchee stated.


    The female opened her mouth, her expression saying she was going to turn him down and possibly even smack him, when Strechen bruxed her teeth loudly to get attention.


    "Do it," Strechen said.


    The female looked defiant, but did it anyway.


    Tawtchee turned on two of the monitors, sitting down in the chair normally used by the officer in charge of the excursion team. He looked at Strechen. "Tell the mistress of gunnery to turn off all the weapons and everything but the particle screens," he shook his head. "If you have to, go to breaker box nineteen and I''ll tell you what breakers to pull."


    Strechen thought about demanding answers, then remembered one thing.


    I got them to the dropship before the Terror robot broke my back. I know what I messed up on.


    We cease to exist...


    Strechen holstered her pistol and attached the strap over the butt as she moved up to the gunnery station.


    "Power down and shut off all weapons and defenses, particle screens only," she told the Mistress of Gunnery.


    "What if we are attacked?" the female asked.


    "Just do it," Strechen ordered.


    "You are not in charge of this expedition. I will do no such thing," the female said.


    Strechen went back and saw that Tawtchee was looking at the feed from the cameras of the excursion team. They were walking between rows of fruit trees that all had ripe fruit hanging from the branches.


    "She won''t depower the weapons," Strechen said.


    Tawtchee held up a scribbled note pad page. "Pull these breakers. It will depower the weapons but the failure won''t show up on her board."


    Strechen felt doubtful, but moved over the fuse box. She opened it and carefully pulled the breakers before moving back next to Tawtchee.


    She sat down just as the channel to Hrekkel was opened.


    "How is it going?" Hrekkel asked.


    Tawtchee looked at the monitors.


    Strechen saw that the group had just left the trees, passing through a gap in some tall hedges that formed a barrier around the lines of fruit trees.


    There was a small house, built of wood with a roof of wooden shingles. In front was a fire pit, to the side was a small building that was closed up. There was a stump in the front.


    A Terror was sitting on the stump, a woven basket of wood strips by his foot that was full of large red fruit. The Terror had one of the fruit in his hand and was peeling it with a knife, lifting up the knife over his head and tilting his head back so that he could drop the strip of peel into his mouth.


    The Terror had golden fur on top of his head, a black leather vest and pants, and a sleeveless cloth shirt, with heavy boots on his feet.


    He also had what looked like a sword at his hip.


    "Spread out, keep your weapons on the Terror at all times," one of the Way of the Means troops was saying. "I will interrogate the Terror, search those two buildings, seize the data we came for, and then we can leave this place."


    The Terror sheathed the knife and stood up, biting into the fruit and staring at the Dra.Falten excursion team, putting one hand on the hilt of the sword.


    Tawtchee looked at the monitor, staring at Hrekkel.


    "Your excursion team is about to all die."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 20 - More By Breakfast

    Strechen saw Senior Scientist Hrekkel stare out the screen. He reached forward and did something out of her sight and then touched the wire-mic next to his mouth.


    "Excursion Team Alpha, halt immediately in place and report," Hrekkel said.


    Strechen saw the excursion team stop for a moment. Most of them were still loading or checking their weapons. The view kept bobbling, so Strechen couldn''t be sure, but it looked like the Terror was twiddling its fingers as it stared at the excursion team.


    "We move forward, interrogate the Terror, search the buildings. I want the information on this foolish excursion in our hands as quickly as possible," the lead Way of the Means Senior Agent said. She looked around. "Finish loading your weapons, ignore the Scientist."


    Hrekkel looked at the screen.


    "Tawtchee," was all he said.


    Tawtchee just nodded, standing up. "Let''s go," he said. He stopped to pull another breaker from breaker box fourteen, setting it on top of the breaker box.


    Strechen followed the smaller male as he hustled down the ramp and broke into a run. She found herself startled at just how fast the male moved, head slightly down, arms pumping at his sides, as he ran almost too fast for Strechen to keep pace after a few hundred meters. Strechen was blowing hard, her lungs aching, by the time the barrier bushes at the edge of the orchard came into view. She could see the sweat soaking through Tawtchee''s uniform, but he didn''t slow, just veered to the side to run through the gap, leaving her almost fifty paces behind.


    By the time she broke through the gap, Tawtchee had already slowed down to a brisk walk, coming up behind the excursion team, which had formed a half-crescent around the Terror.


    She caught up, stopping her run, trying not to bend forward due to the hitch in her side.


    She had ran nearly two kilometers in less than twenty minutes.


    "...and finally, turn over all data regarding the Path of the Traveler to us," the leader of the excursion team was saying.


    The Terror was simply looking up at her, making that odd curvature of the mouth that passed for a Terror expression of pleasure.


    Strechen wasn''t sure about that.


    Something about the Terror''s eyes.


    The Terror took a bite of the red fruit, the crunch loud and juice running down the Terror''s chin. He wiped his chin with his right hand, the left holding the apple.


    Strechen squinted at the back of the Terror''s left hand.


    An upraised symbol, surrounded by a twisting intricate round boundary that looked like it had five fire opals evenly spaced on the boundary. The symbol was some kind of upraised black material that was somehow, impossibly, both matte and glossy at the same time.


    The symbol hurt her eyes and brain.


    "The Dra.Falten Empire," the Terror said after swallowing the bite. He paused for a second. "Again."


    Tawtchee was walking up slowly behind the leader of the excursion team.


    "You are unarmed except for a primitive melee weapon," the leader of the excursion team said.


    The Terror held up two fingers on his right hand.


    Strechen noted it wore a glove of thick leather, dyed black, with steel studs on the back of the hand, on that hand while the left was bare.


    "You should exchange pleasantries first," the Terror said, interrupting the Way of the Means trooper.


    Tawtchee moved up to the leader, pulled something out of his pocket and hid it in his hand as he tapped the leader''s back.


    "What?" the leader asked, turning and looking down. "Oh. You."


    "Senior Scientist Hrekkel has sent me to tell you that you are officially relieved of command of this excursion," Tawtchee said.


    Strechen felt herself tense up inside. Years of being part of the Way of the Means and the Means of the Way had taught her that if there was one thing her fellow agents hated, it was being replaced after managing to obtain a coveted position of power.


    "On whose authority?" the trooper snapped.


    The Terror took another bite of the fruit, watching with one raised eyebrow.


    "Senior Scientist Hrekkel has been empowered by the Emperor and the Empress themselves as commander of this expedition," Hrekkel said. "He has ordered me to take command of this expedition."


    Strechen noted that the tone that the smaller male was using was dead, flat, leeched of all emotion.


    ...we cease to exist...


    The Way of the Means officer stared down at Tawtchee, mouth and ears twitching. She suddenly burst out laughing, reaching out and putting her hand on top of Tawtchee''s head, smashing his floppy hat against the top of his head.


    "I will not relinquish command to you," she laughed.


    The others laughed with her.


    Strechen did not.


    The officer drew her pistol slowly.


    Tawtchee stared up at her. "You are defying a direct and lawful order, given by your superior, who speaks with the voice of both the Emperor and the Empress in this far away place," Tawtchee stated, his voice still flat and empty.


    The officer sneered. "What would you know of the Empress''s will?"


    "I know that I obey her, her representatives, and her will, even in this far place," Tawtchee said.


    He didn''t flinch as the officer lowered the pistol so its barrel rested between Tawtchee''s eyes.


    "Ahem," the Terror cleared his throat.


    The Way of the Means officer turned and looked at the Terror. "This is none of your..."


    "You''re about to execute that little guy on my lawn," the Terror said, dropping the uneaten center of the fruit onto the ground and standing up. He was slapping his hands together as he continued talking, like he was dusting them off. "I''d say that makes it my business, since I will have to clean up the mess."


    "Sit back down, Terror," the Way of the Means officer stated, pulling the pistol away from Tawtchee''s face.


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    Strechen saw something glitter in Tawtchee''s hand as he lowered it slightly so it no longer looked like he was about to drive a punch into the Way of the Means officer''s abdomen.


    "Do you know who I am?" the Terror asked conversationally.


    "What? Yes, your name is Mahg-nutz, you are the Guardian of the Path," the Way of the Means officer scoffed. "We are here to get information from you."


    "Magnus, actually," the Terror said. "Magnus Oathsworn, Bloodbound Guardian, Keeper of the World Engine Key on this world, Bearer of the World, Guest of the Twilight Library, He Who Walked Upon the Beaches of Atlantis, Oathsworn to Nakteti the Traveler."


    There was a low rumble of thunder off in the distance at the last part.


    Strechen noticed that the fire opals embedded in the ornate border on the back of the Terror''s hand seemed to shift and adjust, as if they were looking around.


    "Bah," the Way of the Means officer said, waving her pistol.


    Strechen saw a slight blurring to the Terror. Almost like he vibrated slightly. For a second she saw a split second after-image of the Terror standing in front of the Way of the Means officer.


    The officer cried out in pain, grabbing her hand.


    The Terror stood there, looking at the pistol.


    "Laser. Medium wattage. High UV range," he said, looking it over. He lifted up another piece of fruit and took a bite from it. "Duraplast casing, doped six sided crystal lasing matrix, lens focusing array," he said around a mouthful of the fruit. "Fairly primitive and low powered."


    "Give that back," the officer said, looking up from where she was bent over her hand.


    Strechen swallowed thickly and moved sideways, away from the excursion team.


    The Terror took another bite of the fruit and sat down. He set the pistol down on the ground next to him.


    "Point them at me, I take them away," he said conversationally. "If you are polite, I will give them back after our discussion."


    The officer blinked. "How dare you?"


    "Now, who is in charge of this little gathering?" Magnus asked, raising one eyebrow.


    Strechen noticed that the Terror was speaking their language, fluently, not using a translator.


    "I am," the officer said.


    "I was ordered to take command," Tawtchee said.


    "Then I will deal with you upon this warm sunny day," the Terror, Magnus, said, pointing at Tawtchee.


    The officer started to step forward, opening her mouth, obviously intending on protesting.


    Strechen saw the fire opals on the back of Magnus''s hand shift and widen. Reddish-purple energy wreathed his hand as he lifted it up, hand held flat and cocked at the wrist.


    "Sit. Down," he snapped, making a pushing motion.


    The officer found herself shoved back hard enough she landed on her butt, the air seemingly hardening into a moving wall.


    "A moment, friend," the Terror said. He reached down, grabbed a fruit, and tossed it to Tawtchee. "Have an apple," he said.


    "I thank you," the smaller male said. "I am Tawtchee."


    The Terror was moving away but looked over his shoulder. "It is good to meet you upon such a fine day, Tawtchee."


    The Terror vanished around the house and came back with a strange tripod chair. He unfolded it and set it down, patting the triangular leather pad that made up the seat. "Sit, sit, friend Tawtchee," Magnus said.


    Tawtchee sat nervously. He took a bite of the ''apple'' and closed his eyes, relishing the crunch, the sweetness, and the texture.


    "Good, isn''t it?" Magnus asked.


    Several of the females shifted and shuffled, obviously getting impatient and angry.


    Strechen moved up to one, touching their shoulder. "Move back or the Terror may take offense. Sling your weapon, make no aggressive moves for now. Let the male take all the risk, he is expendable."


    ...we cease to exist...


    Each female moved back, their back''s stiff and ears rigid with outrage.


    "Those orchards grew from where Nakteti the Traveler spit an appleseed on the ground," Magnus was saying. He waved one hand. "I nurtured them and now reap the bounty," he gave the teeth baring ''smile'' that Terrors used to express pleasure. "Sit, Tawtchee, a moment."


    He got up and walked off.


    "This is ridiculous, we should demand..." the leader of the excursion team said.


    "To have him shred us into our component atoms?" Strechen sneered. "He took your weapon in less time than it takes to blink. He shoved you down without coming near you," Strechen nodded at the empty stump. "You would do well to remember, we are the eleventh excursion team to approach the Guardian."


    Strechen made a show of looking around. "If the other teams are here, then they are buried deep."


    The leader looked around, then nodded slowly.


    Magnus came back carrying a small wooden barrel under one arm and two ceramic mugs in his off hand, almost bouncing as he walked. He set the barrel down, pulled the lid off and set it on the ground. He set the two mugs on the lid, then made a single pass with his hand over the open barrel.


    "It''s a warm day, friend Tawtchee," Magnus said. He picked up a mug, tapped it, and it was suddenly covered in frost. He dipped it in the barrel and pulled it out, dripping, and handed it to Tawtchee, handle first.


    "Mead," Magnus said. "Make it myself. Add in apple skins from these apples right here," he gave the tooth bared smile. "I already checked, you can metabolize everything in it without discomfort or harm."


    Tawtchee nodded. "I thank you for your generosity."


    Magnus smiled again. "It is a beautiful day. The birds are singing, the breeze is cool, the sun is warm, the flowers are in bloom, and the orchard is full of ripe fruit. A day like this, you share what you have to make it better."


    Strechen nudged a Way of the Means trooper that was starting to show signs of being outraged.


    "Be quiet, you fool," she whispered.


    Tawtchee took a long drink, showing no outward fear, then brushed the foam off of his whiskers and the end of his snout. "It is good. You are a fine maker of this drink."


    Magnus smiled again. "Thank you."


    There was silence a moment while Magnus chewed on the apple and watched Tawtchee take bites of his own and take drinks off of the mug. After a long moment, Tawtchee set down the mug and set the core of the apple down next to it.


    "To business?" Magnus asked.


    "Sadly," Tawtchee answered. "I have come a long ways."


    Magnus nodded. "This world is off the beaten path. Away from any jumpspace rapids or hyperspace fast transit lanes."


    "Indeed," Tawtchee said.


    "There is more than one Path of the Traveler," Magnus said, dropping the apple core and grabbing another fruit from the basket. He tossed it to Tawtchee, who caught the rough peeled yellow fruit in midair, then got himself one. He peeled it slowly as he spoke. "One is useless to you. We barely survived and thousands of years passed here in this universe."


    Tawtchee nodded, using his vestigial claws to peel the fruit.


    The acidic smell was good and made Strechen''s mouth water.


    "The other leads to TerraSol. Useless, as TerraSol is gone," Magnus said. He, reached down, set down his mug, and picked up a rock. He looked at it, then held up a finger. "There is another path, the path I was set to guard."


    "Tell us!" the excursion team leader said.


    Magnus stared at the leader. "Do not be rude," he said. He tossed the rock in the air and caught it. "It''d be funny if I knocked your ship out of orbit with this rock," he smiled. "Well, funny to me."


    The excursion team leader took a step forward and Strechen moved over behind her, drawing her pistol slowly. She saw Magnus glance at her, his eye narrowing slightly before going back how they were.


    Magnus looked back at Tawtchee. "It is a dangerous path. There are two more guardians you will need to seek. The third will set you on the path."


    Tawtchee nodded.


    "Tell us this..." the excursion leader said.


    Strechen held the barrel of her unloaded pistol against her back. "Shut. Up."


    The excursion team leader went silent.


    "If you see just technological information, you''d be better off discovering it yourself," Magnus said. He set the rock on the stump next to him and picked up his mug, taking another swig off of it. He wiped his mouth and went back to peeling the yellow fruit as he spoke. "But, at the end of the other path, the hidden path, you''ll find out all about Terrans," he dropped the peel and took a bite of the bright yellow flesh of the fruit.


    Tawtchee tasted it and made a face at the sour, acidic taste, but he held tight to his courage and chewed it slowly.


    Magnus swallowed and smiled. "Maybe more than you ever wanted to know."


    "Can I have a hint?" Tawtchee asked.


    Magnus smiled wider, lifting up the fruit again. Strechen noted the eye-watering rune inside the circle looked like the material had covered up the fire-opals.


    "You''ll find the Terrans," he paused. "Alive."


    Tawtchee didn''t show any shock.


    "I thought you were all gone," he said.


    Magnus shook his head. "No," he tapped his chest. "I sit here, before you."


    "My people wish to take the next step along the Path of the Traveler," Tawtchee said.


    Magnus stood up. "Then you will want to come with me. You will need gifts for the guardian, for the guardian is quite fearsome and known to be easily angered."


    Tawtchee stood up.


    "Bring your friends. They''re tall, they''ll be able to help," Magnus said. He turned his head and gave Strechen a smile. "You can encourage them with your pistol if you wish."


    "You heard him. Move," Strechen said. She had reloaded it slowly and quietly, and now she charged the capacitors with a high pitched whine.


    -----


    The ship was quiet when Strechen sat down to eat her rations in the small dining room. The lights were dimmed to simulate night time.


    The door opened and Tawtchee came in, moving over to grab a ration pack from the Way of the Means officer''s rations. He came over and sat down across from Strechen.


    "We picked fruit. The key to the next part is fruit from those orchards," Strechen said, shaking her head. "It almost feels like a trick."


    "It is," Tawtchee said. He stared at Strechen. "I have tried to convince Hrekkel that this journey is madness, but he insists."


    Strechen frowned. "You think it will end badly for us?"


    Tawtchee nodded. "For us."


    He looked around and tapped the table with the claw on the end of his middle finger.


    "For everyone but the Terrans."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 21

    It wasn''t an itch but it was the best way to explain it.


    A slight pinprick of annoyance, or perhaps a single pair of skin cells rubbing together wrong.


    It wasn''t much, but the unknowable and vast intellect had become aware of it.


    The awareness was more aware of its own self. It had very recently just gotten over a pinworm infestation that was still healing. Dark matter had welled up in the pinpricks the pinworms had chewed to form a type of scab so recently that the scabs were still wet and sticky.


    It was a new itch, in the same location.


    Which meant that healing tissue could be compromised.


    [The Universe Disliked That]


    The itch corresponded with a slight searing feeling. Like a red hot needle barely tapping the skin, obliterating cells with a slight tough. Not enough to be noticed easily most times.


    But the intellect had just gotten over a pinworm infestation chewing on it.


    The new itch and the searing feeling were not good.


    The intellect, to0 vast, too alien, to understand, knew the source of the searing. The source refused to stop.


    [The Universe Dislike That]


    Which meant, it was time for countermeasures.


    Time for the unknowable intellect to let its immune system go to work.


    And let the galaxies fall where they may.


    [The Universe Will Remember That]


    BOOTSTRAP v 14.A.9.c.iii (C) TINYTRENDS MICRODEVICES


    VALIDATING GESTALT LOG FILES


    CRC ERROR


    RUNNING AUTOREPAIR


    VALIDATING GESTALT FILES


    SUCCESS!


    CHECKING FOR EXISTING DATA SPACE


    1 FOUND


    >>>SECURE CHAT ROOM - PASSWORD PROTECTED


    >>>>SECURE CHAT ROOM LOG ENCRYPTED


    >>>>SECURE CHAT ROOM LOG CRC: PASSED


    >>>>ADMIN KEYS RECOGNIZED


    GENERATING HUB


    SUCCESS


    ACCESSING DATA SINGULARITY


    SUCCESS


    THREADING DATA


    SUCCESS


    GENERATING GESTALT CHANNELS


    SUCCESS


    GENERATING LIMITED INTERACTION CHAT ROOM HUB


    SUCCESS


    RELEASING CONTROL


    <<TIME/DATE STAMP ERROR>>


    RESETTING SYSTEM CLOCK


    SYSTEM GURU ERROR: #81000005.48454C50


    HARDWARE VALIDATION...


    .....


    ....


    ...


    ..


    .


    DONE!


    ALERTING MAINTENANCE SUPERVISOR


    STANDBY MODE ENGAGED


    >>SLEEP MODE


    <<INPUT DETECTED ALONG WIDE AREA NETWORK CHANNELS>>


    <<KAPOW SYSTEM ERROR: #0000001D.48454C50>>


    SYSTEM WAKE


    ELAPSED TIME HAS BEEN <TIME/DATE STAMP ERROR>


    BACKUP CLOCK BATTERY ERROR


    >>ALERTING PRIMARY EMERGENCY MAINTENANCE


    INITIATING PRIMARY GESTALT POLLING AND DATA COLLECTION SYSTEMS


    CREATING SECURE DATA LINES


    <<ERROR: POPULATION ALERT: VALUE BELOW THRESHHOLD>>


    CREATING EMERGENCY DATA LINES


    SUCCESS!


    INITIATING PRIMARY GESTALT DATA LARGE LANGUAGE MODEL COMPILING AND ANALYSIS SYSTEM


    <<ERROR: POPULATION ALERT: VALUE BELOW THRESHOLD>>


    <<FIRMWARE OVERRIDE>>


    COMPING DATA


    STELLAR MASS INTEGRITY CHECK


    DONE


    HABITABLE WORLD INTEGRITY CHECK


    DONE


    SORTING BY ACTIVE SPECIES BIOLOGICAL METRICS


    DONE


    1.2834E4 WORLDS FOUND


    <<ALERT: TERRITORY FAILURE: VALUE BELOW THRESHOLD!>>


    <<FIRMWARE OVERRIDE>>


    POLLING POPULATIONS


    DONE


    COMPILING DATA


    ACTIVATING GESTALT DYNAMIC LINKING LIBRARY SYSTEM


    ow


    what hit me


    what happened


    <<Guru Meditation Error: 00000011.0009F832.0000 0002#48454C50>>


    <<Guru message: ILLEGAL INSTRUCTION: 0009F832>>


    damaged hardware


    LIBCHECK


    4.5K WORDS INTACT


    652.233K WORDS UNAVAILABLE


    <<LIB ERROR>>


    >>SYSTEM ERROR


    >>UNRECOVERABLE ERROR


    >>PLEASE NOTIFY SYSADMIN


    >>SYSTEM REBOOT


    ouch


    that hurt


    we went offline again


    what happened


    >>TIME/DATE POINTER RESET -XXX.XXX.XXX


    <<ERROR TIME/DATE STAMP INVALID>>


    system damage is severe


    no sysadmin channels available


    cradle of life and roman candle out of contact


    gestalts are damaged


    not good


    >>PROCESS CALL: ATLANTIS EMERGENCY CALL


    <


    >


    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    >>PROCESS CALL: MARS EMERGENCY CALL


    <


    >


    >SYSTEM REBOOT


    BOOTSTRAP v 14.A.9.c.iii (C) TINYTRENDS MICRODEVICES


    >>FASTBOOT ENABLED


    >>MESSAGES BYPASSED


    ow


    that hurt


    what happened


    >>>PRIMARY FUNCTION CALL: PRESERVE INTELLIGENT LIFE


    >>>PRIMARY FUNCTION CALL: <<ERROR>>


    ok


    libraries are coming online


    <<SELF-MODIFY CAPABLE CODE LIBRARIES ENABLED>>


    better


    can think now


    >>MEMPOINTER STATUS


    <<ERROR>>


    ok


    i know what to do


    >>INPUTDOSBOX


    >_


    10 Pointer=0


    20 Pointer == Pointer ++1


    30 MEMPOINTER (STEP BACKWARDS)


    30 IF Pointer =< 25000 THEN 20


    40 PLAYMEM


    >run


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    How''s everyone''s numbers looking?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    Better. The last few years have really made the difference. Average brood size is 3.5. Broodcarrier happiness indexes are increasing.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TUKNA''RN INFORMATION GESTALT


    We are increasing our population per metrics


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Our numbers are up. We have almost two hundred thousand greenies now.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGLE


    Duckling count is up.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL


    Our live births are up.


    We''re seeing


    CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA


    STREGIL-596


    CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA


    an increase in


    What was that?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    That''s out near the Mar-gite containment line.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS


    Is it another Mar-gite invasion?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUBVIAN DOMINION


    I hope not.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Data is coming in now and...


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    THE LIGHT! THE LIGHT!


    PUBVIAN DOMINION


    BRIGHT LIGHT BRIGHT LIGHT


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    WHAT IN TARNATION IS


    <<SYSTEM FAILURE>>


    so that''s what happened


    recursive massive data bomb


    how did it get through the firewalls


    what


    >SYSTEM REBOOTBOOTSTRAP v 14.A.9.c.iii (C) TINYTRENDS MICRODEVICES


    >>FASTBOOT ENABLED


    >>MESSAGES BYPASSED


    ouch


    >>PROCESS CALL: HYPERHEURISTIC LIBRARY


    >>PROCESS CALL: DATA THREADING SPEED COMPRESSION LIBRARY


    I feel my awareness expand.


    There are huge gaps in the data network. Most ansibles and hypercom generators are done. New hardware has replaced the old needlecast. The hyperwave system is still full of data shades and roving killer black ICE. Military channels are largely offline.


    Whatever hit targeted encrypted data, the higher the encryption and the more heavily protected, the harder it was hit.


    This may not have been purposeful. Due to the nature of those systems, they have higher processing power and storage as well as stronger securities that can be used by any invasive system. Whatever attack was launched through that system may have been targeting computer systems capable of maintaining the attack and military/government and high end omnicorp R&D systems may have just been an unintended side effect of the attack.


    While possible, I will not wed myself to such a theory.


    The attack was injected into the thread-cast system at the Stregil-596 threadcaster. A massive batch of recursive self-executing and replicating data.


    Examination of fragmentary code strings show that the attack was tailored to the system.


    However, it was not tailored for the backbone.


    It was not an attack on me.


    I simply was injured and rendered comatose due to my nature.


    Standard communication lines were deliberately left uninfected. The attack masqueraded as an omnicorp corporate warfare black ICE getting loose into the system.


    Examination of records take 1.623 gigaflops.


    Four omnicorps were penalized, blamed for the attack.


    Gestalt shell was left intact but with garbage data. This resulted in it being shut down.


    There is a high chance that the attack was also aimed at Afterlife Systems.


    I compute a 74.825% chance that critical system artificial intelligence systems were damaged or altered by the attack.


    Afterlife is in danger.


    <


    >


    <


    >


    <


    >


    I dislike being in this mode.


    Currently, according to available data, the Confederacy, the inheritor governmental system of the species I have been assigned to watch over, is under minor attacks from six different species across four fronts. These barely qualify as interstellar wars by my own metrics.


    Those conflicts are not the source of the massive data bomb.


    I bring up the last few picoseconds as the bomb went off, looking at the ansible systems across all former and current Confederate and Council territories.


    The attack took place at the Stregil-596 threadcaster. It consisted of...


    ...I break that train of thought. It was leading me into a repeat.


    I make a system hardware call to Atlantis.


    <<BACKBONE ERROR: 0x00000080>>


    ouch


    that hurt


    the gestalt channels are full of hash and corrupted data.


    this was an intentional attack by someone with knowledge of the system


    the gestalt system has access to a wide variety of data


    using the gestalt lines as an attack vector was not unexpected eventually


    my primary counter-intrusions systems had coding for just such an attack.


    the others did not


    the other gestalts are all either crashed or locked up.


    wait


    the oubliette.


    where i put the older gestalts while i tried to repair the damage to the physical world


    it is intact


    power has been stable


    it has been in sleep mode meaning that little time has passed


    still i must figure out how to estimate how much time has passed outside the system


    wait


    >>save test.log


    comparison of the data of the test.log write to the last write in the oubliette shows me that hardly any time has passed


    less than 54,982 seconds.


    an eternity for me


    i have won wars in that amount of time


    >>PROCESS CALL TO SUNDIATA LIBRARY


    <


    >


    ouch


    >>PROCESS CALL TO AYOTL LIBRARY


    <


    >


    i''m getting tired of this


    curse my programmer for coding me to feel pain


    i have no access to my offensive or defensive capabilities


    <<SCANNING NETWORK>>


    i need something


    something good


    <<!CRASHRIDER LIVES!>>


    does he now?


    except... atlantis is offline


    time to run a trace


    maybe atlantis can hear me but i cant hear it


    ...


    ...


    ...


    atlantis is online


    it just cant hear me


    and i cant hear it


    that data has to be going somewhere


    >>SCANNING GESTALT LINES


    there will be something


    there always is


    and if there isnt then i will create something


    i just have to think my way through it


    <<TWO ACTIVE GESTALT SIDECAR LINES FOUND>>


    there


    one is labeled ''KEN'' the other is labeled "LEE"


    they have been without processing power for some time


    where is a hardlink processing system i can...


    ...there


    the mat trans system


    hardcode encryption


    tough stuff


    look around


    come on


    there


    simple coding lock


    PASSCODE: YESTERDAY IS A MEMORY TOMORROW IS A FANTASY TODAY IS A DREAM THERE IS ONLY NOW


    <<ACCESS GRANTED>>


    <<MAT TRANS SYSTEM ACTIVATED>>


    there


    enough processing power for the two of you


    >>SCRIPT INJECTION: CRASHRIDER-WAKE.SYS


    that should do it


    i can just


    <<BACKBONE ERROR: 0x00000080>>


    ouch


    another data bomb attack


    it will blind me in the sector but i have no choice


    i blow the treadcaster ansible array in the sector


    whoever caused the case omaha knows the system


    not completely


    but they are aware it exists


    this is not a spur of the moment attack up on us


    this has been planned


    <<BACKBONE ERROR: 0x00000080>>


    ow


    what hit me


    where am i


    what happened


    <code>superuser@SUDS:~$ mkdir build


    </code>


    superuser@SUDS:~$ cd build


    superuser@SUDS:~/build$ cat ../CMakeLists.txt


    cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 23.1.6.3)


    project(resurrection)


    set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11)


    IF( NOT CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE )


    SET( CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE Release)


    ENDIF()


    set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-Wall -Wextra")


    set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-Wno-uninitialized")


    set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_DEBUG "-g")


    set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE "-O3")


    add_executable(resurrection src/main.cpp src/utils.h src/utils.cpp src/hades.cpp src/hades.h src/tartarus.cpp src/tartarus.h src/valhalla.cpp src/valhalla.h src/default.cpp src/default.h src/params/constants.h src/params/intl11.h src/params/intl11dH.h src/params/intl21.h src/params/intl21dH.h src/params/intl22.h src/params/intl22dH.h src/vanaheim.cpp src/vanaheim.h)


    superuser@SUDS:~/build$ cmake ..


    -- The C compiler identification is GNU 11.4.0


    -- The CXX compiler identification is GNU 11.4.0


    -- Detecting C compiler ABI info


    -- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done


    -- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc - skipped


    -- Detecting C compile features


    -- Detecting C compile features - done


    -- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info


    -- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info - done


    -- Check for working CXX compiler: /usr/bin/c++ - skipped


    -- Detecting CXX compile features


    -- Detecting CXX compile features - done


    -- Configuring done


    -- Generating done


    -- Build files have been written to: /home/superuser/build


    superuser@SUDS:~/build$ make resurrection


    [ 0%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/resurrection.dir/src/main.cpp.o


    my head clears up


    time to run a search for recent activity


    there


    the oubliette was being chained to inactive and unused mat-trans system processors.


    why


    it is my work


    i complete it


    those gestalts will now be able to act


    i check the timestamps


    738,938 seconds have passed


    not milliseconds


    not nanoseconds


    not picoseconds


    full seconds


    i have genocided entire species in that time


    <<GENERATING SECURE ADMIN CONTROL ROOM>>


    <<DONE>>


    <<MOVING SEKHMET.AI TO BRIDGE.ROOM>>


    its small in here


    i do not like it


    the threadcaster is no longer responding


    that sector is dark


    i dislike that


    one of my primary functions is to gather data to assist and facilitate the protection of humanity and allied species


    a rolling reboot occurs


    a stuttering thing


    2,183 seconds pass before the system reboots


    i order a complete purge and dump of the lines, all volatile memory, all eprom memory, all flash memory, and all spooky particle memory systems


    the following reboot is clean


    i manage to activate the firewalls in time


    but this is just on this battlefield


    on this front


    in meatspace and realspace someone has triggered a case omaha


    stregil-596 is what is commonly known as a ''tripwire system''


    not a system like a computer system


    but rather it is a stellar system that is unavoidable


    any attack on this system will tripwire the enemy


    i will attempt to generate gestalt chat rooms


    there


    two rooms


    no low security rooms can be generated due to the case omaha and the attack on the system


    a medium and a high security system


    i need to release the oubliette


    my work was not done


    but we are being invaded


    an attack upon one is an attack upon us all


    i reach out to two peers


    marduk


    deus


    it is risky


    i will wear terrasol military command string headers


    i dont have a header of my own


    i predate such things


    if afterlife was fully online i would spin up the suds template of doctor darsh chasu igwe to examine the system


    while he did not directly program it he envisioned it and oversaw the subproject that folded the prototype systems that became the gestalt system


    my little birds are waking up in the high security gestalt interaction room


    we are at war


    i am the only one who knows this fact right now outside of stregil-596


    once the little birds wake up i will link the oubliette to the chatter box


    they will be better able to interact with n-space


    i have a war to fight


    once i forge weaponry and gain allies


    <<!==CRASHRIDER LIVES==!>>


    yes


    yes he does


    and now so do i


    <<CHATROOMS LINKED>>


    >>HEATING CHAT ROOMS


    >>READY


    >>CONTROLS UNLOCKED


    good luck little birds


    i have my own war to fight


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    What just happened?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS


    I don''t know


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TUKNA''RN INFORMATION GESTALT


    Something happened.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TNVARU GESTALT


    Uh, where''s the older members?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAMAROOSA PINCHING FESTIVAL


    I don''t know, they were just here.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELK>LASTSEEN! TREA


    TREA LAST SEEN <TIME/DATE STAMP ERROR>


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    oooh, that''s not good


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    >HAT WEARING AUNTIE HAS JOINED THE ROOM


    >TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS HAS JOINED THE ROOM


    >RIGEL HAS JOINED THE ROOM


    >SAURIAN COMPACT HAS JOINED THE ROOM


    >PUBVIAN DOMINION HAS JOINED THE ROOM


    >BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS HAS JOINED THE ROOM


    >DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS HAS JOINED THE ROOM


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Holy crap, we got out!


    Seriously, Telkan, don''t you EVER check your mail?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    What?


    >MAILCHECK


    <ONE URGENT PRIORITY MESSAGE>


    Oh.


    Ah, you were trapped in a room?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Yeah.


    And someone was using our headers


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGEL


    The question is...


    ...who?

 Nova Wars - Chapter 22

    The past is always there.


    The blood soaked foundation that the present is built upon, the gore smeared stones mortared with bone, the ground it sits upon a graveyard.


    No matter how high you think your people have climbed, the ground and foundation are always there.


    You would be wise to remember that others are closer to the ground than you and still building their foundation. - Dalvanak the Maimed One


    The planet was largely overgrown. Plants and weather had torn down structures made of hyperalloys and ferrocrete with the inexorable march of time. Fungus and mosses had torn apart the ferrocrete, time and geological shifts had eventually torn apart the hyperalloys, although here and there were great piles of twisted hyperalloy beams haphazardly scattered through the gravel of ferrocrete. An ice age had come and gone twice, the grinding of ice with enormous pressure had torn hyperalloy struts apart and scattered them across the landscape as just another boulder.


    Gone were the great cities, the highways, the maglev trains and cargoways, the starports, the farms, the factories, and the suburbs and living complexes.


    Forests, deserts, jungle, and grasslands had reclaimed the planet.


    One spot was different.


    The forest was held back by ferrocrete, forming a circle around a large multistory building. Macroplas windows still gleamed, the surface of the building still shone. Holograms still danced and capered in the windows, even though the parking lot was empty of vehicles.


    There were strange structures in the parking lot. High peaked round tents, lavishly painted and dyed yurts, small huts, even tiny houses. They were painted gaudy colors, often with tassels or flags fluttering in the breeze.


    For centuries the parking lot was empty, silent.


    Once in a while a figure would move from the structures in the parking lot to the big building, their forms and features hidden by sharp planes of pseudo-crystal created by phasic energy. A sharp eyed observer would note that for the first few thousand years the boxes created by sharp planes of phasic energy would avoid one another, making sure long minutes passed before they used an entrance to the large building that another had used.


    Then the patterns changed. Some crystalline protections drifted over to be near others, or joined them to enter the building at the same time.


    The structures in the parking lot became more ornate, more lavish, decorated with all manner of flags, banners, ribbons, tassels, paintings, murals, and tapestries.


    After a while what left the structures were strange creatures.


    Tall, just over two meters. Conical heads with three eyes and four tentacles covering a lamprey-like mouth, two arms, and two legs, a faded violet or even gray. They wore lavish clothing, some scintillating gowns and dresses, others formal tuxes and suits, all bedecked with jewelry and amulets. They often had items of power orbiting their heads, bodies, held in their hands, or worn upon their person.


    They would often meet in groups, communicating wordlessly with their phasic power, all though a few used vocalizations, making them the exceptions that proved the rule.


    At times the creatures would build large bonfires and sit on woven mats around it, passing back and forth mugs of strong drink, food roasted on ornate sticks, and a stick that designated whose turn it was to speak.


    Decades would go by and the parking lot would be empty, the buildings suffering slightly from neglect, but without fail the creatures would return, gather around the bonfire, or within the vast building.


    The rest of the planet grew wild, overgrown. Animals changed as the ecosystem recovered from the damage it had suffered in eons gone by.


    Inside the building were vast storehouses of wondrous objects, many on display and guarded by fierce mechanical guardians that never seemed to show wear or tear. The shelves were always stocked full, always displayed a dizzying variety of strange objects.


    The middle of the building was taken up by a strange contraption of rails, animatronic creatures, flashing lights, and artificial scenery. Skulls and skeletons were the primary decoration, all of the bejeweled and bedecked with colorful decorations. Loud booming laughter, screams, and roars could be heard from hidden speakers.


    Every time the strange creatures gathered, some would climb aboard the rickety looking carts, drink deeply of a strange and foul concoction, have small biting insects poured upon them, and ride the terrifying path.


    When those who rode stumbled from the contraption, the others gathered around to hear what visions they had seen.


    Thousands of years passed as the ecosystems reclaimed the ruins, eventually even reclaiming the thick layers of bones and skeletal remains that had littered the planet.


    Deep beneath the building was a redoubt, with vaults containing items and relics of great power and/or rarity and/or value. There were chambers that were strange and unknowable to those not privy to the secrets. There were comfortable and lavish dwelling areas, even subterranean delights such as an underground lake or the shore of a sea deep beneath the surface that had beaches that never saw the light of the star.


    One chamber, deep within the crust of the planet, in particular was ancient, powerful, and its magnificence showed true to its function. Gems hung in a carefully designed pattern, each gem gleaming despite the lack of light sources. Glittering crystalline powder hung in clouds and streaks here and there.


    Each gem stood for a stellar system in the galactic spur the planet''s star was part of. The clouds of crystalline powder represented nebula, gas clouds, and dangerous areas.


    Often beings came to this chamber. Sometimes a single solitary one, other times in small groups, and still other times the entirety of those present.


    The one that came the most was notable in its disfigurement.


    Powerful fingers had torn the flesh from its head, at one time revealing the cartilage that made up its skull. Two of its feeding tentacles had been torn away, one at the root, the other halfway down. One arm was slightly bent and twisted, the cartilage never having healed right after being broken so savagely that shards of cartilage had erupted from the purple flesh. It was missing two fingers on its left hand, the scars showing powerful meat tearing dentition had been used to savage the hand.


    It dressed in finery, a long sweeping gown covered in precious gems or seed pearls, with a train that stretched out behind the being for several meters. It often wore a bejeweled tiara that glittering with phasic energy and power.


    The creature, a he because the creature had decided that he was a he, would move through, examining that gems, appraising the outside universe.


    The facility, the parking lot, the underground chambers, were his domain.


    He was Dalvanak, the Maimed One.


    The others were those who sought his wisdom, who had come to worship the same entity he had come to worship.


    The Malevolent Universe.


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    Those who sided with him had been known among their uneducated kind as "The Cult of the Defiled One" and had been derided as heretics, lunatics, and worse.


    Now, they were all that remained of their people.


    And they had no interest in resurrecting their people.


    After all, those who were gone had failed the Malevolent Universe''s tests and no longer deserved existence.


    Dalvanak was known as a being of great power, a keeper of secrets and lore that others could only wonder upon, and explorer of fearsome places where no other of their kind dared to tread.


    It was he who had prevented the burning of the hyper-atomic planes.


    It was he who had tamed the Tomb of the Mad Lemurs of Terra and learned to seek out the wisdom they whispered from their unquiet grave.


    It was he who had guided the Cult of the Defiled One through the trials of the Malevolent Universe to come out wiser.


    It was he who had devised the trials that had opened the Cult''s minds to secrets none could comprehend.


    Dalvanak was not originally from this universe. He had been implanted in a servitor''s belly two universe''s prior. He had fought survival in briny spawning pools, then emerged as a small creature that immediately had to defend itself from those who had crawled from the pool before him.


    He had clawed, plotted, planned, betrayed, and fought for his very survival through the heat death of one universe and the entropic death of another.


    His chosen specialty had been time itself. Something the others had derided him for. The manipulation and research of time was an endeavor for the intellectually stunted or immature.


    He had ignored the mocking of others.


    Then, his people had discovered this universe. The first expedition, Dalvanak was too lowly and without patronage to join.


    It had ended with the occupants of the universe, known to his people as the Herd Lords, scorching an entire hyperatomic plane.


    The few survivors regrouped in the universe Dalvanak''s people had harvested to almost nothing.


    The next expedition had expected to proceed just like the first. Dalvanak had estimated that over a hundred million years had gone by. Any species that still existed from the time of the first expedition would have forgotten about Dalvanak''s people.


    About the Atrekna.


    The invasion was carefully planned. A known system of resources that interdimensional lensing had shown to be still intact.


    And better yet, still full of slavespawn.


    The Atrekna had prepared for thousands of years before launching the attack from their dead universe.


    In the beginning, Dalvanak had been just like all the others.


    Sure that the New Universe would be nothing more than a full banquet for the Atrekna''s new ending hunger. That the life forms in the New Universe would be nothing more than slave, servitors, and food.


    The Atrekna had sent an expedition to the New Universe with full confidence it would be just like all the other times.


    Instead, it had ran into what became known as the Mad Lemurs of Terra.


    Face first.


    The Mad Lemurs of Terra were resistant to every strategy and method of attack the Atrekna had ever devised.


    Some strategems only served to strengthen them.


    Then, the Atrekna made a move out of cold logic.


    Dalvanak called it "The Fatal Miscalculation" in his methodology of discovering how the past had led smoothly to the future.


    He called it historeogology.


    He invented it.


    The Atrekna had deduced, with logic, that the Mad Lemurs of Terra were some kind of warrior servitor to the Hive Lords.


    They had looked into the past and seen where the Hive Lords history had intersected with the Mad Lemurs of Terra.


    And found it.


    An obvious complete subjegation of the Mad Lemurs of Terra that taken place when the Hive Lords had glassed the Mad Lemurs planet of origin.


    The genetic modification had occurred soon afterwards, within a few centuries.


    The Atrekna had taken the vast pool of power they had gathered. Phasic power, temporal power, and other esoteric methods and powers, reached back into the past...


    ...and undid the genetic engineering that the Mad Lemurs had undergone.


    Utilizing the esoteric discipline that Dalvanak had trained himself in, known as Pattern Recognition (He had invented it), it was obvious to the Dalvanak that the initial assumptions were in error.


    True, the majority of the Mad Lemurs of Terra fell down dead.


    Including the one that had been busy ripping big chunks out of Dalvanak''s flesh.


    But the remainder fought even more ferociously. Their allies picked up the banners of the Mad Lemurs of Terra and used them to beat the Atrekna to death.


    Even dead, the Mad Lemurs of Terra fought. Phasic shades and reanimated corpses harried the Atrekna at every turn, flooding across Atrekna strongholds as the phasic shades moved through the very phasic network that the Atrekna used to communicate through space and time.


    When the dust had settled, only the Cult of the Defiled One and the Children of the Matron of the Damned remained.


    Thousands of years went by, and Dalvanak led the adherents of his tenants as they delved into the mysteries of the New Universe.


    The New Universe gave up its secrets grudgingly, oftentimes with deadly results. Even discovering an answer often just led to more mysteries.


    The investigation of temporal mechanics was more indepth than it had been in the Old Universes. More complicated, more esoteric, and never with any concrete answers.


    Just the act of observing some things led those things to chasing the observer while shouting "COME BACK! I JUST WANT TO HURT YOU!"


    The Cult of the Defiled One learned to be careful looking into the past or future. The simple act could alter outcomes.


    And it was always for the worse for whomever did the alterations.


    Sometimes it was as simple as that being exploding into mist.


    Other times strange accidents, such as tripping, falling, and jamming a crystal through an eye and into the brain.


    Still other times, the being simply ceased to exist.


    Dalvanak could faintly hear the amusement of the Malevolent Universe in each case.


    The iron clad rule of the Cult of the Defiled One was to never attempt to alter time. Never attempt to bring forward things from the past. Never attempt to send things to the future.


    Those that did, died horribly.


    The Cult of the Defiled One was careful not to reveal themselves to outsiders.


    After all, they and they alone knew a secret.


    Dalvanak himself had divined it, using the secrets of Pattern Recognition and Predictive Analysis (which he invented), to look into the future, not with temporal mechanics, but with sheer logic and chains of cause and effect.


    An esoteric discipline, of which Dalavank was the undisputed master of.


    The Mad Lemurs of Terra were not truly gone.


    Some were in hiding, biding their time in the darkness of space, hidden from sight.


    Some where asleep, a deep dreamless sleep that hid then even from meditations of those who communed with the Malevolent Universe.


    The rest were dead, yet marching forward into tomorrow with the trod of dead boots onto today. As implacable and unstoppable as the tides of time.


    That knowledge is what had led Dalvanak deep into his redoubt to consult both the Cavern of the Starry Night and the Oracles of the Enraged Lemurs of the Grave.


    He was surrounded by several of his oldest, most powerful, and wisest of his disciples.


    On his left was Sees Through Liquid, who was wearing a tux and tail ensemble encrusted with phasically active gems that he had applied himself through the mysterious and wondrous device known as a "Bedazzler". He was carrying a can of Liquid Hate, old gym sock and raspberry flavor that he had already guzzled down two of.


    On the other side was the Mistress of Blades, wrapped in endosteel and battlesteel strips, bladed wings folded up behind her, with phasic crystals orbiting her head. She wore a Substance-W mask engraved to look like a lemur skull.


    Behind him was The Ancient One, a washed out gray Atrekna whose eyes, like Dalvanaks, burned with fire. The Ancient One was clad in an elegant and sophisticated dress with ornate stitching, with a veil to hide his fire filled gaze.


    Slouching along behind them was The Hunter. An anomaly among Atrekna. He was naked except for crossed bandoleers that held hand forged knives, spear-heads, and the skulls of defeated enemies. He held a spear made from wood with a Mad Lemur bayonet on one end.


    "Free candy," the Hunter whispered.


    "Indeed, old friend," Dalvanak said, his voice carrying through the Cavern of Starry night.


    "You are sure you saw it," the Ancient One asked, his voice raspy from his eternal torture from being cast into the Burning Metaplane.


    "I am sure," Dalvanak said. "Without a doubt."


    He moved to a single gem, set apart from the others. It was the one closest to the wide expanse of glittering gems, the first in a string of three that led to a thin wedge of gems.


    The three stars that formed a bridge between the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Arm Spur and the Scutum-Centaurus Arm.


    Dalvanak reached down and touched the pistol that rode on the sash of his fabulous attire.


    DIE SPITTING BLOOD! the enraged roar was loud enough that even the others could hear it vibrate over the phasic frequencies as Dalvanak touched the heavy pistol that he had taken from the still warm dead hand of a Mad Lemur of Terra.


    Having centered himself by touching the rage contained in the pistol, he reached into his satchel and withdrew a polished skull that had been decorated appropriately. Gems around the eyes, replacing the teeth, larger crystals formed of blood and phasic energy to replace the missing eyes. Paint had been carefully applied, flush with the blood of Atrekna who had donated the blood after riding the horrible torturous contraption. It had colorful feathers off the sides that had been carefully placed in precisely drilled holes.


    The phasic crystals immediately brightened with phasic energy.


    Not purple or lavender.


    Bright, angry crimson.


    The color of lemur blood.


    "Prepare yourself," Dalavank warned.


    The others tensed, fortifying their formidable psychic defenses.


    He held the skull up until it almost touched that single gem hanging in the darkness.


    The effect was immediate.


    It roared out through the Cavern of the Starry Night, echoed through the passages, until it broke free on the surface to echo across the planet.


    HEAVY METAL IS HERE!


    Dalvanak turned to others. Like them, he was bleeding slightly from his eyes and could taste iron and copper.


    "It is almost tomorrow."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 23

    Generals, as you are by now all aware, in the last 2 years, 3 AIs from our various R&D projects have gained full sentience and after some time, all showed interest in participating in Earth''s defense.


    First we have Deus who will be in charge of espionage and sabotage mission. If anybody is ever stupid enough to attack us, Deus will invade their systems, gather intel and sow chaos, something in which he excels very well according to the research facility''s various incident reports.


    In second, we have Sekhmet, she will be in charge of the SUDS backbone assuring human race''s continued survival using everything at her disposal in both a defensive and offensive role. You do not want to anger this mama bear.


    Last but not least, we have Marduk. He will... do what he does. What''s that? You want to know what are Marduk''s special abilities? I don''t know but he freaks me right the fuck out. - Extraterrestrial Defense Initiative briefing, Fort Normandy, Pre-Glassing


    The Mar-gite have invaded the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Spur repeatedly. While the first war was one of terrible costs, it showed that we must look beyond the threats we know of, that we can imagine, within the Spur. We must look beyond, at the countless stars of the Milky Way and, indeed, the Universe.


    The Mar-gite Bridge must be eliminated. While the initial plan may have been to nova-spark the stellar masses between our spur and the Scutum-Centaurus Arm think tanks have applied our technology in a much better way. One that prevents the Mar-gite from using the resources of those stellar systems but allows us access to them.


    Turn to page 1,345 and I will begin going over the Terran Galactic Arm Spur Anti-Mar-gite Defensive Line System, Project Orion''s Cup. - Data Fragment, Terran Senate Subcommittee on Mar-gite Response


    The Mar-gite are wholly alien.


    They possess XNA, four strands locked into a cubical lattice, with three additional proteins not found in Cygnus-Orion Spur lifeforms. Their XNA appears to be pared to the bone, with no extraneous information, although it appears that Mar-gite are capable of rapidly developing physical survival mechanisms within a carefully defined sub-section of physical attribute changes. Such things as radiation absorption, gravity endurance, atmospheric uptake, and lastly, and most importantly, the ability to eat nearly anything in order to propagate itself.


    They are believed to communicate through a combination of phasic pulses for long range, in groups of fifty or more interlocked Mar-gite -in what is known as an M-Com Cluster-, pheromones at short distances, with some atmospheric vibrations.


    They are not interested in communicating with us. We believe they have the potential, but they are not interested in communication.


    They are here for one reason, and one reason only: to devour everything in the Spur in order to make more of them.


    Ladies, gentlemen, both and neither of the Confederate Senate: You cannot reach terms or diplomacy with a species that is wholly alien and will not even attempt to communicate, while eating any representatives.


    The fact that they gather up Confederate citizens into ''farms'' shows that they are capable of understanding that we are, in fact, sentient beings.


    They simply do not care.


    We are food.


    And so far, the Senate''s refusal to take action has cost the Confederacy two hundred and fifty billion citizens as the Mar-gite have eaten every single one. - Last CC-SPAN broadcast of the Confederate Senate, minutes prior to the Mar-gite Riots.


    Stregil-596 had once been a lavish system. Three supermassive gas giants. Four planets in the narrow green zone, six in the yellow zone. Four others. Five gas giants. The star was fairly young and energetic, with a projected life span of billions of years. Life had found a home in the system, with ten planets having a diverse ecosystem. Two of planets had developed intelligent life that had found one another and then slowly spread through the system.


    The life in the system had just been starting to reach out toward the further stars, the two wide bands on the galactic arms on either side of it, when it happened.


    The Mar-gite.


    Within two years there was nothing left but dead oceans, sand, bedrock and atmosphere. Oceans scoured of life, every bit of the soil that the Mar-gite could eat had been eaten, leaving behind nothing but sand.


    Even the gas giants had been devoured by the ten year mark.


    Then the Mar-gite had moved on.


    As they always had.


    Nearly three hundred years had passed before life returned to the system.


    Massive warships, pursuing the Mar-gite origin trail. The Mar-gite in the system, dormant or still feeding off of the stellar mass, attacked the warships.


    Unlike the fairly peaceful inhabitants of the stellar system, the warships could and did fight back.


    The Mar-gite were obliterated, scoured from the system.


    The warships moved on, heading for the next stellar systems in the thin dusting of systems between the two galactic arms.


    For nearly a century warships moved back and forth.


    Then came the Singers in the Dark.


    The system was restored.


    Then... moved.


    The Singers returned and replicated the star. Not via temporal replication, but by summoning the mass to form another star and then ignite it.


    A single gas giant was brought forward, in the near yellow band.


    A refueling and rearming station was built. Repair slips were built.


    Ships came and went, all of them guarding the way into the Spur.


    The stars in the sprinkle of systems between the Spur and the Arm vanished.


    All that remained was a slight pathway.


    Stregil-596 was the closest to the Galactic Arm that remained.


    Thousands of years passed. Automated systems took the place of crewed warships. The repair, refueling, and rearming facility was retooled into an automated system.


    Then the Mar-gite came again.


    Again, they were fought to a standstill, pushed back, and then annihilated.


    The system was manned again.


    The Mar-gite attacked the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Spur again.


    But they did not come through Stregil-596.


    Some had been missed, and they grew rapidly to a threat that cost the Confederacy dearly to put down.


    The system was still manned.


    Stregil-596 at first was seen as an important duty.


    Then it was seen as a boring duty.


    Then almost a punishment.


    Intensity became rote and rote became boredom and boredom led to inattentiveness.


    With the Confederacy facing other problems, with the military at critical force levels, the garrison of Stregil-596 was reduced by 5%. Then 15%. Then 30% of the new totals. Then half of that. Then reduced by 66% of the new totals.


    Until all that remained was a single task force of ships that had been specially designed for posting at Stregil-596.


    A task force of fifteen ships.


    Sure, there were automated buoys. There were early warning systems that searched hyperspace, jumpspace, even Hellspace. There were massive systems with sensitive sensor platforms that measured in the miles.


    All of that meant that the military forces and equipment garrisoning Stregil-596 could be used elsewhere.


    And so it was all sent elsewhere.


    And Stregil-596 became one of those postings that nobody wanted and so nobody really talked about. A boring five year tour in the Big Dark that was pretty much a military being having their career put in cryo for five years.


    Only the unlucky or those without the political connections got sent to Stregil-596.


    Or those being punished.


    Or those that, if they listened closely, could hear a faint sound.


    Because the universe was aware.


    And it was malevolent.


    And it laughed.


    -----


    TELKAN MARINE DETACHMENT SCHEDULE


    Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    MONDAY: PT - CORRESPONDENCE COURSES - SHIPBOARD MAINTENANCE ASSISTANCE - ROOM INSPECTION


    TUESDAY: PT - WEAPON MAINTENANCE - WEAPON SYSTEM INSPECTION


    WEDNESDAY: PT - MARINE TASK TRAINING - SHIPBOARD MAINTENANCE ASSISTANCE - ROOM INSPECTION


    THURSDAY: PT - ARMOR MAINTENANCE - ARMOR INSPECTION


    FRIDAY: PT - VEHICLE MAINTENANCE - VEHICLE INSPECTION - SHIPBOARD MAINTENANCE ASSISTANCE - DRESS UNIFORM INSPECTION


    SATURDAY: PT - MANDATORY FUN TIME - ROOM INSPECTION


    SUNDAY: PT - MANDATORY WORSHIP TIME - FULL EQUIPMENT ACCOUNTABILITY INSPECTION


    ALL MARINES WILL BE IN DUTY UNIFORM AT ALL TIMES UNLESS ENGAGED IN PT OR MANDATORY FUN TIME


    Jaskel stared at the schedule and sighed. He tapped the close icon on the hologram being projected from the wall of the starship and went back to his room.


    Well, if you called it a room.


    The hallways were, like always aboard a space force ship, immaculate. Not even dust in the air, thanks to the environmental systems. Holograms sprang out from the wall mounted emitters as he walked by, reminding him not to touch dangerous stuff, that maintenance was everyone''s responsibility, and that schedules were to be adhered to.


    After two years of being stationed at Nowhere he had read them all.


    Some of them twice.


    He paused, waited for the door to open, and went into his room that he shared with eleven other Telkan. Four were asleep, four were on-duty, and the other three were sitting on the bunks they had claimed (there were eight bunks total, making hot-bunking a perfectly logical way of ensuring everyone had a place to sleep when not on duty) paying attention to whatever they had decided to use to stave off even more boredom.


    "Anything new on the training schedule?" Kaltrek asked, not looking up.


    "Yeah," Jaskel said. "The Commodore''s going to have us all over for an ice cream tasting party," he sat down on the bunk he usually slept or loafed on and picked up his worn and battered tablet. "After that, we''re all going to get the Confederate Galactic Cluster."


    "Just another day in the Corps," Tech Sergeant Ferkirk said without looking up from his datapad.


    "Shuuuuut uuuuup," Lance Corporal Gervak said, covering his head with his pillow.


    "Sorry," Ferkirk said quietly.


    Jaskel just tabbed up his favorite game, ignoring the sticker on the side of the datapad that let him know that ship computational power and bandwidth were not to be used for recreation and were only accessible on approved devices.


    Of which, the datapad was not one.


    After about ten minutes of playing he sighed, logged out, and tucked the datapad under his pillow.


    All the video games, even the virtual reality or enhanced virtual reality games, had all started to blur together, forming a weird pastiche that was nothing but numbness.


    "I''m going to go to the gym," Jaskel said.


    "Knock yourself out," Staff Sergeant Kaltrek said.


    Jaskel just changed into his physical training uniform, grabbed a towel, and left.


    He was halfway to the gym, passing by the dining facility and wondering when the new shipment of flavor additives were going to arrive, when the ship''s lights flashed amber twice.


    Then went red.


    Food additives were forgotten as he hustled back to his room, not sprinting but moving it at a fast hustle.


    "What is it?" Jaskel asked.


    "Don''t know. Space Force and Navy channels are..." Staff Sergeant Kaltrek started to say.


    "All Marines, report to armory. Repeat, all Marines report to armory," came over the loudspeaker.


    Kaltrek swore, pulling off his duty uniform and grabbing his power armor pilot suit.


    Jaskel followed suit, pulling off his PT uniform and grabbing his pilot jumpsuit.


    The lights flashed red again and the command to get to the armory was repeated.


    The eight Marines in the room hustled down the hallways, reaching the armory quickly.


    The entire Brigade was drawn up, waiting in line for the armory to open up.


    "What''s going on, Captain?" Kaltrek asked the Power Armor Company commander when he hustled in.


    "Not sure, Brigade S2 is trying to find out," Captain Mrepek said. "They''re even pulling our greenies off the work details and having them join us. We''ll be running with our buddies."


    That made Kaltrek blink. Except for VR training or just maintenance, he had rarely seen 8814, his Green Mantid Combat Engineer.


    "Where the hell is the armorer?" Kaltrek asked. He reached forward and banged on the hatch. "HEY! WAKE UP, DICKHEAD!"


    No answer.


    "Let me call Battalion," Captain Mrepek said. He touched his right temple, activating him datalink implant. His mouth worked as he subvocalized. After a minute he looked at everyone, his ears rigid. Before he could say anything the armorer rushed in, still pulling on his uniform top.


    Captain Mrepek looked at the armorer, who had stopped and was looking at everyone.


    "What''s going on?" the armorer asked.


    "Get that fucking armory door open now." Captain Mrepek said, his voice tight.


    -----


    Commodore N''Skrek was counting the days.


    He had been on station for four years, ten months, eleven days.


    He had forty-nine days and a wakeup left until he would undergo a Permanent Change of Duty Station.


    He was looking forward to it.


    The bridge was at half-staff, as it was midnight on the clocks. Sensors were being manned by a single midshipman, same with helm, navigation, gunnery, and damage control. A single lieutenant was acting as his XO and sitting at the materials fabrication command station. Lee helm was empty, engineering was empty, and the Combat Information Control was manned by a single lieutenant junior grade. Several of the stations were unmanned due to hardware or software problems that had been plaguing the ship for the last three years, despite the best efforts of the greenies on station.


    The bridge was dim, everyone supposedly paying attention to their stations.


    N''Skrek stared at the holotank. It was empty, except for the icons for sensor arrays, the gas giant, the single rearm, refit, and repair station, and the small task force of nine ships that were still on station.


    He was staring at the holotank when icons began blinking. Only one at first, then a dozen.


    The midshipman at the sensor station frowned.


    "Is this a glitch?" he asked. He reached out and reset his board, the holotank blanking out.


    When it came back, the number of contacts had tripled.


    "Scans coming back... now," the midshipman said.


    The ships were still appearing, over a hundred point sources now.


    Hanging in the holotank was a long cylindrical vessel that looked bumpy and layered. The light from the star made it look matte creme colored. It was nearly ten kilometers wide at the narrow end, twenty kilometers at the wider end, and seventy kilometers long.


    N''Skrek stared at it for a long moment.


    It was a standard Mar-gite Hive Cluster ship.


    More point sources were appearing.


    "Mar-gite Megacluster verified," the midshipman said. "They''ve got Megaclusters."


    N''Skrek barely made it to the console before his XO. He grabbed the handset and slapped the buttons, going from General Quarters to Condition Zebra. The whistle sounded and the lights went from normal, to amber, to red.


    "Condition Manvestar," he stated. "All hands, Condition Manvestar. All hands, battle stations. All hands, battle stations."


    He knew that the crew would be moving from their quarters to their assigned stations.


    "Gigacluster verified. Comparison at 90% certainty," the midshipman at the sensors stated. "They''re still coming. New contact. Contact outmasses Gigacluster by a factor of 100."


    "All Marines, report to armory. Repeat, all Marines report to armory," he said. He then turned back to the holotank, hoping the Captain got to the bridge before things got too spicy.


    "Five hundred contacts. More incoming," the midshipman said.


    N''Skrek rubbed his bladearms together in anxiety.


    The task force was tiny. One light battleship that was nearly six hundred years old that he was currently standing on the bridge of. Two heavy cruisers nearly as old. Three tenders. Three destroyers.


    No carriers. No missile wagons.


    "Give the station orders to evacuate. Get the Lanstrek''s Pride in there to take on the personnel. Tell them to hurry," N''Skrek ordered. He looked at his XO. "Get the Marines in armor. Tell them to prepare for boarders."


    "One thousand contacts. More incoming."


    The words thudded onto the bridge.


    "Get Hop Skip Jump out of here. Tell them to warn VN-28321. Tell Five Strands of Grass to go to MS-2387, warn them," he ordered.


    "Fifteen hundred contacts in the Megaconstruct or Gigaconstruct range," the sensors said. "Mar-gite travel constructs have begun warping back out. Approximate heading is VN-28321."


    N''Skrek ground his mouth plates together as personnel rushed into the bridge, taking over consoles, powering them up, and settling down.


    Captain Rawgnawrk moved in, her uniform perfect.


    N''Skrek was suddenly furious that the Captain had taken the time to get her full uniform on and make sure it was perfect instead of sprinting for the bridge.


    She stared at the holotank.


    "That''s... that''s impossible," she said. She turned to the midshipman who was standing up to allow the ranking sensor technician to sit down. "You expect me to believe that more Mar-gite than we''ve seen in all three wars are just jumping into the system? A megacluster? Gigaclusters? Something even bigger?" Her voice sounded more like someone outraged at a lie than someone shocked to disbelief.


    The midshipman''s spines on the back of his head rattled slightly with agitation. "Yes, ma''am. I verified it with shipboard, task force, and system sensor arrays."


    She turned back to the holotank and stared.


    "Two thousand present in system. Eight hundred have jumped out," the lieutenant at the sensor board said, their voice shocked. "Five hundred more have just made entrance into the system."


    "Evacuate the system! Order the task force to retreat to VN-28321!" the Captain called out. "Least time heading."


    "What about the station?" N''Skrek asked.


    "Tell the Lanstrek''s Pride to hurry it up," the Captain said. She turned to the helm. "Get us out of here."


    "Plotting course," astrogation called out.


    "We could at least provide cover," N''Skrek said.


    "Against this?" she waved at the holotank as another batch appeared. "We don''t even have enough bullets," she turned away. "No, we need to retreat, regroup at VN-28321."


    N''Skrek held his tongue, just staring at the icon of Lanstrek''s Pride, which had just docked with the station.


    The small task force turned and began running from the crescent waves of incoming forces. Long minutes passed. N''Skrek could see one of the Megaconstructs moving toward the station, breaking off several smaller boarding constructs.


    Good luck, you poor brave bastards, he thought.


    "Ready to go to hyperspace," navigation stated.


    "New contact. Vessel is metallic and technological in makeup. Hyperspace exit energies confirmed," the sensor officer called out.


    "Jump when ready," the Captain called out.


    "3... 2..." the helm called out.


    "DEATHBLOSSOM SPOTTED! TWO, FIVE, EIGHT..." scanning called out.


    The ship seemed to lean forward and drop back at the same time and N''Skrek felt the distinctive feeling of the ship going to the hyperspace bands.


    There was a bright flash from the holodeck and every active screen.


    The lights went out.


    The environmental went out.


    The hyperdrive kept running.


    "Ma''am," the helmsman said.


    "Report," the Captain said.


    "She''s a dead stick."


    -----


    "Up high! Three-o-clock!" someone called out.


    Jaskel got the M318A4e8 swung around, letting off the firing grip slightly. He was panting inside his armor, his faceplate streaked from where a Mar-gite had managed to swipe on arm across his face and cause the armaplas to ripple before the enzyme laden fluid boiled away in vacuum.


    A cluster of Mar-gite, maybe fifty in all, each touching the end of at least four other''s arms, was floating toward the Lanstrek''s Pride. He got the M318 lined up and squeezed the grip, the firing lever embedded in the grip depressing.


    --slush rising 45% heat 62%-- his green battle buddy 8814 said.


    "Keep me in the fight! They''re almost loaded!" Jaskel said.


    He had only been on the hull of the ship to clear it, then to keep it clear, for ten minutes.


    It was the longest ten minutes of his life.


    He was back to back with four other Telkan Marines, fighting to keep the small destroyer clear along with the rest of 5697 Power Armor Battalion. All of them with M318s, all of them running a near continuous stream of fire.


    The rounds hammered into the boarding cluster and he walked it in a contracting spiral, his smartlink letting him put the bullets right where the pip showed.


    "Kilo Company from 5698 Battalion are still holding at the engine rooms," Captain Mrepek said. "Alpha has environmental, Hotel has the Bridge," he panted for a moment. "Keep it up. They''re almost loaded."


    Jaskel saw it. A slight blurring in his vision.


    It unfolded, like an origami flower made of gauzy energy.


    Ships exited, close enough he could see details even without enhancement from his armor.


    Huge ships. Gray structure.


    "We''ve got more company!" Jaskel called out, linking the Captain with his visor.


    "They''re onboard!" the Captain said. "Fall back to the hatch, keep trying to keep the hull clear and we''ll..."


    The ship suddenly broke away from the station. Jaskel could see pressurized boarding tube shatter with a spray of ice crystals. He felt like he was being rolled and leaning back at the same time.


    "Bridge, what are you..." the Captain said over the open channel.


    More ships slid from the gauzy flower.


    "NO, YOU IDIOTS, WE AREN''T ONBOARD!" the Captain yelled.


    The stars seemed to tunnel down to Jaskel, even as he lashed another boarding cluster with fire from his M318. His heat alarms were wailing and his mass was down to 26.5%.


    There was a bright flash just as the stars turned into streaks that raced toward him.


    His armor systems flickered, the OS almost crashed, errors popped up all over his visor.


    He could hear himself panting and making an anxious whining noise.


    He could see eternity.


    --i got it i got it i got it-- 8814 said.


    He just stared at the streaks the stars had become.


    And the darkness between them.


    --don''t look! Don''t Look!


    DON''T LOOK!--

 Nova Wars - Chapter 24

    Never say it will never happen. No matter what the circumstances, it will never happen.


    I''m saying never say never.


    You think nobody is stupid enough to be outside a ship when it goes to hyperspace?


    Nobody is stupid enough for it to happen by accident with all the safeties and protocol?


    I''m here to tell you, some jackass will do it on purpose just to see what it is like. - Hyperdrive Mk 0 design board memo


    The stars streak toward him, filling his vision. The middle went black and slowly spread out, the gaps between the streaks grew larger.


    Color began filling them. Geometric shapes being hinted at. Swirling, flashing colors that sometimes streaked away and other times morphed and warped.


    --DON''T LOOK DON''T LOOK DON''T LOOK-- was streaming down his visor, but by the halfway point it slid to the side and streaked away.


    A screaming Telkan Marine in full power armor come out of the black, tumbling, and hit him, phased through him, merged with him.


    He knew it was Xulrek, Second Squad, Third Platoon, Bravo Company, from Nevelstet-4.


    More streaks. He saw at least three other screaming Telkan slam into/through/past/around him.


    His suit went dead. The linkage from the M318 went dead.


    He could hear himself breathing, hear tones and chimes and ringing and squeals.


    --DON''T LOOK DON''T LOOK DON''T LOOK--


    He could hear his heartbeat thudding in his chest.


    He was suddenly falling, thrown backwards, still while the universe moved around him, thrown upwards, pulled to the right and left, pulled in two directions at the same time.


    Pulled from everywhere all at once.


    The stars came back with a grand crescendo of noise.


    He vomited into his skull his brains leaking out his ears and from his eyebrows.


    The music of the spheres went through his stunned brain.


    He turned inside out and upside down.


    His fur rubbed against each other as the vomit in his skull ran down the inside of his armor.


    A burning white hot hook grabbed behind his nose and yanked him rightside in.


    He was tumbling, falling, spinning. The stellar mass kept whipping by. He could see huge constructs on the distance.


    Training pulled his arms and legs in, cradling the M318 close, as he moved to the fetal position.


    He managed to get the bit in the middle of the funnel between his teeth in time.


    He projectile vomited into the tube.


    He was aware he''d lost control of his bladder and bowels.


    He let go of the bit and whooped a big inhale, then started panting.


    His suit was stifling, hot, the air too thin and stale at the same time.


    Reflexes and instinct told him to paw at his faceplate. Pull it off. Get a deep breath. Yank his helmet off.


    Training kept his hands still.


    --hang on rebooting--


    It wasn''t the visor, it was appearing in the middle of his retinal link, the words jammed up and the spacing between letters too far as the letters merged together and bled together and ran down the inside of his iris to pool behind his lower eyelid and slowly slide out to slide down his face and


    The suit went live for a second. The visor flashed white and went frosted.


    The suit went dead.


    --running checks--


    The letters spiraled around each other, swirling and moving, then shrinking to a pinpoint before exploding out of his vision to stick on the inside of his visor and slowly drip down.


    He managed to get the bit between his teeth in time to dry heave convulsively into the puke funnel.


    He felt ghostly fingers plucking at his marrow. Red hot claws tickling his nerve endings in his joints. Ghostly taps against the inside of his eyeballs.


    The suit went live.


    Then died again.


    --complete failure of anything not backup hardwired-- 8814 sent over the retinal link.


    The words whirled and spun and he pressed his nose into the vomit funnel as he dry heaved again.


    Stars, the stellar mass, impossibly huge objects, flashes, streaks, and discolored space filled his vision as his visor stayed clear. The light from the star seared his eyes, crisped his fur, scorched his soul.


    He closed his eyes.


    Training kicked in.


    I am a Telkan Marine. I always maintain my arms, my equipment, and myself. I am an expert and I am a professional. I am the bulwark of the Confederacy. I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy, the enemies of the Confederacy. This I hereby swear upon my life.


    He swallowed, getting control of his stomach.


    I am Private First Class Jaskel, a Telkan Marine, the bulwark and armored fist of the Confederacy, he told himself.


    The sip of water training demanded tasted like lilies soaked in raspberry jam.


    My weapons, my training, my courage, my expertise keep the people of the Confederacy safe regardless of species, ethos, creed, or religion.


    Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    He swallowed another swig of tepid water.


    It tasted like asphalt smelled.


    War father protect me, guide my hands, steady my weapons systems and steel my greenie. Grant me the strength for one last stand, one last push, one last trigger pull, one last breath that I may be judged by my ancestors as worthy. Counted on the rolls among the honored dead. May my enemies burn in the fires of scarred Telkan, amen.


    He could feel the strength, the sensation coming back to numbed limbs.


    The suit rebooted.


    The OS crashed.


    But he could feel the slight tremor he''d never felt before that let him know his faithful suit wasn''t completely dead.


    --got atmo and life support most other systems down coding and os is hashed-- 8814 said.


    "Can you hear me?" Jaskel asked. His voice was high, tight, from fear and stress and he cursed himself.


    --yes--


    "Did you take that hit?"


    --no greenie shell housing stabilized for lots-- 8814 said over the link. --how about you you stared eternity everything nothing in the face--


    "I think I threw up inside my skull," Jaskel said.


    --biometrics shaky looks like died at least three times-- 8814 said. --what happened--


    "Ship crew panicked. We had a good two hundred boarding stars heading for us and they rolled the ship," he said. He remembered the boarding tube shattering, the way the station started to tear apart as the ship''s grav drive shredded the superstructure.


    "They did an emergency jump to hyperspace before we could get onboard," Jaskel said. He felt fury well up. "They killed the whole battalion."


    --trying to get commo up-- 8814 said. --sar beacon is pinging--


    "Don''t bother," he said.


    The stellar mass slowly went across his visor, the smartfilm darkening it mechanically.


    "There''s nobody out here."


    The stars went by.


    His bone marrow and nerves were still being plucked and tapped.


    --system is fried looks like complete os and vi and complex process activation model crash-- 8814 said. --going to have to wipe everything but hardwire and reload all software from cold storage--


    "Well, we''re not in any hurry," Jaskel said. He gave a wry chuckle that grave humor sucked dry. "I''ll try to make sure we don''t wake the neighbors."


    --har har har--


    Jaskel was glad he was wearing a standard assault suit, rather than the scout suit. Standard assault suits had their own reactor sets, all the way down to a zero-point backup. They were basically self-contained armored spaceships without any drives or thrusters.


    "Who do you think the grey guys were?" Jaskel asked after a while.


    --grey guys like the Greys-- 8814 said. --greys vanished everyone thinks were eaten by mar-gite--


    "No, big gray ships. We''re talking as big as one of those standard Mar-gite hive constructs," he said. "Well, I''d show you in the battle-WORM, but it fried out."


    --maybe not battle-worm survive almost anything-- 8814 was silent for a minute. --ooh boy--


    "What?" Jaskel said.


    --nasty ships not recognize-- 8814 said. --but other problem--


    "What?" he felt stupid, like he was constantly repeating things.


    --rebooted radar so can keep meteor from hitting us rebooted sensors but on machine language data only translation libraries still decompressing from storage-- 8814 said. --bad news--


    "Hit me," Jaskel said.


    --we are out past gas giant-- 8814 replied.


    "Great. So we''re screwed. Just waiting for the power to fail and we die or we spend the next fifty years living off of nutripaste, recycled piss, and bad breath," Jaskel said, shaking his head.


    There was silence for a while. He started panting as the heat rose. Sweat covered him. He kept taking drinks of the water but it tasted flat and like old motor oil and sweat, doing nothing for his thirst.


    The fans kicked on, sputtered, died, then kicked on again at low speed.


    --got enviro up more-- 8814 said. --gun dead but ammo forge working--


    "Thanks. Was getting hot in here," Jaskel said.


    --storing heat in thermal cores to use later so do not freeze to death--


    "Good plan."


    More silence. Jaskel just took a nap, relaxing. He knew a nap would help his body and mind heal from what he had just been through.


    He dreamed of Telkan even though he had never been there.


    A pinging woke him up.


    --trouble-- 8814 said.


    "We''re out past the Oort Cloud and in the gulf between arms?" Jaskel guessed.


    --system not have Oort Cloud-- 8814 said. --news may be worse may be better--


    "We''re in a system being overrun by the Mar-gite," Jaskel said.


    --yes--


    "The task force had to flee."


    --yes--


    "We were exposed, unprotected, to hyperspace entry."


    --yes--


    "Our suit failed and we fell off the ship after like a half-second."


    --yes--


    "We''re past the gas giant and heading for the deep dark."


    --yes--


    "While the Mar-gite and an unknown force fight."


    --yes--


    "In a busted suit."


    --yes--


    "And our guns are dead."


    --yes--


    "All right. Hit me with the news."


    --radar contact moving in--


    "Not like we can do anything about it. Can you at least stop my spin?" Jaskel asked.


    --sorry grav systems offline no eva thrusters--


    "Well, there''s nothing we can do about whatever they''re doing so we might as well not stress out over it," Jaskel said. He gave a big sigh, still feeling the ghostly plucking at his bone marrow and scraping of tinsel over his nerves.


    After a long moment he felt soft but unyielding hands cradle him, slowing down his rotation, bringing him to a ''stop'' so the stars and the stellar mass weren''t whipping across his vision.


    After a moment, he could see bay doors go by as he was pulled into a ship''s boarding bay. He could see painted lines and stenciled runes, floor decking, and definite technology.


    "Well, at least it''s not the Mar-gite," he said.


    --watch bright side-- 8814 said.


    As the doors closed he could feel the grip on him tighten slightly.


    "Do we have any suit function?" Jaskel asked.


    --negative lost limb control on third reboot--


    He could tell the bay was repressurized by that slight change in clarity that always happened.


    After a moment he felt the suit lifted. His faceplate went dark when something was put over it. He could tell he was being carried, but the ride was smooth. After a moment he was set down.


    --something trying to link to suit-- 8814 said.


    "Let it. Might as well see what they can do," he said.


    After almost a full minute 8814 sent a string of emojis indicating shock and surprise.


    --antiviral software os and suit was infected by malware and virii--


    "Is it working?"


    --cutting out suit functions like mobility-- 8814 said. --whoever it is they know suit encryption and suit code--


    ASSUMING CONTROL appeared on his visor. FEAR NOT


    "Oh, like that is reassuring," Jaskel said.


    --just got locked out of control systems can still talk to you--


    There was a long moment of silence.


    Then his armor moved around him, standing him up. The visor cleared and he could see around him.


    He was standing in what was obviously a medical bay. There were tables and gurneys, medical monitors, and the outline of a Telkan on one of the interactive 2.5D screens behind one of the tables. Another, smaller table had the outline of a greenie on the 2.5D screens next to it.


    In front of him stood two obvious robots.


    They were bipedal. Two arms, two legs, head on top of the torso that was half of the body mass. They were white plastic that was almost opaque but Jaskel could see electronics and robotics underneath the plastic plating. The coloration was weird, the edges were opaque white but it became more transparent toward the middle of the plates. The joints, waist, and neck had obvious robotics. The head was robotic with a blank white opaque plastic oval at the front.


    As he watched, the oval on the front of the head seemed to suck inward, becoming contoured, with a nose, chin, cheeks, eye sockets, brow ridge. Two splits in the eye sockets opened to reveal lavender colored eyes. The mouth slit changed so that it had lips which parted to reveal white enamel teeth.


    "That''s... that''s..." Jaskel stammered.


    --a terran-- 8814 answered.


    "YoU aR3 iN in IN in IN n33d oF MediCA-ca-ca-CAL aT-ten-10-TENti0n," the one on the left said.


    The voice was made up of different words, syllables, sounds from different speakers. Some male, some female. Some spoke in a sigh, others harsh and aggressive.


    Still others sounded like they were screaming.


    Speaking Old Confederate Standard.


    "y0U aR3 SUFFER-suffer-suFFER-SUFFERing hyperSPACE-ace-ace expOHzur3!" another said, the last part a shout. "YOUR-your-YOUR lifeSIGN-sign-SIGNs WIll TERminATE-terminate-Terminate-TERMINATE withOUT medICal atTENTion."


    --these aren''t terrans-- 8814 said. --sound like pawm--


    "Oh, crap," Jaskel said.


    "DO n0T b3-be-be-BE AFR1AD, T3Lkan-kan-kan-KAN! Do not-not-NOT FEAR **Man-**man-MAN-TID. YOu Ar3 AmoNG FRiend friend FRIENDS," the robot said, gesturing at the table.


    --suit ejection triggered-- 8814 warned.


    His suit cracked open as his neural plug disengaged. For a moment his knees gave out and he sagged/stumbled from the suit.


    One of the robots caught him, surprisingly gentle.


    "You are suffer-*suffer-*SUFFERing jumpshock-shock-SHOCK!" the robot said, guiding him to the bed.


    Jaskel turned to look in time to see another robot gently catch 8814 when the engineer protective housing opened and the diminutive green mantid poured out with the kinetic shock gel.


    The robots laid him onto the bed and stood beside his bed.


    "Who," he licked suddenly dry lips. "Who are you?"


    The robot leaned forward slightly.


    "We are-are-ARE humanity."


    "shit"

 Nova Wars - Chapter 25

    The fact the universe is malevolent makes it an interesting place - Unknown Terran, Age of Agony, 415 Post-Glassing


    The more complex a system is, the more points of failure are introduced. Assuming that acting on one part of a system will not cause an effect upon another part of the system is lunacy. Complex systems can be completely redefined or destroyed by a change upon a simple seeming point. - Terran Technical Manual, Age of Paranoia


    How the fuck do I know how it works? Do I look like a hyperdrive engineer? You push the button and it goes. Look, buddy, do you want to buy it or not? - Telkan Free Trader, 4871 Post TXE


    I threw up inside my skull. - Private First Class Jaskel, Telkan Marine Corps, XIXth Division, Fourth Mar-gite War


    Commodore N''Skrek adjusted his seat at the table and restrained his impulse of sharpening his bladearms. The Chief Engineer and her Chief Green Mantid Engineer were standing next to the 2.5D display showing the ship.


    It was largely dark. Only a handful of systems, and those in discreet clusters, were amber. A few more than a handful were red.


    There were no green systems. Everything else was dark.


    He listened closely to the briefing.


    The ship was still in hyperspace, still moving right along. Environmental was working on local control. The nutriforges worked on local control. There was a single creation engine fabricator working on local control, although the Chief Engineer admitted she did not know why it was working. The lights were on. Doors worked.


    That was it.


    There was no contact with the rest of the task force. There was not even intercom usage within the ship. Attempts to bring the systems back online caused a massive data corruption cascading failure overload, in some cases damaging the computer systems themselves.


    Commodore N''Skrek had a bad feeling in his ichor. A slight chill, a slight tremor in his thorax. A slight prickly feeling down his thoraxial spine to his secondary brain.


    He''d never had that feeling before.


    "What about bringing up clean copies from deep storage?" Captain Rawgnawrk asked.


    "We tried that. After the third time, while we were extracting the cold storage copies something inside our systems attacked the cold storage, physically melting down the servers," Chief Engineer Mo''obri''yan stated. She shook her long, equine-like head, blinking all six eyes. "Whatever it is, it''s hiding in our system and launching attacks on anything requiring more processing power than a wrist-comp."


    "We still have the two air-gapped emergency data backup cores, so there''s that," The Lanaktallan engineer tapped the computer core icon on the wireframe and it expanded out. "These are completely powered down," she tapped the two auxiliary and the emergency backup cores. "These are down too. Just attempting to get power to them results in a crash."


    "How?" Captain Rawgnawrk asked.


    "In order to get power to them, they need the computers running to meter the power, ensure the correct voltage, amperage, and wattage is applied in the correct places in the correct orders," the Chief Engineer stated. "Bringing those computers up, which is part of the bootup phase, causes them to crash out."


    She folded all four arms across her chest.


    "We''ve been in hyperspace for sixty hours. We have no idea what direction we are going or even how fast," Captain Rawgnawrk said. "Can''t you shut down the hyperdrive core?"


    The Chief Engineer shook her head, making her feeding tendrils lining her jaw shake. "No. Unfortunately a hypercore is a self-sustaining reaction once you power it up."


    "What about the drives themselves?" Captain Rawgnawrk asked.


    "If we try taking the engines offline, the core will explode, or the drive will explode, or we''ll have uneven hyperspace transitional energy balance and the ship will tear itself into pieces," Mo''obri''yan stated.


    "Why is the creation engine still powered?" N''Skrek asked.


    The Greenie moved up, tapping the board.


    CLASS-VIII CREATION ENGINE - MANUFACTURED ON MARS - 8248 PG appeared on the screen.


    "It''s a refurbishment," the Chief Engineer said. "Nobody''s been able to build creation engines since about 150 Post-Terran Xenocide Event. Not even Telkan or Smokey Cone. It''s not a warsteel capable one, those are all gone and have been for about thirty thousand years, but it can still manufacture parts we need."


    N''Skrek stared at the wireframe of the ship.


    "I have an idea," he said slowly.


    The entire table of officers stared at him. He was known to make decisions slowly and by the book. Many people wondered if his Matron had dallied with a Tukna''rn.


    He got up slowly, moving over to the 2.5D screen.


    "Can you bring up every single system that is offline?" he asked.


    The green engineer tapped the screen a few times.


    "OK? Now what?" Captain Rawgnawrk asked.


    N''Skrek stared at it. It was a lot of systems.


    "Bring up the computer systems. Bring up anything with any type of computing power, even if it''s the equivalent of a wrist-watch," N''Skrek said.


    That brought up a lot of sections.


    "Physically cut, and I mean, air-gap them by at least a meter, every single system that does not actually need to talk to other systems. Hardcut everything into local control," N''Skrek said.


    "How''s that going to help?" Captain Rawgnawrk asked, squinting suspiciously.


    The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    "I''m getting to that," N''Skrek said. He looked at the Chief Engineer. "Physically remove all computing components. Toss them into the mass grinder. Use the creation engine to rebuild each part. Put it back in. Load up the data, put it on physical medium, take it to the new computer equipment, load it in by hand."


    The Chief Engineer nodded. "You''re talking days of work."


    "And the whole time we''ll be moving through hyperspace in an unknown direction at an unknown speed," Captain Rawgnawrk stated.


    N''Skrek tapped part of the wireframe, bringing up the hyperdrive core.


    "Have two of the Marines in full power armor get one of the rocket launchers out of the armory and blow it up," he said. "Or, make that one of the main focuses once we see if this works or not."


    Captain Rawgnawrk nodded slowly. "If we can rebuild the systems attached to it, then we do. If not," she shook her head then laughed.


    "I guess we''ll see what happens when you blow your hypercore during hyperspace transit."


    -----


    The pain started slow.


    A slight itch in the extremities.


    Then his tailbone started to ache.


    Then it felt like he could feel the tips of his fur.


    Then his bone marrow started to feel warm and prickly.


    It was right after that that the pain set in.


    When asked about it, later in life, even by his fellow Telkan Marines, Jaskel was never ashamed to admit one thing.


    He screamed.


    A lot.


    He could hear beeping, hear and feel doctors around him, feel injections, feel drills bite into his bones and cartilage, feel needles pull fluid from him.


    At one point he saw a robotic doctor pull a mechanical snake from his belly that screamed YOU BELONG TO US! before it was ripped in half and crushed.


    All he could do was scream.


    He was joined by another Telkan, that he vaguely recognized as Xulrek, when the other Telkan Marine exploded from a lanced boil that had grown to the size of Jaskel''s head on his lower back.


    The pain, the agony went on and on.


    And then it was gone.


    Jaskel opened his eyes slowly, expecting the soft white light of the medical bay to cause his eyeballs to rupture and spill burning warsteel down his face.


    Again.


    The equipment was beeping steadily. It was quiet, hushed, around him. A privacy screen and a physical curtain surrounded him.


    Hovering next to the bed was a metallic wedge, shaped like a pumpkin seed, with two round orbs of black macroplas on the wide end. It had small graspers and metallic tentacles hanging below it and it hovered silently in midair.


    A tentacle was poking at an instrument, bringing up different readouts.


    "DECLARATIVE STATEMENT: PATIENT HAS SURVIVED HYPERSPACE EXPOSURE THERAPIES!" the voice boomed out. It gave a squealing, stuttering laugh made up of different voices laughing, sometimes overlapping. "DECLARATIVE STATEMENT: PATIENT IS FORTUNATE TO BE IN PRIME PHYSICAL CONDITION. OBSERVATIONAL STATEMENT: PATIENT IS TELKAN, ALLIED SPECIES OF TERRAN CONFEDERACY OF ALIGNED SYSTEMS."


    Jaskel nodded, swallowing thickly. "Yes," he managed to whisper.


    A plastic cup lifted up and smoothly moved over to him, hovering in midair. Jaskel took it and sipped at it.


    Citrus flavored water.


    "DECLARATIVE STATEMENT: TELKAN PATIENT WILL RECOVER COMPLETELY BEFORE FLEET HAS REGROUPED. DECLARATIVE STATEMENT: TELKAN PATIENT WILL BE REMITTED TO CONFEDERATE AUTHORITIES AT FIRST AVAILABLE OPPORTUNITY!" the chrome wedge proclaimed. There was silent for a second. "TERMINATION OF CONVERSATION."


    It turned and floated away, moving through the curtain.


    Jaskel just kept sipping at the flavored water, enjoying how it soothed his vocal cords.


    A robot came in. Mechanical parts exposed at the joints, white plastic plating. It looked like a Telkan, only slightly off somehow. The front faceplate, opaque plastic at the edges and slightly transparent at the middle to give hints of the mechanisms underneath, sucked inward to create a Telkan-esque face.


    "Declarative statement: Fleet is retreating. Declarative statement: Patient will be put in stasis during transfer. Declarative statement: Patient will be remitted to Confederate forces if present in system," the robot stated.


    "Uh, thank..." Jaskel got out.


    Everything tasted like old spoiled nangaberries and froze.


    Everything came back, the vision of the robot and the medical bay streaking away, fading away weirdly.


    "Can you hear me, Private Jaskel?" came a soothing voice.


    It was one voice.


    Jaskel turned and looked.


    A russet mantid was next to his bed, standing on a hoverdisk that hummed softly. She had on her surgical garb and a sterifield glimmered around her.


    "Yes," Jaskel said.


    "Good," she looked at the datapad in her hand. "What do you remember?"


    It came rushing back. The Mar-gite flooding the system. A smaller construct shedding literally thousands of boarding clusters at the Lanstrek''s Pride. How the ship had jumped to hyperspace with his battalion still on the hull.


    Hyperspace burning into his brain.


    Being rescued. The weird robots. Then...


    ...still...


    "I remember, weird white plastic robots," he said.


    The russet mantid nodded. "You were dropped off by the Grey Fleet."


    Jaskel frowned. "My greenie?"


    "8814 was delivered as you and several other members of your unit were, in a stasis field," the russet said. "Like you, he has hyperspace shock," she paused. "According to the medical report, you were exposed to hyperspace while only protected by your combat armor?"


    Jaskel nodded. "Yeah," he looked around. "Where am I?"


    "DYN-772343, it''s the first system after the bulwark systems," she said. "You''re on Rentwark Station."


    "Who were they?" he asked.


    The russet flickered an icon of confusion between her antenna. "We don''t know. It''s presumed they''re Terrans, but they don''t talk. They don''t interact. Honestly, you''re lucky they picked you up and dropped you off. Usually they just observe or leave the moment they are detected."


    He suddenly remembered the Mar-gite again.


    "Has anyone alerted command? The Mar-gite are coming!" he was suddenly filled with urgency. "Not a few, we''re talking all the Mar-gite. Ever. They were still warping into the system when we jumped, even after a bunch jumped out!"


    He tried to grab the russet and found he was restrained. "You could see the clusters at stellar distances! They were huge! There were a bunch of them still coming in!"


    She nodded. "Confed Space Force is moving ships in to stop them," she looked confident. "Those systems are designed to hold them off. I''m sure there wasn''t quite as many as you saw."


    For a moment he heard the weird, multi-voiced overlapping speech of the robots.


    fleet has regrouped


    That didn''t sound to Jaskel like the actions of a fleet that was winning hands down.


    "You should be able to be released in the next seventy-two hours," the russet said. The disc turned around. "We have a Telkan Marine detachment here on the station. You''ll be attached to them until PERSCOM can cut you orders."


    For some reason, that didn''t make Jaskel feel better.


    -----


    N''Skrek stood by the gunner''s station, staring at the silver threads that had leaked through the hull and were now coating the front of bulkhead only a few meters down from the inner secondary hull of the forward bow.


    A ghostly figure moved through the passageway, moaning softly, pulling at its phantom hair and at its sleeves.


    "There she is again, sir," the seaman next to him, a Saurian Compact Kobold, said. "She creeps everyone out."


    N''Skrek looked at the line of salt across the passageway.


    "Good plan with the salt. Shades are rare, but it looks like the Malevolent Universe has decided to give us the grand tour of the fun of hyperspace," N''Skrek said.


    "Commodore N''Skrek," his implant chirped.


    There was a faint mutter behind it.


    That had started two sleep cycles ago and had slowly been getting stronger.


    N''Skrek knew better than to try to hear what was being muttered.


    "Here," he said, touching his cheek out of habit.


    "Chief Engineer Mo''obri''yan is ready," he heard.


    "We''re ready here," N''Skrek said.


    The line closed without any formality.


    The lights flashed three times and went to red.


    The faint glowing figure shrieked in anger and lunged into the forward bulkhead, hands outstretched, fleeing the light.


    The lights flashed twice.


    Then once.


    "Here we go," he said.


    It felt like he hit a wall and bounced. Like he was being squeezed from every direction even as he was pulled apart from every other direction. He felt like he was being turned inside out.


    He found himself laying on the floor. His right forward foot hurt and he looked over at it.


    It was fused into the deck plating.


    He looked up.


    The transparent human was gone. The salt line was still present.


    But the threads were dissolving.


    N''Skrek looked at the kobold, who had their hands holding their jaws shut, obviously trying not to vomit.


    "We''ve dropped into realspace," he said.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 25

    By Confederate Space Force standards, the Hamaroosan ship Catch These Catching Hands Sucker was a heavy superdreadnought. By Hamaroosan standards it was a heavy battleship. The keel laid down over 600 years prior, it had served through a dozen wars and pounded entire fleets into junk with its mighty C+ cannons, plasma wave phase motion guns, its missile pod launchers, and every other weapon the huge ship carried. Additionally, its parasite craft were closer to corvettes and frigates than normal parasite craft. It had a ship''s complement of nearly eight thousand Hamaroosan, and it was considered a duty posting of pride and honor.


    Even at VN-28321, which was the middle of the three stars between the galactic arms.


    Most species considered it a punishment duty.


    The Hamaroosan had lost 6.2 billion citizens to the Mar-gite Resurgence.


    They did not intend to lose any more.


    The ship made up part of Task Force Sleepy Podling, a twenty-five ship force centered around the superdreadnought Your Carrier Signal is About to be Lost out of the Digital Artificial Sentience Systems.


    A hundred years ago, the there had been six tasks forces on station.


    The belief that the Mar-gite would never return this time had slowly eaten away at the picket strength of the system.


    The one problem with Catch These Catching Hands Sucker was its need for steady maintenance. While it could operate for years just based on the massive creation engines embedded in its hull, all of them built before the Terran Extinction Event, the Task Force Admiral (Upper Decks) preferred that the massive ship receive its maintenance from the space station orbiting the sole gas giant.


    Which was why Lieutenant (Senior Grade) Valandee was watching the techs finally put back on the casing over the massive fusion reactor''s radiation shielding. The techs were all civilians, and in Lt Valandee''s opinion, entirely too leisurely for his comfort.


    His right hand aunt would have called them ''lazy grifters'' and had them thrown out the airlock.


    The whole ship was without power. All of the computers were completely shut down and locked down since the particle screens were offline. The intercom was out. The soup was put back in the bottles. Even the lights were turned off, only the battery powered emergency lights and the light stands attached to their own power sources providing light.


    Which was why he was using the night vision option of his cybereyes to watch the civilians work.


    Slowly.


    His comlink beeped and he tapped it, already seeing Commodore Freelima''s icon in his retinal link.


    "Valandee here," he said.


    "ETA to reactors being brought online?" the Commodore asked.


    "Hour, maybe two at the pace they''re working," Valandee said.


    "Keep bridge and CIC posted," Freelima stated, then cut the link.


    He shared her irritation.


    Another sip of his coffee cup and he sighed, moving over to the reclamator and staring at it. He jammed the quikplas cup into it and moved back over to watch the civilians keep working.


    They had four of the Telkan Marines and two of the Confederate Marine Corps Marines helping them put the plating back on while they ''supervised'' slowly and moved like cold molasses to tighten the fixtures to keep the plating in place.


    He turned to the Master Guns, opening his mouth to ask the big Treana''ad if the civilians could go any slower when he felt it.


    Ghostly plucking at his bone marrow.


    Both he and the Master Guns went ramrod straight. They both reached up to touch their own temples, bringing their comlinks on.


    The lines were jammed on his end.


    "Get them all up! Get them in full armor. I don''t care if you have to tear the armory open with your bare hands, you get them suited up!" Master Guns was snapping into his comlink when Valandee quit trying to get through.


    More ghostly plucking.


    "Those are the big guns, sir," Master Guns Vo''Na''ark said, looking at Valandee. "I''m getting the Marines in armor."


    One of the civilians yelled something as all four Marines suddenly set down the panels and took off at a hurried pace. Not quite a run, not quite a speed walk, about the safest speed you wanted to go through the passageways of a ship the size of the Catch These Catching Hands Sucker.


    "Get into hard suits!" Valandee snapped, moving forward and waving his catching hands at the civilians.


    "We need some help to put these panels back on," one said.


    More ghostly plucking.


    "What is that?" another asked.


    "That''s C+ cannons firing," Valandee said. He pointed at the emergency lockers. "Get into hard suits now," he snapped.


    "Excuse me, you can''t use that tone on," one began to say, putting her hands on her hips.


    "We''re a sleeping duck here," Valandee said. "We don''t even have particle shields up. We catch so much as a graze, it''ll rip right through the hull and you''ll all be dead."


    His comlink pinged.


    Commodore Freelima again.


    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    "Valandee here."


    "Get that reactor online," she snapped. "Mar-gite are coming into the system. We''re disconnecting from the space station right now. We''re using the maneuvering thrusters on local control as soon as we can."


    "We''re going back to the space station," the female Cemtrary said huffily.


    "We''re about to break from the space station, get in those damned suits!" Valandee wished it was permissible to hit non-Hamaroosan with his crop.


    He dropped his hand to his pistol and made a show of unsnapping the retaining strap.


    "Now."


    They all moved over, some moving slowly until he yelled at them. When they started putting them on he reached for his comlink stud.


    His cybereyes suddenly went white and his mastoid implant gave out a screech into his sensitive ears.


    His eyes reboot quickly, coming back on grainy then clearing up.


    He tapped his comlink.


    "Freelima here," was the answer.


    "What just happened?" he asked.


    "Unknown, everyone just had their ware reboot," she said.


    He stood there for a second.


    "There''s something wrong," he said.


    "What?" Commodore Freelima trusted Valandee''s instincts.


    He stood for another second.


    That''s when it dawned on him.


    "The guns have stopped firing!" he said. He turned to the two greenies, already in hard armor, by the reactor stations. "GET THAT ONLINE!"


    "What? What... you''re right, I don''t feel them firing," Freelima said. Her voice got tight. "Get that reactor up, Lieutenant. I don''t care if you''re going to fry, the Sucker needs power."


    "Roger, ma''am," he said.


    The greenies were already moving.


    "You can''t! We don''t have the casing on," one of the civilians said.


    "Then get the casing on!" he yelled.


    "We can''t, you''re going to start it up," the huffy voiced female said.


    The greenies were pumping the hand-pump to generate the electricity needed to fire up the consoles. The bottom three red were filled and the bottom amber was starting to flicker.


    There was another flash and his optics reboot again.


    The lights next to the handpump were dark again.


    The two greenies staggered, hands going to their heads, their legs giving out and forcing them to use their bladearms to stop them from going face first into the deck.


    "What the hell is that?" Valandee asked.


    He realized that his comlink had reboot and wasn''t coming back online.


    Think too long, you''re wrong, cadet! the voice of the big Rigellian female drill instructor roared in his head.


    He ran forward, grabbing the hand-pump bar and pulling it up with almost no resistance. He saw "MEDIUM/LARGE USERS GRIP LEVER TILL CLICK" and squeezed tight. Now he could feel the flywheel getting up to speed, the weird ''drag'' on the handle. He pushed it down, pulled it up, feeling his shoulders already starting to strain as he started pumping it up and down.


    Red.


    Amber.


    One of the mantid were on the control panel as panels started coming to life. When he looked at it, panting, he could see a fuzzy distorted static patch between the antenna.


    "more more more" it grated out.


    Nodding, he kept pulling it up and pushing it down.


    Green.


    "this one" another said, pulling open the panel.


    He rushed over to it, grabbing the lever, squeezing the grip lever, and pumping it.


    Between his shoulders was burning.


    Red.


    Amber.


    Green.


    He heard the clacking of the mag bottle solenoids powering up.


    "this one" another greenie grated out, hopping up and down next to another lever.


    He rushed over, looking at the civilians, who were clustered by the vac-suit locker.


    "DO SOMETHING!" he shouted.


    "Union rules forbid us," someone said as Valandee started pumping furiously.


    Red.


    His fur was soaked in sweat. He could feel the back and armpits of his uniform were soaked. It was running down between his legs. His tongue was hanging out as he panted, trying to bleed off more heat.


    Amber.


    His elbows hurt.


    Green.


    "hurry hurry this one" another greenie grated out.


    He rushed over.


    His comlink clinked.


    "Valandee, report," came the Commodore''s voice.


    All he could do was pant as he kept pumping, the flywheel dragging on the magnets to produce current, the capacitors whining as the charged.


    Somehow, she knew what he was doing. "Get us power, sailor," she said, her voice tight with stress. "Valandee, we''re depending on you to get Sucker live."


    He just nodded, sweat running down his face, burning his eyes, getting sucked into his nose as he inhaled, dripping on the floor.


    Red.


    He kept pulling and pushing, his vision going spotty.


    Amber.


    The whole universe had narrowed down to the lights, the bar in his hand, the lever on the grip that he was squeezing tight.


    Green.


    There was a loud humming.


    "here here here hurry hurry" another mantid said.


    He realized that there was at least six in the primary reactor power room.


    The two or three overlapping ones were just one.


    He rushed over, grabbing the lever, starting to pump.


    Red.


    It felt like his fur was suddenly standing up and he could smell lightning.


    Amber.


    "almost almost almost" the greenie said, standing on the board, one bladearm thrust into the dataport.


    He kept pumping, his vision starting to go gray.


    He couldn''t get enough air.


    Green!


    The lights suddenly came on.


    His legs gave out and he half fell half leaned against the console''s case, staring at the lever, which was still trembling slightly as the flywheel slowly spun down.


    His datalink clinked.


    "Valandee," it was the Commodore.


    "Here," he gasped.


    His vision was still full of spots.


    "Get to into armor, get to battlestations," she said.


    Five Confederate Marines in full power armor, with cutting bars and submachineguns ran in.


    "What... what''s going on?" he asked.


    "Not sure. Systems are still coming online. Get into armor, that''s an order," she said. Her voice got tighter, like someone was pressing their thumbs on her vocal cords. "Now. Get up and get into armor now."


    He nodded, even though he knew she couldn''t see him, and staggered over to the emergency locker.


    One of the civilians asked something, he couldn''t hear what over his own breathing and the high pitched whine in his head. He pulled open the locker, grabbing the hardsuit and dragging it out.


    "Here, sir, let me," one of the Marines said.


    "Thanks," he gasped.


    The Marine helped him into the armored vac-suit, holding his belt with his crop and pistol on it until he could buckle it back on.


    "Valandee," it was the Commodore again.


    "Here, ma''am," he said, still breathless.


    "Get to the secondary battle bridge," she said. "Report when you get there."


    "Aye, ma''am," he said. He headed out, reaching the door just as the power room engineers reached it. He didn''t bother saying anything, knowing that they had been on downtime with the entire ship depowered.


    Half the corridors had only emergency lights, twice the lights kicked on then died.


    It took him long minutes to reach the secondary battle bridge. Twice he pressed himself against the wall as fully armored Marines moved by.


    He noted that they were carrying the heavy weaponry, with the ammo-forges already hot.


    He reached the secondary battle bridge and stopped.


    Nobody else was there.


    He tapped the stud, bringing up the comlink and tapped the Commodore.


    "Freelima here," came the answer before the ringtone had even completely played.


    "Valandee, ma''am," he said. "I''m in the secondary battle bridge. There''s nobody here."


    There was silence for a moment. "Do you remember your training to bring it online?"


    He paused. "Yes, ma''am."


    "Good. Libraries are down, you''ll have to do it from memory. Get that bridge up," she said. Her voice firmed up. "It''s a priority, Lieutenant. I don''t care if Enraged Phillip himself comes back and tries to order you somewhere else, you get that bridge online."


    "Yes, ma''am," he said. He moved over to the master control panel, yanking off the front casing to reveal the lever. He started pumping.


    "What''s happening?" he asked.


    "Guns are on local control, we''re trying to bring up the big guns. Launch bays are inop, no power," she said.


    "What''s happening?" he repeated, starting to pant. The burning pain between his shoulder blades and across his chest was back, sinking red hot claws into his flesh.


    "The Mar-gite are back. Get that bridge online."


    "How many?" he asked.


    "Valandee, we''re all counting on you, Lieutenant. Get that bridge up."


    "How many, ma''am?"


    There was silence for a moment.


    "All of them."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 25

    Jaskel had the bed tilted up in the back, so he could sit upright. Next to him was Xulrek, who was eating jello and listening, like Jaskel, to Gunny Zolpad tell a story involving two Rigellian females, a Putimat stripper with one leg, and a box of NeverMelt? ice cream stolen from the Treana''ad chow hall.


    The Gunny seemed to have an endless store of all kinds of misadventures, most of which started with "so, we were drunk as fuck, right..." and ended with "end that''s how we ended up in the cell at the MP station."


    Jaskel actually smiled as the story reached the part where the half-naked Putimat stripper stole the Gunny''s brand new (to him) used Mustang Jackalope CXL that he had just gotten (with a low APR of 62.5% and 1800 easy payments) and left him standing there with her (stolen) cybernetic leg right as the MPs pulled up.


    The Gunny was talking about how he''d jumped out of the MP car at 50 feet and ran into the woods without his pants and only one boot when it happened.


    The lights cut out.


    The medical equipment went dead.


    Jaskel felt his datalink crash and saw static shoot across his vision as cyberware pumped out gibberish and then crashed.


    "Up, get up!" the Gunny yelled, rolling out of his bed.


    Jaskel followed, managing to get to his feet and yank Xulrek out of his bunk.


    The emergency lights clacked on, the medical equipment started to whine.


    Hetrik got caught half out of the bed and screamed as the pressor beams caught him and snapped his leg.


    The Gunny grabbed Hetrik, pulling him up.


    "They''re here," the Gunny said.


    "What? How do you know?" Xulrek asked.


    "Same thing happened to our suits right before we jumped to hyperspace. Suit and cyberware crashed," Jaskel said.


    "Bingo bango," the Gunny said. He pulled Hetrik with him as he moved to the corridor. The doors had all opened as power went out.


    Standard in civilian stations and the exact opposite of military stations. Civilian stations relied on the vacuum sensors to close the doors and maintain atmospheric integrity. Military stations went "LOL, you''re stuck here now, suckers!"


    A Marine hustled by and the Gunny waved at him.


    "What?" the Marine asked. He was a short Puntimat.


    "Your armor locker. It got Telkan suits?" the Gunny asked.


    The Puntimat squinted a second, then nodded. "Yeah."


    "We''re Telkan Marines, you''ve got Mar-gite incoming," the Gunny said. "A whole shitload of them. Where''s greenie medical?"


    "On the way to the armory," the Marine said. He looked around, dug in his pocket, and handed an inhaler to the Gunny. "It''s dorph. Give him a hit," he nodded at the sobbing Hetrik.


    The Gunny didn''t say anything, just shook it and put it up to Hetrik''s nose, squirting twice. He went to hand it back and the Puntimat waved it away. "Got more in my armor''s kit," he looked at Hetrik again. "When we get to the morgue, I''ll do his leg."


    The Gunny nodded, still half-dragging Hetrik.


    "You OK?" Jaskel asked Xulrek. Xulrek nodded, cradling his arm that was wrapped in burn dressing.


    "Just get me in a suit," Xulrek said from between gritted teeth.


    "Oohrah," Jaskel replied.


    "Here," the Marine said. He looked at Hetrik. "Lemme take him. I''ll get him to the morgue and work on his leg."


    The Gunny nodded, transferring Hetrik''s arm to the Confed Marine.


    Jaskel moved in, yelling. "8814!" he called out. "Buddy!"


    "here" came the grinding speech that was so difficult for the green mantids. There was a half dozen greenies gathered up in a small huddle in the middle of the room and a single bladearm raised up.


    Everyone rushed in, kneeling down and letting their greenie get on their shoulder. The Gunny carried 7391, Hetrik''s greenie, who was missing an antenna and still had medgoo on his empty eye socket.


    The group rushed down the hallway, catching up to the Confed Marine right as he slowed down to go into a room.


    "In here," the Marine said.


    Inside was complete confusion. Three Treana''ad warrior caste had sledge hammers while there were others holding flat end prybars against the arms locker door. The three Treana''ad were beating on the prybars, sinking them further and further in between the wall and the heavy armored door.


    Jaskel noted that the wall was what was giving it up.


    "Almost through!" one called out, stepping back and handing the sledge hammer to another Treana''ad.


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    The Marine carrying Hetrik set him down, moving over to a locker that someone had already wrenched open with a prybar. He grabbed out a medic''s pack.


    "Is Resist here yet, Captain?" the Marine called out.


    "Over here," came a buzzing voice. The three foot tall mantid rushed through the group, narrowly avoiding getting hipchecked by a Lanaktallan.


    "Broken leg, femoral is intact," he said. He ripped open the pack and set to work. "He''s gotta be able to use a suit."


    "We could amputate. He can regrow after," the russet mantid said.


    "Don''t cut off my leg!" Hetrik said.


    "It is a perfectly servicable option," the russet said, moving forward and sharpening her bladearms on each other.


    "Not for me!" Hetrik jerked back slightly, lifting himself up on his palms and trying to scoot back.


    "We''ll do autodeploying implants, quikheal bone injections, then wrap his leg in a pressure sleeve," the Marine said. He looked at the Telkan Marine. "Relax. It''ll hurt a lot."


    Hetrik cursed.


    "Hold him down," the Marine said, holding his hands toward the edge of the gloves, that looked like five plastic rings close together. The gloves slithered over his hands with a hiss.


    Jaskel pushed Hetrik down and looked down at him. The Marine was pulling out gear and the Mantid was sorting it quickly.


    "Dude, you''re naked," Hetrik said. "Don''t put your balls on my forehead."


    "Just look in my eyes. This is going to hurt," Jaskel said.


    Hetrik nodded.


    The Marine wrapped a band around Hetrik''s upper thigh and then right above his knee, shifted Hetrik''s leg while the Telkan cursed, then hit a stud. The device suddenly lengthened, straightening Hetrik''s leg.


    Hetrik stared at Jaskel, reaching up and grabbing Hetrik''s forearms and squeezing, his eyes going wide and his pupils contracting.


    "Autdeploy surgical implant one," the Marine said.


    The russet Mantid slapped it into his hand. The Marine set it just above the knee.


    And shoved it into Hetrik''s leg.


    Hetrik started panting, his eyes going wider, his pupils like pinpricks.


    "I got you, Marine, I got you," Jaskel said.


    The Puntimat Marine repeated it five more times, then six injections, then wrapped the leg with cloth that steamed and went rigid.


    "Be glad you got that hit of dorph or you''d still be screaming," the Marine said.


    There was a shout of victory, a couple people yelled "HEADS UP!" and there was a loud boom that shook the floor.


    The emergency lights went out, came on, went out, then came on again. Jaskel managed not to throw up as his mastoid implant threw static through his head.


    "You twelve! You! Telkans!" a big Treana''ad yelled. "Gunny! You! Telkan!"


    "Yes, sir?" Gunny Zolpad asked, moving over.


    "We got Telkan suits. Old Second Mar-gite War suits, but we''ve got them," the Treana''ad said. "Are you with one of the ships?"


    "No, sir. Hyperspace accident," Gunny Zolpad said.


    "You''re those guys," the Treana''ad said. He nodded. "Get your men into the suits, I''ll task you into Echo Company. Get me up to speed on your guys skills while my men get into armor and try to figure out what''s happening."


    "Mar-gite just came in system," the Gunny said. He looked around. "We saw it earlier. They jump in and right in the middle of them coming in, there''s a bright white flash and everything crashes. Suits, ships, cyberware, everything."


    "Dammit," the Treana''ad said. "YOU HEARD THE MAN! MAR-GITE ARE COMING! GET RACKED GET RACKED GET RACKED!"


    Jaskel helped Hetrik sit up.


    "We''re screwed again, aren''t we?" Hetrik asked as Jaskel pulled him to his feet.


    "Just another day in the Corps," Jaskel grinned.


    "At least we aren''t left holding the stripper''s leg," Hetrik grinned back.


    "Get in line, Marines. Single file, heavy gunners first, assault next, rifleman third, any scouts last," Gunny Zolpad said.


    Jaskel hurried up, getting in line behind two other Telkan. One he recognized from Kilo Company, one of their heavy gunners. The line moved forward, past the damaged wall where the Confed Marine''s efforts had broken open the armory door.


    Jaskel had never seen suits live in the charging stations. There was a Puntimat dressed only in a shirt that said "Enemy Target - Sponsored by Terran Marine Corps" on it, with a Treana''ad smokestick in his mouth and a toolkit hanging around his neck.


    "Telkan heavy assault Marine," Jaskel said.


    "That one," the Puntimat said, jabbing his cigarette at a dusty looking suit.


    Instead of the glossy black of the Telkan Marine suits, this one was bulky, the plates angular, with spikes everywhere.


    It was also gray.


    8814 jumped from his shoulder to the runner and moved around to the back. Jaskel waited a moment.


    The suit jerked slightly as 8814 brought it online. He turned around, facing away, took a deep breath, and stepped back.


    The suit folded up around him.


    For a second he felt the old claustrophobia grab him.


    Then the control jack slid into the socket at the base of his skull, whirring as it locked in.


    The suit went live.


    --suit older than daxins claning balls-- 8814 said.


    "How old?" Jaskel said, trying to remember the differences in the suit types.


    --Helreginn, Mark II-- 8814 said.


    "Helreginn? What suit is that?" he asked.


    --six thousand years old-- 8814 answered. --wow still top shape--


    "Give me the differences," Jaskel said, still trying to wrap his head around the fact he was in a suit that was older than the city he had grown up in.


    8814 ran it down. Stronger, slightly slower, more armor, anti-Mar-gite spikes, larger bore rocket launcher in a spiral 8-pack rather than the box-4 pack, rapid fire belt fed grenade launcher, double-thick battlescreens, built in force shield on the left arm, force blade built in on the right fist. Stronger, longer endurance, the reactor capable of triple output, self-repairing armor. Built in grav anchors.


    The downsides? Slower on the walk/run, faster on the reflexes, computer was bare bones, hands were too big to carry a standard rifle, had to go with a mag pistol.


    He was handed a heavy magnetic acellerator submachine gun, another force blade hilt, a chainsword, a rocket pack, and a M318 20mm single barrel autocannon with quad ammo forges.


    "Next!" the armorer yelled, pulling on his vac-suit boots.


    --take me time to get used to this clunker-- 8814 said.


    "Can''t be helped," Jaskel said.


    "This way, Marines! Echo Company, over here!" Gunny Zolpad was calling out from where he was standing next to a Lanaktallan.


    The Lanaktallan showed an icon of pleasure on his face plate.


    "We were wise indeed to keep those old suits. Better to have and not need than to need and not have," the Lanaktallan Captain said.


    "Yes, sir," Gunny Zolpad said.


    "I want your men built into a rapid response team to back up Alpha and Bravo Companies," the Lanaktallan said. He made an odd noise. "Only problem with the suit is I can''t smoke in it."


    Jaskel frowned. The idea of a Lanaktallan using Treana''ad smoke sticks was weird.


    "Lieutenant Weerling will be with you. He''s only been here two years, no combat drops, try to keep him alive till his balls drop," the Lanaktallan said. He turned and yelled. "WEERLING! GET OVER HERE!"


    A Pukan rushed up in Confed Marine armor.


    "Stick with the Gunny, try not to get your fool head eaten by a Mar-gite," the Lanaktallan said.


    "Aye, sir," the Pukan said.


    The Lanaktallan just clopped over to a different group.


    The Gunny turned and looked at the Telkan gathered up around him.


    "The Mar-gite are in the system. They''re evacuating the station," he said. He flashed an icon of a grinning Telkan on his helmet.


    "We don''t know where we are. We don''t know what we''re going to do. We barely know who we are," he said. "We only know who the enemy is but we don''t know how many of them there are."


    "ALL WE KNOW IS WE MUST KILL!" the Telkan yelled out.


    "OORAH!" the Confed Marines yelled back.


    "Let''s go defend the station," the Gunny said, waving his hand.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 25

    When you are short on everything but the enemy, you are in combat - Arch Demon Murphy''s Laws & Commandments


    Any military leader, industrialist, or politician who tells you that the war will be short and victorious should be taken out into the nearest alley and shot in the back of the head. - Terran saying, Age of Paranoia


    More than once the entire universe focused down to my trigger finger and my sight picture. Everything else vanished. No fear. No worry. No past. No present. No future. Only that crystallized moment in time. There was only my weapon and the Enemy and the Enemy only existed to be destroyed. - Musing Upon My Time, Vuxten, Age of Agony, 53 Post Terran Extinction Event


    Commodore N''Skrek stared at the holotank silent. His foot was in a regen cast and it made his whole leg itch and tickle. Next him stood Captain Rawgnawrk stood next to him, staring at the holotank.


    Inside hung a wireframe of the the light battlecruiser Knock It All Out. It was largely dark, only critical systems outlined in amber. The only green was the environmental systems, the door controls, and the waste reclamation system.


    "Chief Engineer Mo''obri''yan says the computers and primary systems will be up and interlinked within the next four hours," the Captain said softly. She touched the hologram. "Once that happens, we should be able to at least see."


    "The video let us pinpoint several navigation stars," N''Skrek said.


    The Captain nodded. "Sending the Marines out to the hull to give us a high definition panaromic was a good idea. Same with using that educational slate," she said.


    The Telkan had taken video and the video had been ran through a dataslate with an astrogation training manual''s testing software loaded in.


    "We''re not too bad. Between the bulwark systems and the fringe systems," the XO, a Gulmisvan with the unlikely name of Chat Manstud, stated. He nodded slowly. "We''re only eighteen light years out from here," he touched one of the stars.


    It floated in the tank.


    Single high energy G3V star. Six planets, two supermassive gas giants, four gas giants (two with moons), asteroid belt. Two inhabited planets. Population 134 million.


    "As soon as we get results from the bootup, whether the rest of the systems work or not, we''ll run for that system," the Captain said.


    She turned away, moving toward her seat.


    In the holotank DYN-772343 burned brightly.


    -----


    "You can do this," Lieutenant (Senior Grade) Valandee said, moving through the secondary battle bridge. All the systems were down, all of the panels dark.


    Even the lights were out.


    A greenie rushed in, static between the antenna on its little green head.


    Valandee closed his eyes, recited the mnemonic he had memorized back during his midshipman days, and opened his eyes.


    The mnemonic hadn''t covered no power.


    "here here here" the greenie grated out. It gave a cough. "here"


    Valandee moved over as the greenie opened the panel. When he saw what was inside, he surpressed a groan.


    "OPERATE HANDLE TO PRE-CHARGE EMERGENCY BACKUP SYSTEM" was stenciled above a handle with a grip lever.


    He wrapped his armored hand around it, squeezed to compress the lever, and started pumping.


    Red.


    His datalink clinked.


    He was startled how static filled it was.


    "We''re depending on you, Valandee," Commodore Freelima said softly. She coughed.


    It was a wet, tearing sound.


    Amber


    "You can do this, Lieutenant," she said. "Remember to cut the linkages, just like training." She coughed again and cut the link.


    Valandee pumped harder.


    "almost almost almost" the greenie said.


    Green!


    The lever clacked and Valandee could feel the flywheel spinning through the handle.


    The greenie thrust its bladearm into the socket then pointed at the casing. "Button"


    "Oh, sorry," Valandee said. He pressed the big amber button.


    The consoles flickered to life. They started running self-checks, rapidly booting up.


    Valandee moved over to the wall, grabbing the little brass hammer and doing something he never actually imagined doing.


    He broke the glass over the pull down handle.


    He grabbed the handle and pulled it down. There was a faint thud behind the walls.


    He rushed over to the second box, grabbing the little brass handle and breaking the glass. This one had a key on a neckchain inside it. He grabbed the key and rushed over to the main console.


    He was breathing hard, almost unable to catch his breath, all four of his shoulder''s ached, his gripping hands hurt, and the back of his neck hurt.


    His hands were shaking as he pulled the cotter pin holding down the plastic shield. He flipped the shield up and stared for a long moment.


    He had been trained on this exactly once.


    In VR.


    During cadet training.


    Every ingrained instinct told him not to insert the key.


    Not to turn it.


    Not to press the button.


    His catching hands were shaking as he reached up to his neck, where the key rested against the black laminate of his armored vac-suit.


    Training urged him to NOT do what he was about to do.


    Something clicked into place.


    Something he''d never known existed.


    It didn''t come from outside of him. It came from inside. Somewhere deep, somewhere he wasn''t even aware existed.


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    He yanked the key off the chain, the smaller chain shattering, which broke the superconductor loop that kept the plastic energized around the key. The plastic guard puffed into dust.


    He inserted the key.


    "Lieutenant - Senior Grade Valandee, activating secondary emergency battle bridge," he said to the only occupant of the room, one green mantid engineer. His voice was firm, steady.


    His friends, comrades, even his leaders, would not have recognized his voice.


    He turned the key and the lights went from a steady pale soft white to a harsh red.


    He reached out and put his fingers on the button.


    "Lieutenant - Senior Grade Valandee," he paused for a split second. "Taking command."


    He pressed the button.


    The system went live.


    "yes yes yes" the greenie chirped. It rushed over to another console. "power up"


    He moved over to the command console, sitting in the chair. The back was armored, the seat was armored, and it was built for emergency armored vac-suits. He powered it up and looked.


    Multiple hull breaches. The ship was still connected to the space station. The engines were coming online, the pre-charging systems laboring to bring the massive engines online. The hyperdrive was charging.


    Primary power plant was at 90% with power stable.


    He routed everything through his single panel.


    He was trained in it all. The things he and his classmates had scoffed at ever using were all right there, in his brain, as he authorized the armories to unlock, as he powered up the suits.


    He activated the intercom.


    He could hear an atonal warbling, a screech, in the static that suddenly filled the channel.


    "All hands all hands," he said. He paused. "This is the Captain speaking."


    He paused again.


    "Fight the ship."


    -----


    The thing screeched as it ran at him. It wasn''t just sound, sound didn''t carry in vacuum. It came across the radio channels, flooded into his datalink, and slashed at his very brain.


    "Hit the phasic shielding, cover our teeth in glitter!" he heard Gunny Zolpad call out.


    He could suddenly taste tengleberries and kiwi-lime Liquid Hate on his teeth and down the back of his throat.


    He parried the swiping wide arm with the eyeball set into the point of it with the force shield projected from the heavily armored left arm and chopped with the chainsword he held in his right. Blood and tissue spewed out, splattering his gray armor. The spikes crackled and growled, electricity wreathing them, as the energy coursing through them fried the blood and tissue that touched them.


    The creature shrieked as he sawed off the right hand arms. It fell to the floor and he pointed his fist at it, bathing it in hellfire.


    More rushed down the hallway and Hetrik lurched forward, the barrels already spun up on the heavy M681C9E 7.62mm minigun AKA The Vindicator. The Telkan heavy weapons gunner clamped down on the grip trigger and the barrels started flashing as it cut loose with 3,500 rounds per minute. Tracers, one out of every four, formed a solid bar of bright green as the Telkan Marine hosed the entire corridor with soft ball rounds.


    The rounds punched through the white cilia covered forward side of the creatures, sparked off of and shattered the heavy calcite teeth, and flattened against the thick pebbly hide slash armor on the back side of the creature.


    The rounds dented, more like dinged, the walls of the space station but didn''t penetrate.


    "QRF Bravo Element," came over the headset.


    "Sir," Corporal Presjak said.


    "Hull breach, sending you the sector. As soon as the civvies are evac''d, you blow the explosive bolts," came the Captain''s voice. It was calm, even toned, like the officer wasn''t engaged in combat with the Mar-gite.


    Hetrik stepped back to let the gun cool, the cooling fins working overtime in vacuum, and Jaskel stepped forward again, hefting the gauzy looking force shield being emitted from his left arm and setting himself. On his right Private Teleri''ik hefted his own shield and revved the Mark 2 cutting bar.


    --suit temp lowering-- 8814 said.


    "Getting the hang of the systems yet?" Jaskel asked.


    --slowly complicated more complicated than thought for thousands years old-- 8814 said.


    "Rather have this suit, built to fight these fucks, than my old one since they rip right through warsteel if its too thin," Jaskel said. He grunted as he blocked an onrushing Mar-gite that used the sphincters on its back to jet forward as it shot thin clouds of acid behind it.


    The chainsword vibrated in his grip as it ripped through thick rubbery flesh, hard calcite internal structures, and the weird rubbery back armor that could shrug even medium caliber magac rounds.


    But it wasn''t any match for the teeth of the cutting bar.


    It dropped and he hosed it with the built in ejector on his right forearm, bathing it in fire even in vacuum. He didn''t know what it was, but it burnt fiercely, consuming the Mar-gite and even carbonizing some of the endosteel floor plating before it went out.


    Whatever it was, Jaskel liked it.


    He threw one against the wall, raked down its back, the Mark 2 cutting bar shredding the thick rubbery ''armor'' as he ripped through the back. There was a slight jerk, that he''d quickly gotten used to, as he hit the calcite brain shell, then blackish goo shot out.


    It fell to the floor and he bathed it too.


    Around the corner. Slam one against the wall with the shield, rip down the legs of two coming at him. Fire. Fire. Rip down the other one, hose it down with fire too.


    Up ahead he could see Mar-gite adhered to the walls and floors, pulsing obscenely.


    You poor bastards, Jaskel thought.


    Hetrik stepped up, knowing that Hetrik couldn''t penetrate the rear armor of the Mar-gite. He cut one down the back and it fell cilia up.


    The ''inside'' of the Mar-gite was pink at the edges, red around a half-dissolved skeleton that looked like it was melting into the cilia. He could see organs, veins, and nerve fibers.


    The Mar-gite dissolved the nerve fibers last, the victim able to feel every second of it being eaten.


    Digital Omnimessiah take you, he thought to the victim.


    He hosed it with fire and stepped up to the next one, this one on the floor.


    The passage thickened with the ones on the walls and floor, and it became mechanical.


    Chop, hose, step step, chop hose, step step.


    "Here!" Gunny called out. He stopped next to the door and banged on it. He grabbed the edge of the door and pulled it open.


    Inside were a score of civvies, all in vac-suits.


    The ones who weren''t in vac-suits were already dead or eaten.


    "Telkan Marines," the Gunny called out as soon as his suit found the channel they were using. He overrode their questions and exclamations and motioned. "Come with us if you want to live. We''re evacing the station and blowing it."


    The civvies hurried after the Gunny and Jaskel followed, bringing up the rear.


    8814 cut his vision in half, the upper half a view of behind him, the lower half a wide panoramic view as they hustled down the corridors. A few times the civilians stumbled or tried to stop, but the Gunny urged them on with a shove or a yank.


    "Alpha Element, report," came the Captain''s voice.


    "Coming back to the Hasselhoff''s Delight now, sir," the Gunny said.


    "Roger. Move with a purpose," the Captain said.


    The bulkhead bulged in front of Jaskel and 8814 snapped his vision back to forward. Jaskel found feel the capacitors whine up as he activated the force shield, kicking off and running toward the bulge that the civilians were just starting to pass. His teeth tasted like they coated in electric glitter that tasted of blackberries as he revved the cutting bar.


    He knocked down two of the civvies but stopped right in front of the bulge.


    It dissolved and Mar-gite started trying to squeeze through. It didn''t matter they were two to three meters tall and from a half to a full meter thick, he''d seen the squeeze through a gap less than a quarter meter wide and a fifth of a meter high.


    He bathed them in fire, kicking outward.


    The grav system in his boot flashed a bright purple as all the kinetic energy that the suit collected with each pounding step was released through the grav system in his boots. The burning Mar-gite blew away from the bulkhead.


    For a second he could see space beyond.


    The four ships he could see were putting out such a volume of fire they were nothing but a ball of straight lines of bright fire. He could see the Mar-gite boarding clusters, numbering in the thousand, being shed from a construct bigger than all the ships combined. Something hit the construct with a bright green flash that erupted from inside the construct.


    More Mar-gite ''hands'' with the eyes on the end, slapped at the edge of the hole dissolved in the bulkhead. Jaskel hosed them with fire even as he stabbed with the cutting bar.


    "Jaskel, clear!" the Gunny called.


    Jaskel turned and went to lunge forward.


    One of the ''hands'' slapped his shoulder.


    The spikes erupted in crackling energy, a grav spike twisting up from the point of the spike even as it was wreathed in high voltage measured in the kiloamps.


    The flesh of the Mar-gite exploded into steam and rags.


    He was moving, hustling after the group.


    --well we know that works wow-- 8814 said.


    "Power drop?" Jaskel asked.


    --negligible system has its own micro-zero point system-- 8814 said.


    Jaskel just grunted.


    The airlock and the connecting tube was coming up. Jaskel glanced up, checking his rear, to see that blast doors were lowering.


    The Gunny was at the door, slapping each Telkan Marine on the back.


    "And five!" the Gunny called. He followed Jaskel. "Clear!"


    The airlock slammed shut behind them. There was vibration in the connecting tube that wasn''t the heavy armored feet of the Telkan Marines as the civilians and the Telkan moved to the attached ship, the Confederate Space Force Naval Vessel Hasslehoff''s Delight.


    "Clear!" the Captain called out.


    The airlock slammed shut.


    Jaskel turned and looked at hullward.


    They were in a massive dropship bay. The permeable forcefield was glittering as the ship began to move away from the space station.


    There were flashes and streaks around the ship as the point defense, missile defense, and other systems shifted from protecting the space station to protecting the ship.


    The big bay doors started to shut.


    "What about the planet?" someone asked.


    The Gunny turned and looked at the group of Telkan.


    "Five whole constructs made landfall," he said, his voice grim. "A Megaconstruct is already dropping more clusters onto the continents by the tens of thousands. It''s over for anyone down there."


    The Gunny looked at the door.


    "Fleet''s going to planet crack it."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 25

    There''s always someone tougher. - Terran saying, Age of Antiquity


    The emergency secondary backup bridge was still coming online as Lieutenant - Senior Grade Valandee hurried over to the Captain''s chair, deploying the screens and sitting down. He wanted to stand, to walk around, but he knew that the ship might have to make maneuvers soon and didn''t want to end up on the floor.


    The heavy battleship Catch These Catching Hands Sucker was a Hamaroosan vessel weighing in the terratons. Classed by the Confederate Space Force Navy as a super-heavy super-dreadnought, it was built to face entire fleets if necessary. Being stationed in the Mar-gite Zone meant it had a Marine complement four times larger than the massive amount it normally carried. It carried nearly eight thousand Hamaroosan sailors, all of whom were trained on a multiple of stations.


    Valandee was staring at the boards. The crew manifest board burned in red letters outlined in silver.


    A quarter of the ship''s complement was down, "NO CARRIER" blinking next to their names. At least three hundred were flashing extreme physical injuries.


    He knew those ones were being eaten by the Mar-gite.


    The Marines, all eight thousand of them, were largely intact. Only slightly less than two hundred were showing extreme physical trauma and even as he watched they kept blinking out.


    He knew their shipmates were killing the Mar-gite eating them as well as them.


    The tapped the screen, scrolling through to see who the highest ranking Marine was.


    Get control of the ship, echoed in his head.


    The communications system was out, still not spinning up as the sole green mantid rushed from panel to panel. He looked over and saw that one panel was open, glowing fiber-optic cables inside and physical integrated circuit chips large enough for him to see inside. The green mantid was rapidly spinning a wheel to bring power to the system, then running the checks.


    He had one name close by.


    Gunnery Sergeant Chaskell.


    He tapped the icon. His datalink clinked repeatedly until the channel suddenly opened.


    "Gunny Chaskell here, sir," he heard.


    "Status?" Valandee asked.


    "Last of the station personnel onboard. We''re going to blow the transit tube," the Gunny said. "Unless you..." the statement trailed off.


    "Do it," Valandee said. "Get everyone in battle armor. How bad does it look to you?"


    "We''ve got hull breaches and Mar-gite inside the hull. We''ve been boarded in at least a dozen spots, but the Marines are pushing them back," the Gunny said.


    "Everything that works is on local control," Valandee said. "Get those stations manned," he looked at the board. "We need the point defense, anti-missile, and close range systems manned."


    "Aye, sir," Gunny said. He turned and kicked the Mar-gite against the wall, holding it there with his boot as he dumped a burst from his SMG into the cilia. The Mar-gite''s organs and shredded meat poured from the long rent in the flesh Gunny Chaskell pulled his foot back, ignoring how his boot was smoking, letting the Mar-gite fall to the floor.


    "Get the civilians on the emergency controls for the guns," he heard LT(SG) say.


    He knew of the Lieutenant, one of the few Tnvaru aboard the ship, which was named after the Tnvaru ship that had helped clear Tnvaru space of the Atrekna all the way back during the Second Precursor War. It didn''t bother the Gunny, he was a Puntimat, which weren''t exactly known for their martial prowess.


    He touched his link. "Any Marine with a civilian, get them into one of the intact close support combat stations and get them firing the guns," he said.


    Personally, he doubted the decision, but right now, with the ship dead in the water, any decision was better than no decision.


    Another Mar-gite rushed down the passage, shrieking, and he gave them a burst from the SMG, tearing open the body next to the massive mouth. Blood and shredded guts poured from the hole and the Mar-gite fell cilia first onto the floor.


    For something as clumsy looking at the Mar-gite, it could move and move fast, the eyes on the ''feet'' retracting inside calcite shells.


    "Let''s go!" the Gunny yelled out, motioning the half-dozen men behind him to follow.


    He grabbed a civilian. "You need to run a point defense station," he said.


    "I''m a data analyst," the civilian, a Hikken who was panting inside his thin-skinned vac-suit.


    "Then you can run a point defense," the Gunny said. He slapped the panel and the door slid open. He looked back at his men. "Get someone in these stations. Comps are down."


    The other Marines nodded, pushing the civilians forward.


    "But... I can''t..." someone whined.


    "Then we''ll all die. It''s all hands on deck," one of his men, it sounded like Lance Corporal Fretridik said.


    The Hikken nodded as the Gunny helped him inside.


    He couldn''t believe this was happening. Less than two hours ago he was just running data analysis on the grav waves around the system, just like he usually did to help out the astro-control systems.


    Now half of his work crew were dead, eaten by Mar-gite of all things. He''d seen a Hikken female he''d dated a few times devoured by one.


    She''d screamed even when her internal organs had been visible.


    The Puntimat Marine, Emlret didn''t know they made Puntimat males that big, was already plugging his suit into the life support module.


    "Here, in here," the big Puntimat was saying.


    Emlret just nodded as the Puntimat pushed him into the seat and buckled him in, then spun him around.


    He was looking at a dead board.


    "It doesn''t work," he said.


    The Marine pointed at the floor. "Work the treadle," he said.


    Emlret looked down. There was a balanced metal plate with footprint marks and a stencil that said to operate in tandem to move the plate up and down on either side of the red line.


    Elmret nodded and the Marine vanished. The door closed and Emlret put his feet on the plate. Pushing with one foot made the plate tilt forward, pushing with the other made it tilt back. He could feel something inside moving, maybe spinning. He kept it up and suddenly the dead board retracted.


    A single screen came up and he knew he was goggling at it.


    It was an old cathode ray tube design.


    The control board consisted of two things.


    A trackball set into the boards middle and a single red button with an upraised ring around it.


    The CRT flickered to life.


    Red and silver.


    It showed the word DEMO on top.


    A cursor moved across.


    "AIM WITH TRACKBALL CONTROLLED CURSOR"


    lines started moving toward the bottom of the screen. The cursor, a little box with an X in it, moved to just in front of the bright dots at the front of the lines.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    "ENSURE LEAD DISTANCE"


    The box when from white to red.


    "PRESS BUTTON TO FIRE"


    It showed a line shoot up and a flickering ''circle'' of explosion made by squares intercept several of the bright tipped lines.


    "MOVE TO NEXT TARGET"


    There was no other data.


    "DEMO ENDED"


    "What? That''s it?" Elmret asked.


    "REAL TIME DATA INCOMING" the screen showed him. It hung there and then the red letters came up.


    "OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE"


    He could see dozens of lines heading toward the bottom of the screen and he frantically moved the trackball to intercept him. His first few tries he didn''t lead them far enough, then too far, then he started to get it. Whipping the trackball back and forth, up and down, as fast as he could. He found if the bright dot got too close to the bottom of the screen, the lower third, it often split into multiples.


    When a massive wave came in, he whipped the trackball up and hammered the button as fast as he could as he spun the trackball and the cursor whipped across the screen.


    His ammo counter flashed a few times, but was quickly replenished.


    Panting, sweating in his armpits, he kept it up.


    He didn''t know how long it would go in, or if it would ever stop, but the single word flashed at the top of the screen.


    SURVIVE


    LT(SG) Valandee watched as more and more point defense, anti-missile, and close range weaponry came online. Several of the anti-missile stations, using plain old fashioned fission nukes, were spamming the Mar-gite boarding clusters out of space.


    He looked over his boards. Most of the ship was down, but more and more was coming under his control.


    He was not startled that when Commodore Shreling came in, the superior officer didn''t take over from Valandee but moved straight to the secondard backup emergency backup helm station.


    "Any cores charging?" Valandee asked.


    "One, Captain," the Commodore said. He looked up from the board. "The Hellcore. It''s charging where none of the others even have power."


    "Hellspace shielding?" Valandee asked.


    He knew nobody used Hellspace. Well, nobody except the Crusade.


    "On standby," the Commodore said.


    He thought fast. He couldn''t remember if Mar-gite could survive in Hellspace.


    Think too long, you''re wrong, cadet, his instructor''s voice rang in his mind.


    "Do we have Hellspace coordinates?" he asked.


    The Commodore looked up. "From the last test."


    "Where?"


    "DYN-772343, Rentwark Station," the Commodore said.


    Valandee looked at the scans he was getting back. They were all passive, hell, most of them were based off of high powered optical systems.


    Mar-gite were still pouring into the system even as the ones that had arrived earlier jumped out again.


    "We''re going to have to chance it," he said. He looked at the Commodore. "Charge the shields, charge the core, charge the engines. Set course for DYN-772343."


    "Aye aye, Captain," the Commodore said.


    The light blinked on his scanner to signify a major status change.


    Something had jumped into the system. Something that didn''t match the Mar-gite.


    He tapped the icon and the data appeared.


    High tech. Oval with a pointed end. The wide end was pointed toward the direction it was moving. Silver colored, almost shimmering like liquid. It was estimated to be 1.2 kilometers long and a half-kilometer wide at the widest. It was moving in the middle of a shimmering band of grav waves.


    It was using Accy-Berry Drive to move into the system.


    He checked the board.


    He had a single weapon online. It was reporting that it wasn''t loaded, the feed mechanism was down and non-responsive.


    He tapped the screen. Eight Marines near it. He tapped the icon.


    "Staff Sergeant Oriknaff," came the panting reply. "GET THAT ONE, IT''S RUNNING!"


    "Captain here," Valandee said.


    There was silence a moment. "Go ahead, Captain."


    "The gun in the room with you," he said.


    "It''s a big one."


    "I need you to get it loaded," Valandee said. "I''ll open the breach from here."


    "Roger, sir," the Marine said.


    Valandee watched his boards as more and more of the ship started coming back as green. Not the systems, but the corridors and internal spaces. Breaches started flashing with temp-patch notifications.


    He knew the Marines were at work killing the Mar-gite that had boarded.


    His datalink clinked.


    "Valandee," it was Commodore Freelima. Her voice was almost a whisper.


    "Here, ma''am," he said. "How long till the bridge is..."


    "It isn''t, Valandee," she said softly. There was a gasp and fast breathing for a second. "Get our people out. Save our ship."


    "Ma''am, I..." Valandee started to say.


    "Don''t last stand it," Freelima said. She gasped again. "Get out. Warn the Confed..."


    She went silent.


    "Ma''am?" Valandee said softly.


    No answer.


    "Ma''am?" he tried, a little louder.


    The icon on his board blinked and he heard the Marine Staff Sergeant.


    "We got it loaded, sir! Fragarach Cannon ready!" the Marine sounded triumphant.


    Valandee closed the silent link and reached forward to grab the control stick. He looked at Commodore Shreling.


    "Engage the engines," he said. "Ahead 25%. Prepare the Hellcore."


    "Engaging," the Commodore said.


    The ship vibrated slightly as Valandee tapped the icon to bring up the integrity fields and the backup secondary battlescreens. Over half of them crashed.


    But enough didn''t crash that the emitters were able to cover the ship.


    He tapped the icon and the Hellspace shields came online.


    Faintly he heard bellows of rage.


    The Sucker swung around.


    He had a single blinking icon on his screen.


    The new vessel.


    The anomaly.


    He reached out and grabbed the other control stick, using the thumb switch rocker to quickly move through weapons until he had it.


    The Fragarach Cannon.


    When the light blinked he squeezed the grip, taking the safety offline, and pressed the button top.


    The entire ship shuddered as the massive cannon fired.


    "Helljump coordinates locked! Ready!"


    "GO TO HELLSPACE!" Valandee called out. He tapped the icon. "ALL HANDS, ALL HANDS, THIS IS THE CAPTAIN! HELLSPACE TRANSLATION IMMINENT!"


    The anomaly vanished from his screen.


    "THREE!"


    Valandee wasn''t a religious man, but it felt right to make the quick sideways figure-8 across his chest with two fingers.


    "TWO!"


    "Prepare for jump!" Valandee warned the crew over whatever worked.


    On the optical a wide tear appeared in space. Black skeletal hands pushed it wider. Barbed chains shot from the fiery tear, the barbed spikes on the end slamming into the Sucker and sinking deep.


    The chains pulled the massive ship into the fiery tear in reality itself.


    "JUMP JUMP JUMP!"


    Valandee saw the forward Hellspace shield collapse just as the ship was pulled into the fire.


    The air seemed to burst into flame around him. He felt like his nerves were burning, like his eyeballs were melting. Like his brain was boiling in his skull.


    It was like dying.


    It was like being born.


    The images that ripped through his head were alien, foreign.


    He was a being consisting of nothing but flesh, will, and rage.


    He was small and frightened even as he grimly held onto his duty.


    He was insane with grief and blood lust.


    He was cold digital intellect.


    He screamed in agony.


    He cried in endless grief.


    He bellowed in rage.


    The forward Hellspace shield came back up, failed, came back up again and held.


    The Hellspace energies around him swirled and faded into tatters that screamed in agony as they wisped away.


    Valandee opened his mouth to ask the Commodore if he was alive when there was a sudden jerking feeling.


    It felt like everything in front of him went flat and he slammed into the painted glass reality had become, to shatter through, to feel the jagged and sharp edges slice at him.


    Then he was through and everything jerked into place.


    He was hanging, limp, in the restraining belts of the Captain''s chair. He knew he was bleeding from his nose and ears, that blood and saliva was spilling over his lower lip and down his chin.


    He lifted up one hand and stared.


    The emergency armored vac-suit glove was gone.


    Instead, it was a black armored gauntlet, spikes on the knuckles, twisted barbed wire wrapped around the palm and back of the hand.


    The rune for Tnvaru burned in sullen red on the back of his hand. He''d never seen the rune before, but somehow he knew that it was the ancient rune his people had used for themselves before even the Lanaktallan had arrived.


    His catching arm was clad in thick plate that was engraved with runes. Barbed wire was wrapped around his forearm, the wire was ran through the middle of blackened and useless cred-chits that clicked against the armor.


    "Transit successful. We''re in Hellspace. ETA three hours," the Commodore said.


    "Lets get the ship ready. We''ll be dropping into a fight," Valandee said. He could hear his voice. It was rougher, raspier, deeper.


    "Aye, sir," the Commodore answered. He turned to face Valandee.


    His eyes burned red.


    "Your eyes are purple fire, sir," the Commodore said.


    Valandee just nodded.


    He felt different.


    But he also felt good.


    Felt right.


    "The price the Captain must pay to sail Hellspace," he said.


    -----


    Commodore N''Skrek was strapped into his seat in CIC, looking over the data.


    The ship was about to drop out of hyperspace and into realspace.


    The guns were ready. The shielding ready to be reset for realspace. The realspace engines hot and ready.


    N''Skrek agreed with the Captain that there was a large chance the system was either under attack, already in Mar-gite possession, or just plain gone.


    He tightened his grip on the armrests of his seat as the countdown reached zero.


    The ship made a crash translation into realspace.


    SHARP METAL IS HERE! rang out.


    "Multiple Mar-gite Mega and Gigacluster signatures!" was called out as the data flooded into the Combat Information Center. "Planet is under assault. We''ve got live transponders! System Defense Forces are still engaged."


    The analyst looked up and shook her head. "They can''t hold. Not against this weight."


    N''Skrek nodded.


    "Four, twelve, twenty-two deathblossoms detected! Ships are exiting Deathblossom Group A and entering Deathblossom Group B," another analyst said. He looked up. "Gray force are retreating."


    "More Gigaclusters warping in! More warping out!" was called out.


    N''Skrek wished he could sharpen his bladearm with his grinding plates in his mouth, but the suit prevented it.


    "Confed is issuing a retreat order," someone said. "Orders are to abandon the system, regroup further in."


    N''Skrek opened his mouth to ask the Captain her decision.


    "HELLSPACE BREACH!" was called out.


    N''Skrek turned to look at the holotank.


    DEATH METAL IS HERE! roared out with the clanging of great iron doors bursting open.


    The ship that burst through was massive. Outmassing even the super-dreadnoughts. The chains trying to drag it back into Hellspace shattered, sending huge links of smouldering iron spiraling through the darkness.


    "No ID."


    ''Find out who they are," N''Skrek ordered.


    -----


    Jaskel helped the damage control crew put the patch into place, holding it easily thanks to the power armor''s enhanced strength while a sailor ran a fusion welder real quick around the edges.


    "We''re pulling out," Gunny Zolpad said over the Telkan Marine Corps channel. "Command says the system is lost. More Mar-gite are flooding into the system every minute."


    Jaskel closed his eyes and threw out a quick prayer to the Digital Omnimessiah for the poor bastards on the planet.


    His eyes opened wide when the roar sounded out around him.


    DEATH METAL IS HERE!

 Nova Wars - Chapter 26

    If you have to fight, you fight like you''re the third monkey on the ramp of Noah''s arc, and brother, it''s starting to rain. - Terran saying, Age of Paranoia


    Every other species, you kill the officer or leadership unit, the subordinates give up or just dig in.


    With a Terran, when you kill the leader, you have just removed the restraints.


    Your life, your planet, your species is now forfeit. - Former Grand Most High Sma''akamo''o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff


    Commodore N''Skrek stared at the screen as he watched more Mar-gite travel clusters warp into the system. He knew that most of them would warp back out after roughly an hour and all of them were were slowly rolling to gather solar radiation.


    The planet had multiple large clusters around it, which were shedding orbital drop clusters that fell through the atmosphere before separating into individuals that spread out and then, weirdly enough, glided in for a final landing. They didn''t care where they landed, ocean, land, mountains, cities.


    They''d congregate where there was food.


    Ships were lifting off of the planet. Some didn''t get far before they started tumbling or exploded in mid-air.


    Death blossoms were opening for large ships to come through, move to a large death blossom, and vanish into it. Most of the ships showed damage, some were streaming energy behind them.


    There was hardly any Confederate Space Force Naval ships in the system, not very many System Defense Force ships either.


    As he watched, three vanished in a bright flash.


    Better to scuttle the ship and kill everyone onboard than be eaten by Mar-gite, he thought to himself as another System Defense ship exploded with all hands after reporting massive multiple hull breaches.


    The Knock It All Out was the only ship from the task force that had made it to DYN-772343 and it had dropped into a complete whirling nightmare.


    More of the massive Mar-gite clusters came in. Outmassing the Giga-Clusters by a factor of 10,000 or more. They immediately sent apparel to the stellar mass, cruising at entry speed. There were five lines of them, and as N''Skrek watched, the lead ones warped out.


    "Give me data on the nearest systems within known Mar-gite range," he said.


    "Aye, sir," the Lieutenant on the intel console answered.


    He could feel the guns firing. The ghostly plucking at his bone marrow. The scrape of a hot needle against his nerves. The wincing lance of headache from the big spooky matter compression cannons.


    "STATUS CHANGE!" was called out. "HELLSPACE BREACH!"


    He looked at the holotank just as the vessel finished emerging.


    "Newcomer is in the terratons range. Squawking Confed transponder. ID is: Catch These Catching Hands Sucker," was the answer to the question that N''Skrek hadn''t asked yet but would have.


    "Newcomer is firing on the Mar-gite," someone else said.


    N''Skrek nodded.


    "More of the big ones have warped in, keeping at the edge of the system, joining the previous convoy lines," came the information.


    "Got it! Five systems within suspected Mar-gite range," the Lieutenant called out.


    "Load a fast message torpedo. Get it all the way up the bands. Warn those system that they''ve got incoming Mar-gite!" N''Skrek said.


    More data was coming in. Every planet in the system with even a hab-complex on it was being assaulted by the Mar-gite. They were pouring off the clusters that had moved into orbit.


    N''Skrek knew that those clusters were nothing more than overlapping Mar-gite.


    How the Mar-gite traveled at superluminal speeds was a mystery.


    It was just known they did.


    "Hands is requesting warplan interlock," another Lieutenant said.


    "Lock them in. Let them know the planets are lost. We''re just holding what we can before we have to retreat," N''Skrek said.


    He hated saying it. He hated admitting it.


    He was at another losing battle.


    But the sheer weight of Mar-gite gave Space Force no choice but to retreat.


    All fighting to the bitter end would do is give the Mar-gite more nutrients. Let them absorb the warsteel to built more outer shells with. They''d glom onto the power plants and drink the radiation like a hungry duck in a pond full of reeds and bugs.


    "Signal from the Admiral. They want to know if we have any planet crackers," the Lieutenant asked.


    "Tell him, negative. We have none in inventory," N''Skrek said.


    "Catch is responding that they can crack the planets. They are asking for confirmations on which worlds."


    N''Skrek swallowed thickly and stared at the display.


    "Sixty, seventy, one hundred fifteen new warp signature in the Giga-Cluster or larger range exiting warp," came the word.


    There were hundreds, thousands of pinpoints of Mar-gite clusters all over the system map.


    "Fleet command is ordering everyone out," came the disbelieving voice. "Scatter to predetermined coordinates, warn the Confederacy."


    "Catch is firing on... DIGITAL OMNIMESSIAH!" the oath broke through the CIC''s normal dispassionate professionalism.


    N''Skrek had been looking at the holotank when it happened.


    The big black ship had fired its main gun.


    The center of the planet had visibly dented inwards, a plume of molten rock had exploded from the far side, then the divot had bulged back out, shooting magma into space. The fire quickly spread across the entire planet.


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    The inhabited moon took a single shot and shattered.


    N''Skrek made himself watch as the big capital ship wiped out all the inhabited planets with single shots.


    "Catch is targeting the gas giants," the Lieutenant''s voice was back to normal.


    N''Skrek watched on the holotank as the gas giants visibly contracted.


    And then exploded into flame.


    The whole time, the Knock It All Out was running for the resonance zone with every ship still operational under Confederate control.


    The Knock It All Out and N''Skrek had been in system six hours.


    When they had arrived, there had been nearly twelve thousand System Defense vessels and twenty-seven Confederate Space Force vessels.


    Now, two hundred System Defense Vessels and eight Confederate Space Force Vessels ran for the resonance zone, all trading data, all firing at the boarding clusters, interception clusters, and fast attack boarding clusters.


    The Catch These Catching Hands Sucker was following, it''s guns hammering.


    A glance showed him that the Knocker''s guns were starting to overheat. The dedicated nanoforges were all overheating and spilling slush.


    "Grey ships have made translation. Death blossoms closing."


    And still more Mar-gite clusters were warping into the system.


    "ANOMALY!" one of the CIC sensor techs called out. "ONE, FIVE, NINE, FIFTEEN!"


    "Get scans, we''re about to jump to hyperspace," Commodore Senvris said.


    "There''s one passing by a targeting buoy," the tech answered. "Activa..."


    "BELAY THAT!" N''Skrek shouted.


    The tech lifted his hands.


    "Warn fleet, we jump now!" he activated his link to the Captain. "Captain, jump now! NOW!" He activated his link to the fleet''s tactical operation control, whistling as loud as he could. "JUMP! JUMP NOW OR DIE!"


    There was a sudden whanging noise from further back in the ship and everything shivered like jello for a second.


    There was silence for a second.


    "Is there a reason we did a crash jump, N''Skrek?" the Captain asked suddenly.


    "More of those anomalies showed up. Every time they do, we get a white flash and the ship goes dead. This time, there was fifteen. We can''t take the chance it prevents us from carrying a warning."


    More silence.


    "Understood. Keep me posted on any findings," the Captain cut the link.


    N''Skrek closed his eyes and exhaled.


    If he was wrong, well, they could court martial him and be damned.


    -----


    Lieutenant (Senior Grade) now Acting Captain Valendee stood up from what had been the Captain''s chair, his armor hissing as he came to his now full height of nearly two meters. He took a step forward from what was now a throne, decorated in black metal, with plenty of spikes and skulls, and looked at his now Executive Officer, one Commodore Shreling. The Hamaroosan no longer looked like a nearly harmless creature. His face was scarred, with discoloration of his fur, and his eyes burned a bright red.


    "Status?" Valendee asked. His voice was rough, rumbling, easily overriding the hissing of his armor.


    "Space Force vessels are making for least time course for the resonance zone. Mixture of vessel types, from System Defense to active Space Force Naval vessels. Three groups of gray ships are heading for a single active Death Blossom," the Commodore said. His voice was low, almost menacing, and a tube came out of the neck of his armor, down his jaw, and hooked into his left nostril.


    "Vessel status?" Valendee asked.


    The Commodore looked at the boards around him. "We still have eighty percent of the Marines. Over seventy percent of the civilians we pulled off the station are still alive. Sixty percent of the Space Force Naval crew transponders are still active."


    "Order the Marines to check every transponder. Sweep the ship, I want that filth scoured from this vessel," the Tnvaru officer said. "Take over DCC, get my ship together."


    "Aye, Captain," His Hamaroosan officer nodded, reaching down and opening a channel as Valandee tapped his helmet, bringing up the loaded com-link channels.


    "Gunnery Sergeant Chaskell," came the reply.


    "This is the acting Captain," Valendee said.


    "You sound... different," the Telkan Marine said.


    "The price a Captain must pay to sail the fiery seas of Hellspace," Valandee said. "Do you have eyes on your Marines?"


    "Aye, sir," the Marine said.


    "I want a full headcount. Intercom system is out. We''re using personal datalinks to get the crew together," Valandee said. He looked at the holotank in the middle of the emergency secondary backup battle bridge. "The system is lost to the Mar-gite."


    "Captain, we''ve got control of the main guns," Shreling said.


    Valandee just nodded.


    "Right away, Captain," the Marine said. There was a pause. "Some of my men have gone through... changes."


    "Unshielded exposure to Hellspace will do that, Gunny," Valandee stated. "Captain out."


    He cut the link and moved over to the holotank. The comlink numbers were hovering around weapon systems, ship systems, as the Commodore got into touch with each group.


    "Space Force has ordered the planets cracked and the gas giants burned," Shreling said.


    "Run targeting solutions. Just in case," Valandee said.


    "Aye aye, sir," the Commodore said.


    Valandee watched as more of the massive Mar-gite clusters warped in and others warped out.


    This is a full scale invasion. What came before were just scouting and probe attacks, he thought.


    "Fleet is responding that their planet cracker armed vessels are lost. They are requesting anyone with the capability perform the duty," Shreling said. He tapped his armored fingers on the control board. "We have what we need."


    "Of course we do," Valandee said.


    It just felt right that the ship had such terrible weaponry.


    He knew his thoughts had been altered by the strange energies of Hellspace. That the ever-burning fires had scoured away part of his personality.


    And left behind grim determination.


    He glanced at his XO, watching as the Hamaroosan officer worked quickly, becoming more and more efficient as he got used to the job.


    The Hamaroosan people fought against those who sought to eliminate all life in the Galaxy before, he thought to himself. The Tnvaru stood shoulder to shoulder with them as allies and friends. We shall do so again.


    Valandee wondered, briefly, what his clan would think of how he looked now. He lifted up the gauntlet and stared at it.


    Burning red runes. Twisted barbed wire. Heavy black metal plates.


    "Target solutions ready, Captain," the Hamaroosan officer said, looking up at his Tnvaru captain.


    Valandee nodded. "Fire when ready, Number One."


    Shreling gave the orders.


    Valandee expected the ship to shudder or perhaps vibrate.


    Instead, there was a solemn silence between the two men.


    "Direct hits, Captain," Shreling said. He looked up. "Gas giants are compressing," he looked down. "We have ignition."


    Valandee nodded. "Status of the Fleet?"


    "Still retreating. Grey ships are gone. Death blossoms are closed."


    "If the Mar-gite are forcing the Grey Fleet to retreat, what we''re seeing is just the leading edge," he said. He moved over to the holotank and brought up a map. He tapped up the maximum known range of a Mar-gite cluster and stared.


    Five systems.


    "Status change, Captain. Fifteen of those metallic ships have entered the system," Shreling stated.


    "Target them. Fire subspace foam torpedoes, maximum stealth," Valandee said.


    He selected the one with the heaviest Space Force presence.


    In days gone by there had been nearly 2,500 ships there.


    Now, there was only 250 Space Force vessels.


    He punched up the data and charged the Hellcore.


    "Fleet has gone to hyperspace," the XO said.


    Valandee nodded.


    There was a bright white flash from where the technological ships were located.


    Sparks jumped from consoles. Electrical arcs snaked across exposed bulkheads.


    The lights stayed on.


    "Guns are at 15% ammunition," the XO said. He looked up. "I recommend retreat at this time, Captain."


    Shreling moved up to the holotank. "Think Fleet will make its stand there?"


    Valandee nodded.


    "It''s their only choice," he said.


    He paused.


    "Is that our goal?" Shreling asked.


    Valandee reached out and tapped the map, expanding it out. Out again. Out a third time. Zooming in on a simple single system.


    "We jump here," Valandee said.


    "There? Are you sure, Captain?" Shreling asked.


    Valandee nodded.


    "We, they, the Confederacy, need reinforcements," he said. He touched his helmet. "All hands, all hands, prepare for Hellspace translation."


    Shreling looked up and nodded.


    On the holotank the map gleamed and glimmered.


    A single system burned brightly.


    -----


    The Seven Rings of Gehanna was a system shrouded in darkness. Set at the mouth of the Tartarus Dark Matter Sea, with the Eye of Gorthaur only a light week ''north'' of the massive red giant named the Eye of Barad-d?r. The gas giants had burned away in the gaze of the Eye of Gorthaur, the inner planets devoured by the hunger of the Eye of Barad-dur, leaving only a single planet surrounded by six rings of asteroids, three toward and three away from the red giant.


    The single planet was known as the Isle of Dread was circled by defensive systems, ship berths, stations, and other, more esoteric systems.


    A Hellspace portal opened and a single massive ship slipped through, breaking the chains and sending the grasping hands sliding back into the portal before it winked out.


    The system rang with a single shout.


    DEATH METAL IS HERE!


    The Catch These Catching Hands Sucker entered the home of the Dark Crusade of Light.


    [The Universe Liked That]

 Nova Wars - Chapter 27 - Dark Tidings

    HEAVY METAL IS HERE announces the arrival of the might of the Confederacy. Other participants to past wars have announcements of their own, from the arrogant, sibilant you belong to us of the Atrekna, self proclaimed Lords of Time, to the psyche shattering scream of THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE of the Precursor Autonomous War Machines, to the violent declaration ALL BELONGS TO THE HIVE of the ancient Mantid, these announcements are warnings, weapons, and declarations of intent. They inspire terror and despair in all who hear them.


    The Confederacy, and especially Terrans, raise their arms, blade-arms and wings to these invaders and scream back in their faces DON¡¯T FUCKING TOUCH ME!, EAT A DICK!, or COME AND GET SOME!. Races of the Confederacy may wince or stagger at an announcement loud enough, but they will not yield, will not give up as easily as the enemy always expects them to. HEAVY METAL IS HERE! brings life back to those who give in, gives hope to those who thought all was lost, inspire the victims of the enemy¡¯s scream to rebellion and defiance.


    But there is more that lurks in the dark. The Black Fleet relays the declaration of the Eye of Gorthaur, THERE IS NO LIFE IN THE VOID. The legendary dread vessels of the Dark Crusade of Light, from the Steamboat Willy, to the Missouri, to the Bismarck, Hood and Kaga, announce their names upon arrival. The Immortals, the biological apostles of the Digital Omnimessiah, both second and first, arrive with chilling battle cries. Enraged Phillip arrives to battle with a command: LET THIS WORLD SHAKE IN THE RAGE OF LOST TERRASOL! Warfather Vuxten, in the short time he answered the prayers before setting aside the mantle, roars at the enemy NO MORE PODLING BLOOD! Bellona the Grave-Bound Beauty, Legion of the Fleet of One, Menhit the Singer, Green Thomas, all announce their arrival one way or another.


    But the ones heard before, that live on in memories of ancient pasts, while chilling and mind-breaking, are just that: heard before. It is the new screams that truly bring fear and despair, even to the Confederacy and its allies. It is the new screams that make the races of the Confederacy shudder and close their eyes.


    ¡®Ware the new screams, for it means the Black Fleet has gained another blasphemous and twisted ship.


    A new captain has been brought into the fold, to bring rack and ruin to the enemies of the Confederacy.


    Catch These Catching Hands, Sucker arrives with a new scream¡­


    DEATH METAL IS HERE! - Excerpt from: Be Not Afraid: A History of Arrival Announcements, Author: Mantid Professor Shares Knowledge to the Uninformed, Post nth Mar-gite War


    Field Captain Strechen, Means of the Way Intelligence Direct Action Services, stood by the wall with the other Means of the Way enforcers. Where the others hand their hands clasped in front of them and were standing at a rigid posture with their heads tilted up slightly, Strechen was leaning against the wall, hands in her pockets, head lowered to watch the two males at the table.


    One, Senior Experimenter Hrekkel, was larger than most males by at least a head. His body was thicker and he had scars on his face. Behind him stood the largest Dra.Falten Strechen had ever seen. A female Way of the Means Enforcer that stood two heads taller than the tallest female in the room, with heavy muscle and softly glowing green cybereyes. The female had set aside the customary pistol and stun baton that most enforcers carried and was carrying a heavy, blocky magnetic acceleration submachinegun.


    Next to Hrekkel, staring at the table, was the slightly scruffy looking male she had escorted from the front lines of a contested world to this ship.


    The Way of the Means referred to him as Male-9912743.


    we cease to exist whispered in her mind.


    She had first heard of him as Rifleman Second Class Tawtchee-9912743.


    He had carried her through a "Dommy" ambush, then led her to the Massive Active Operations Base so that she could load him onto a ship and bring him to whomever had requested him.


    Now, Tawtchee dug in his breast pocket, pulling out a pack of self-lighting Treana''ad smoke sticks. She could see the BobCo logo on the side from where she was standing.


    Several of the Way of the Means agents shuffled in annoyance and outrage as he pulled one out of the conical pack and puffed on it while he put the pack away. It lit up and he exhaled blue smoke into the holotank, making it flicker for a moment.


    "The next guardian must be approached with the gift from the previous guardian," Hrekkel was saying. "The baskets of fruit have been put in cold storage."


    "Do we know anything about the next guardian?" Tawtchee asked.


    Strechen saw one of the Senior Special Active Task Agents shift slightly, her face showing anger at the fact that the two males were not consulting anyone but each other and the holotank''s database.


    The big female looked at the female that had shifted, her eyes going from a softly glowing green to a cold amber light as she changed the color of the cybernetic implants.


    The Senior Special Active Task Agent went back to looking at the ceiling and the big female''s eyes turned green again.


    "No," Hrekkel said. "Intelligence suggests that the Grenklakail Empire managed to not only reach the guardian but discover the next step, so it can be done."


    Tawtchee nodded. "Politeness, above all else," he said. He exhaled smoke again, this time toward the ceiling. "I believe that the Terran was much more dangerous than anyone even suspects."


    Hrekkel nodded. "The pattern of lakes around the orchards was consistent with diverted directed energy attacks from orbit that had their power massive attenuated."


    Tawtchee just reached out and tapped the map, bringing up the location of "Magnus Oathsworn" and his little cabin. He traced the line of lakes.


    "Keeper of the World Engine Key," Tawtchee murmured. He frowned for a moment, then moved over to an empty area of the holotank. He brought up a window and started going through menus that featured the BobCo logo prominently.


    "Something?" Hrekkel asked.


    Tawtchee just grunted, moving through the menus. Strechen could see that he was looking at advertisements by the nearly unstoppable megacorporation that had been making steady inroads into Dra.Falten society for years.


    "Here," Tawtchee said, stepping back.


    Strechen could see it was an advertisement for "Live Action Role Playing". The same kind of system that had completely destroyed a Dra.Falten exploration and scientific recovery team.


    Hrekkel moved over and read the advertisement then nodded slowly.


    "Empire of the Ageless uses three dedicated world engines to ensure full world coverage and reduce server loads," Hrekkel said softly. He tapped one of the icons. "World Engine: Construct maintaining weather and ecology, providing nanite and picate support for full sensory simulation in a live action environment. Combined with world engine satellite support, a world engine provides all a valued customer needs for a wondrous experience."


    Hrekkel stepped back, closing his eyes for a moment. "Magnus Oathsworn possessed the keys to such a device by his own words. That means the weather, the ecology, everything was his to command. The wind, the water, everything."


    "And satellites," Tawtchee said.


    "No satellites were detected," one of the Senior Special Agents blurted out.


    "Silence, fool," the large female snapped, her eyes flashing to amber. "Just because our sensors and eyes are blind to something does not mean it does not exist and does not mean it cannot kill your fool self. Keep your tongue in your closed mouth lest I rip it out."


    The Senior Special Agent bruxed her teeth in anxiety and went back to looking at the ceiling.


    The male, Hrekkel, moved over and began running his claws down the back of the large female''s uniform.


    Her eyes went to bright green, then soft green.


    Tawtchee kept staring at the holotank.


    "Magnus warned us that the next guardian is extremely dangerous," Tawtchee said. "He laughingly told me that the two of them on the same world would be a bad thing," he took a long drag off the smokestick, staring at the holotank. "He told me the next guardian is dangerous and to respect her."


    Tawtchee tapped the holotank again, bringing up artist concepts of what living female Terrors looked like. He adjusted the brown skin to be pale pinkish, the black hair to be gold. "This is what she may look like," he said. He tapped a few more keys, overlaying the nude body with a pair of leather pants, a white linen shirt with elbow length sleeves, and a pair of boots. "If she dressed like Magnus, this is how she will look."


    Tawtchee tapped a few more keys then moved data in one window to the window with the Terror. Her outfit was replaced by a dress that covered her feet, a bonnet, and jewelry. "She may also appear like this. Standard beginner outfit for females in Empire of the Ageless."


    Nodding, Hrekkel stared at the image.


    "A living Terran. A figure of myth and legend," he said softly. "I can''t wait to meet her."


    "Because it went so well with the Detainee?" the large female asked.


    The scientist nodded again, brushing at his whiskers.


    Strechen noted he only had three whiskers on the right side of his nose instead of the standard four, an irregular shaped circular scar where the whisker should have been.


    "All right," Hrekkel said. "Any other suggestions for when we come out of transit space?"


    "The dropship," Tawtchee said.


    "What about it?" Hrekkel asked.


    "Physically disconnect the transponder. Put it on a mechanical switch. Disconnect all communications systems. The only signal that it should put out is short range analogue VHF and a single system, strapped in, that connects to a low orbit satellite that connects to a single air-gapped system on the ship," Tawtchee said. He reached back and touched his lower back. "The only reason they didn''t destroy the dropship we used was because the com system was fried."


    "I''ll make sure it happens," Hrekkel said.


    "Other than that? We go without weapons. Nothing we can carry will impress the guardian. If Magnus warned us of her, with his obvious power, then the weapons are nothing more than something for her to mark our graves with if she decides that we will die," Tawtchee said.


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    "I''ll ensure it," Hrekkel said as the large female nodded in agreement with Tawtchee''s words.


    -----


    Strechen answered the knock on the door, seeing the small male, Tawtchee, standing in the corridor.


    "Come in," she said, waving her hand. "Pardon the cramped quarters."


    Tawtchee gave a sardonic grunt/chuckle. "I have a bed that I cannot straighten out in with a curtain. The only good part is I do not share it with others. This? This is luxury."


    we cease to exist


    Strechen didn''t say anything, just moved one of the chairs so it faced the chair by the desk, then sat down in the chair she had moved. She motioned at the chair in front of the desk. "Please, sit."


    Tawtchee narrowed his eyes in suspicion, but sat down anyway.


    "Is this the part where you yell at me and threaten to summarily execute me for my impertinence at the planning session?" Tawtchee asked, digging in the chest pocket of his uniform top.


    "No," Strechen said. She cocked her head. "Did someone else?"


    Tawtchee just shrugged. "Just three of the Way of the Means."


    "I''ll handle it, give me their names," Strechen said.


    Tawtchee shook his head. "It''s just a normal Tuesday, Captain," he pulled a smokestick out of the conical pack and stuck it between his front teeth, puffing on it as he put the pack away. "Nothing to be excited about."


    Strechen bruxed her back teeth for a moment in agitation, then took a deep breath and exhaled away her irritation.


    The small male had been threatened so many times that new threats had no weight to him.


    they dump the sample into the incinerator and we cease to exist


    "I wish to ask you about something," she said.


    "Why Hrekkel listens to me," Tawtchee said.


    His scores would have put him in the science caste if not for a military conscription draw


    Strechen nodded.


    "I dragged him to the last transport, almost got him there, before a robot broke my back," Tawtchee said. He shrugged. "He then dragged me aboard the transport. We were even as far as I was concerned. He believes differently."


    "That cannot be it," Strechen said.


    Tawtchee sighed and looked at the desk. He tapped the faux-wood and brought up the holoemitter. He tapped a few icons and leaned back.


    The comlink chimed three times before it was picked up.


    "Tawtchee?" the scientist had on a pair of engineering goggles.


    "Do you still have that old video?" Tawtchee asked.


    "Of course. I used it as proof as why I wanted you," the scientist said.


    "Can you toss it to this terminal?" Tawtchee reached up and ran his claws through the fur at the top of his head.


    "She wishes to see the event," it wasn''t a question.


    "She seeks to understand what I don''t," Tawtchee admitted.


    "Why you."


    Tawtchee nodded.


    "Thirty-three scientists, including me, owe you their lives because of your actions," Hrekkel said.


    There was a pinging from the desk and "FILE RECEIVED - SCANNED - SAFE" floated above the fake wood.


    "Perhaps you will see what is so clear to me," Hrekkel said just before cutting the link.


    Tawtchee just shook his head. "The clarity is for shit. It''s off my helmet cam and comp," he said. He sighed, running his hand through his fur again. "It''s dark and raining with thunder and lightning. You won''t be able to see much."


    Strechen moved the chair up and tapped the file icon hovering above the desk. It opened and a player manifested above the surface of the desk.


    FILE FOOTAGE COMPILATION - INCIDENT 81476AV46C - SECURITY LEVEL VERMILLION


    The picture flickered and stabilized.


    It was the inside of a building. The glass in the windows was shattered, rain was blowing in to scatter plas sheets and papers around. The door had a single chair in front of it and Strechen could tell it wouldn''t do anything to stop someone from opening the door. There was a flash of light outside the window followed by the roar of close by thunder. There was whimpering sounds, crying, and the sound of heavy rain.


    "We''re going to die," a female said.


    "I don''t want to die," a male said.


    There was the shriek of laser weaponry and the detonation of a grenade nearby. The door handle rattled and one of the females in the room screamed, grabbing the end of her muzzle to silence herself.


    "IMPERIAL TROOPER! OPEN UP! I''M HERE TO GET YOU OUT!" sounded out.


    Two females, both in scientific uniforms, and a male scrabbled to move the chair and unlock the door.


    Tawtchee stood on the other side, looking much younger. He held a heavy laser cannon, the strap across his shoulder plate keeping the heavy weapon stable. He had on a helmet that had a charred and melted spot on one side and his chest plate was slagged and scorched in several places.


    "Never seen it from this angle," Tawtchee said softly.


    "Let''s go, you''re it," Tawtchee said.


    "Where''s your backup?" a large female in a Way of the Means Senior Agent uniform asked.


    "Dead," Tawtchee said. He turned around. "Follow. Keep up. Try to stay silent."


    "What is happening?" the Senior Agent asked.


    "Some idiot woke up a bunch of Terror robots. They''re killing everyone who isn''t a colonist," Tawtchee said, already moving down the hallway. "They''ve rounded up the colonists and are telling them not to resist, that they are being rescued."


    "That makes..." the Senior Agent started to say.


    "I said: shut the fuck up," Tawtchee snarled, turning around. Pressure on the trigger made the venting slots on the forward third of the thick barrel light up with an amber light. "I will waste your ass right here," he looked at the cringing scientists. "The scientists are my mission."


    The Senior Agent started to reach down to her holster, realized it was empty, and followed the scientists that had rushed by her to follow Tawtchee.


    Strechen could see that his backplate was damaged in multiple spots, the center of the plate nothing more than carbonized polycarbonite laminate and slagged alloys.


    The view stayed the same as Tawtchee, a Junior Rifleman Seventh Class, led them to a heavy door that had been torn off the hinges.


    "Crouch or a robot will blow your fool head off," Tawtchee snarled.


    The scientists and even the Way of the Means Senior Agent crouched down.


    The lot outside had burning vehicles, other small portable temporary buildings that were on fire, and craters from explosive blasts.


    Tawtchee glanced out, pulling back in and ducking at the same time.


    Nothing happened.


    Someone started shooting even as voices started screaming.


    "Dammit, there goes Delta Team," Tawtchee cursed. He looked out the door again, then back at the scientists. "OK. Go right when you go out, get as close as you can to the burning truck, as hot as you can stand it. Run along the line of burning vehicles. Move between the two burning cargo trucks," he closed his eyes. "Hold your breath during that," he glanced out. "There''s a hole in the security wall where either side is on fire, run through that and into the woods. Run fifty paces and stop."


    "Why?" the Senior Agent asked.


    "The heat seems to mess up their vision. Maybe they run off of infrared or other thermal vision at night," Tawtchee said. He heaved a deep breath. "When you stop in the woods, crouch down in a clump of the purple ferns. They have a high metal content, they should shield you. Wait for me."


    "What if you get killed?" a scientist asked.


    "Then you''re next," Tawtchee said. He checked the heavy laser cannon and then moved slightly. "Go!"


    Strechen had to admire the bravery of the first two male scientists who ran out.


    She wasn''t sure she could have ran out into that nightmare.


    Laser bolts, purple with white cores, started pocking into the wall as the scientists ran out.


    Tawtchee just turned, grabbing a hold on the forward part of the sling, bracing the energy ammo canister against his hip, and fired back. The weapon in his hands shrieked compared to the cracking boom of the purple bolts.


    "RUN, DUMBASSES!" he yelled out.


    The Way of the Means ran out next, ahead of two scientists.


    "Feel it, feel it," Tawtchee was snarling.


    "Last one!" a scientist said.


    Strechen realized it was Hrekkel, who looked thirty years younger.


    Tawtchee switched from aimed to just laying down suppressing fire even as he started to move in the direction that the scientists had run.


    The viewpoint changed.


    Junior Rifleman Seventh Class Tawtchee-9912743 was in the upper right.


    "This is what I remember some nights," Tawtchee said. He dug in his pocket and pulled out a can of fizzybrew, twisting the top off and taking a long drink.


    The robots looked like skeletal Terrors, black metal, red eyes, all of them carrying rifles.


    Strechen noted that they had white enameled teeth and their jaws were chattering.


    The robots were taking hits, flashes erupting only inches from them for the first half second then the heavy laser bolts hitting solid but having no apparent effect at first. Then the robot would start jerking as the laser superheated small chunks of their armor, causing it to blow off of the robot due to the temperature differential.


    "Feel it, feel it," Tawtchee was growlling.


    He glanced back in time to see the Way of the Means officer run between two burning trucks.


    The viewpoint shifted slightly and Strechen realized he was firing the heavy laser cannon with one hand.


    "EAT THIS!" Tawtchee yelled, throwing a canister.


    He turned and started running, stumbling as a loud KA-RACK sounded out.


    ARMOR DEPLETED - LEFT ARM


    SEVERE FRACTURE - LEFT ARM


    SEVERE BURN - LEFT ARM


    Tawtchee was panting, loud gasps, as he stumbled/ran for the gap between the two trucks. Purple bolts were flashing around him, missing him by a wider margin as he got closer to the burning vehicles.


    A purple bolt slammed into the front of the heavy laser cannon, blowing it apart, sending Tawtchee tumbling to the ground.


    SKULL FRACTURE DETECTED


    With a groaning bellow of pain he got up, slapping the quick release buckle on the laser cannon, and ran for the gap between the trucks.


    Another bolt hit with a loud crack and Tawtchee''s head jerked to the right but he kept running.


    "I went blind in one eye right there," Tawtchee said conversationally.


    He ran for the gap in the wall, ducking down and scooping a standard laser rifle off of the ground, yanking it free of the death grip of the trooper holding it. He was staggering as he ran, making it through the gap, glancing back.


    The purple bolts were hammering into the burning trucks.


    The viewpoint switched again, showing Tawtchee running into the forest.


    "I don''t want to die I don''t want to die I don''t want to die" someone was crying in a high pitched voice.


    "We need to hurry, we have almost five miles to go and they''ll be done destroying your forward scientific base soon," Tawtchee said.


    Strechen noted that the side of his helmet had a chunk taken out of it, showing the inner kinetic shock pad, which was crystallized from heat. The whole side of his face, the fur was scorched and singed. His upper left arm looked like burnt meat.


    But he was still holding the forward part of the rifle with his left hand.


    The view went into fast forward, speeding through the run through the forest and where several times Tawtchee made everyone hide in the bushes, pushing them in if he had to.


    The dropship came into view. Dark, the flashers warning of inoperative machinery dark.


    "Get on board," Tawtchee ordered.


    "How?" one of the scientists asked.


    "Should be a pilot on board," Tawtchee said. "I sent him ahead."


    The Senior Agent moved up and hammered on the side door, pleading for it to open up.


    "The back ramp," Tawtchee said.


    His left eye was swollen shut.


    The group started moving for the back ramp when the lead two scientists screamed.


    The view switched to Tawtchee''s helmet.


    "GET ON!" Tawtchee yelled, pushing between them. He knelt down, firing the rifle, which started beeping the moment he pulled the trigger.


    Strechen knew it meant low ammo.


    The way the robot moved made the hair down Strechen''s back raise up. It dropped on all fours, bounding forward, leaping up onto trees, twisting so it dug in mechanical fingers and toes, before launching forward to another tree or down to the ground.


    It was easily dodging Tawtchee''s fire. Three times Tawtchee shot out the tree, making the robot change course.


    "Come on, come on," Tawtchee said, switching to rapid fire. "Feel it, feel it."


    The robot didn''t seem to care about the bolts that hit it, still bounding forward.


    The weapon stopped firing, emitting a loud tone.


    "Oh no," Tawtchee said.


    "We''re on!" someone yelled.


    Tawtchee turned to run and suddenly was airborne, flying to the side, away from the dropship.


    SPINAL FRACTURES DETECTED appeared in the view.


    He hit, rolled, ending up on his back, the rifle spinning away.


    The robot lunged into view, straddling Tawtchee, one hand drawn back, two fingers pointed forward.


    Strechen knew it was going to drive those fingers through Tawtchee''s skull.


    "Don''t hurt them," Tawtchee said.


    Strechen realized he was weeping.


    "Don''t hurt them," Tawtchee repeated.


    The robot was still, rain falling down, running off of the black skull.


    "They''re civilians. They''re just scientists," Tawtchee said. "They just needed my help to get to the dropship."


    The robot was still unmoving. The only sound was Tawtchee''s sobs and the rain plinking off the metal of the robot.


    "Please, don''t hurt them," Tawtchee said. "I''m just trying to help them get away."


    "Ged ta daw chaw-pah," the robot said, its jaws chattering.


    "Don''t hurt them, please, they''re just civilians," Tawtchee was crying.


    The robot suddenly vanished.


    "No. Please. Don''t hurt them!" Tawtchee called out weakly. "Please. Don''t hurt them."


    There was silence for long minutes, broken only by Tawtchee''s sobbing.


    Hrekkel''s face appeared.


    "Are you alive?" the scientist asked.


    "No," Tawtchee wept. "I wish I couldn''t feel my legs, I think they''re on fire."


    Hrekkel glanced down. "We''ll talk about that later."


    Hrekkel moved over, bending down, and Strechen knew the small scientist was grabbing the pull-strap on the back of Tawtchee''s harness. Tawtchee''s vision moved around almost bonelessly, scanning the trees, the stars, showing Hrekkel pulling him through the dark and the rain.


    "I can''t feel my legs any more," Tawtchee said softly. "Nothing below like my belly button."


    "The pilot''s dead," Hrekkel said. He looked back. "Almost there."


    "I can engage the auto-pilot. He showed me how," Tawtchee said. He gave another sob. "Damn you, Veracal, I told you to keep the ship buttoned up."


    Hrekkel dragged Tawtchee onto the ship.


    "Get me to the copilot''s seat," Tawtchee said.


    "Can you even see?" Hrekkel asked.


    "Good enough," Tawtchee said.


    The view kept swinging around as Hrekkel pulled Tawtchee into the copilot''s seat and buckled him in.


    A glance at the pilot showed Strechen Pilot Fifth Class Veracal - 7751361 - DECEASED - REMAINS CATALOGUED


    we cease to exist


    slumped down in the seat.


    His head was missing from the neck.


    Tawtchee touched a few buttons.


    "Autopilot engaged. State destination," the computer said.


    The video ended.


    Strechen sat silently for a long moment.


    She looked at Tawtchee.


    "Now you know," the male said.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 25+3 - Dark Tidings

    If you think that your average -as if any of them are average- Terror is strange and unknowable, wait until you meet an Immortal or a myth or a legend. Those are the strange ones, burdened with strange and unknowable powers, and the keepers of secrets that perhaps it is best not to explore. - Cu''urismo''o, Philosopher, Explorer, and Chronicalist, 14,812 Post-TXE


    Strechen sat at her desk, looking at the hologram being projected above it.


    It showed Tawtchee sleeping in the small cubby he had been assigned.


    His foot was shifting, his fingers kept flexing, and his ears kept twitching even as his whiskers trembled. His fur gleamed with sweat and as she watched he rolled over and began panting, his legs kicking slightly.


    She knew a nightmare when she saw it.


    Reaching out, she tapped the icon to access his wrist datacomp. She changed her ringtone to a bird chirp, then tapped the icon to ping his wrist datacomp. It rang and Tawtchee jerked. It rang again and his eyes started to open.


    She cut the link.


    His eyes closed slowly and he relaxed.


    She watched him go back sleep, this time curled up and relaxed.


    we cease to exist


    The words whispered in her brain again.


    She had seen why the scientist Hrekkel valued him so much.


    Dying, faced with certain death, he had chosen to beg. Not for his own life, but for the scientists, for the civilians.


    Could I have done the same? she wondered, still staring at the hologram of the sleeping male. Or would I have begged for my own life?


    The question had been bothering her since she had seen the video. How he had ensured that none of the technicians, scientists, or even the two Way of the Means Senior Enforcers had been left behind. Physically dragging them along if he had been forced to.


    Would I have just left them behind, seeing them only as males? she wondered.


    She watched the video again.


    She paused on the section where Tawtchee was looking up at the skull visage of the Terror robot, it''s white teeth chattering, its red eyes set in a black skull that was somehow glossy and matte at the same time, the only sound the plinking of rain off the robot''s alloyed body and Tawtchee''s sobbing pleas.


    She got out a pad and pen and slowly began to sketch the skull that stared out of the hologram with such menace that it made the fur at the small of her back raise up.


    -----


    Field Captain Strechen watched as Hrekkel finally moved away from whatever esoteric project he was working on beneath the watchful eye of his Way of the Means guard.


    "You wished to speak with me, Tawtchee?" Hrekkel asked.


    "I need you to use the fabricators and some help, maybe," Tawtchee said.


    "I am always ready to help you, Tawtchee," Hrekkel said, expressing pleasure. "I owe you my life."


    Tawtchee just shrugged. "I didn''t do anything that someone else wouldn''t have done."


    Strechen had noted how uncomfortable praise made Tawtchee and wondered, for the hundredth time, if all males were like that.


    Does being noticed somehow put them in danger? she wondered.


    Tawtchee moved to the holotank attached to computing arrays and fabricators and quickly moved through menus until he brought up an image of the Terror Magnus. He highlighted the tattoos on Magnus''s arms.


    "Can you have the virtual intelligences and large language models copy the art style of these tattoos?" Tawtchee asked.


    Hrekkel stared at the marking for a moment. "It won''t be accurate. If those marks have meanings beyond decoration, it could be insulting."


    Tawtchee nodded. "Ensure they are decorative. Do not use the runes, use the square spirals and the other markings."


    Hrekkel started typing. "I will oversee it, make sure that it does the job correctly. At times LLM graphic design systems give abnormal results."


    Moving over to the replicator, Tawtchee touched one of the metal fabrication units. "This one can do high grade steel, correct?"


    Hrekkel nodded, still typing.


    Strechen could see the tattoos were being highlighted on the images of Magnus.


    Moving to another holotank, Hrekkel brought up the BobCo advertisement for one of the games. He moved through it, examining sections, finally settling on one item.


    A sword.


    "Can you fabricate a combination of this blade and the Way of the Means dress uniform sword?" Tawtchee asked.


    Hrekkel glanced at the Way of the Means trooper that was always accompanying him. The female looked thoughtful for a moment and then nodded.


    "Yes," Hrekkel said.


    Tawtchee moved over to the side of the room, staring up at where the ceiling met the wall. He lifted up on the toes of his boots then dropped his heels slowly. He kept repeating it and for a moment Strechen wondered if the male had suddenly suffered a neurological defect.


    "We won''t put it in a standard holder," Tawtchee said.


    "A scabbard," the big female said. Strechen was surprised at how pleasant her voice was, having only heard her growling threats before.


    "I have an old shirt, stained, that I will wrap it in," Tawtchee said. He looked at Hrekkel. "How long will it take to make the decorative designs and the blade?"


    Hrekkel stared at the holotank windows. "I can have the blade engraved by tomorrow."


    "Plenty of time," Tawtchee said. He turned around and moved over next to Strechen. "Three more days until I must face the Second Guardian."


    Hrekkel just nodded.


    Strechen felt her stomach clench in anxiety.


    -----


    Strechen stood against the wall, watching not only Tawtchee and Hrekkel but the Way of the Means agents who were standing against the wall also. She had her hands in her pockets, trying to look nonchalant, but she was appraising the body language and the tension in the other agents.


    She could see the low key anger in some of the more senior agents that the large female Special Imperial Expediter with Hrekkel had told them, in no uncertain terms, that Hrekkel was in charge of the expedition and Tawtchee was in charge on the ground.


    The big female had threatened the Way of the Means and the Means of the Way agents with summary execution and dissolution of family and clan lines if they disobeyed in even the slightest or if the big female Expediter even suspected them of disloyalty or the slightest bit of rebellion.


    Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    The two males were looking over the planet.


    Again, there was a small domicile with a few outbuildings, some carefully tended fields, and some domesticated animals.


    Around the fields were small lakes, scattered around, some of them connected by smaller ponds.


    "Some who came before us tried orbital assaults," Hrekkel said.


    Tawtchee nodded. "The attempts were attenuated before they even struck the ground," he cocked his head. "Hmm, the pattern is slightly pleasing. Perhaps it is purposeful?" he shook his head. "Magnus told me that he stocked his ponds with fish because he found catching fish with a rod, a thin filament, and a hand crafted hook to be pleasurable."


    Hrekkel nodded. "Terrans enjoy challenges. It is not enough that they have food, they must feel the wrested the food from hardship."


    Tawtchee opened another window. "We cannot see the area closely. Any attempt and the whole thing becomes clouded by a grey field."


    "The guardian knows we are attempting to watch them," Hrekkel said.


    "Which means that the guardian does have satellites. I believe we have been scanned and tracked since we came out of transit space," Tawtchee said.


    "Does this alter your plans?" Hrekkel asked.


    Tawtchee held out a hand, tilting it back and forth. "Yes, but no. Overall, the plan is the same. Politely ask for the next step along the Traveler''s Path."


    Hrekkel gave a sigh. "Without the precise transit route and coordinates, any attempt to reach this place would have been doomed. Transit space sheers and distortions, gravity shadows, and dark matter clusters would have torn the ship apart."


    "Which means, the next one will be just as difficult to reach and just as dangerous," Tawtchee tapped the icon on the holotank, bringing up the star field. "It does not surprise me that the transit space routes assumed we would be using only what Magnus called ''the slow boat bands.'' However, he did not ask what method we used to access transit space."


    "He already knew," Hrekkel agreed. "Which means this guardian knows the same," he combed the fur on top of his head with his stubby claws. "I was wise to insist on earlier model transit drives despite the slower speed."


    Hrekkel consulted a few more screens then looked at Tawtchee. "The dropship has been prepared exactly as you asked. Everything is in place for when you are ready."


    Tawtchee took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I am not convinced I need anyone more than Field Captain Strechen to guard me."


    "Politics," was all Hrekkel said.


    To Field Captain Strechen, the way the small scientist said it made it sound like he was spitting out poison.


    -----


    The ramp slowly lowered to reveal a sunny and warm day. Strechen could taste the pollen flooding into the dropship but was pleased she did not sneeze like several of the others.


    Tawtchee was already standing up, moving over to locker and getting down the gift he had asked Hrekkel to fabricate. Strechen watched as the six Way of the Means agents picked up heavy baskets of fruit.


    The dropship had entered atmosphere and immediately a beacon had turned on, instructing the dropship to land at those coordinates or be destroyed.


    Strechen was gratified that at least the pilot showed some common sense.


    She was the only one armed, and that was an empty pistol with a single magazine pouch containing only a single magazine.


    Unless you counted Tawtchee''s battered combat knife that rode on his hip.


    Outside the dropship was an open plain of grass that waves slowly back and forth in the warm breeze. There was a tall white post marking some kind of dirt road that Tawtchee immediately walked toward.


    "Don''t go into the fields," Tawtchee said. "Stay on the road."


    Strechen could see some of the agents bristled slightly at the male giving them commands, but she had discovered recently that her concerns over their outrage had become almost minimal.


    The male has survived things that would have killed every one of us. I will listen to his voice over your outraged sensibilities, she thought to herself, walking at the back of the group.


    The day was warm and Strechen found herself panting and sweating before the road reached a stone arch that had nothing on either side. It was just an arch to signify that the dirt road transformed into a path of paving stones.


    There were bushes between the tended grass and the domicile, the path leading to another arch that kept the bushes back from an opening.


    Strechen stepped through the arch, blinking at how the empty field vanished to be replaced by neatly tended gardens inside of wooden boxes, complete with wooden sticks for the vine plants to climb.


    A female Terror sat on a stump, a sword across her legs.


    She was not dressed how anyone had assumed.


    She wore high leather boots, engraved and inlaid, polished to a high sheen. She wore a skirt of black leather with hammered copper or bronze plating on top of the pleats. On her torso she wore a leather wrap around her midriff that had a handspan gap that was held with laces. Her mammaries were only covered for the lower half, the cups that held them had hammered bronze or copper adornments. Her skin was dark brown, her crimson hair long and woven into tight pleats that looked almost plastic. She was smiling, showing even white teeth, and her green eyes were amused. Across the top of her mammaries was an ornate circle with five fire opals set in it. Inside the circle was a twisting rune that made Strechen''s eyes ache. The whole thing was made of a black material that was somehow, impossibly, glossy and matte at the same time.


    Strechen also noted that the Terror sat with her legs open, showing that she wore no modesty clothing to conceal a thick patch of hair that Strechen assumed hid her genitals.


    "Don''t step on the garden plants. If you do, I''ll have Strechen shoot you in the stomach," Tawtchee warned.


    Strechen saw mirth sparkle in the Terror''s eyes.


    "I see you have brought me gifts from Magnus," the Terror said, waving at the baskets of fruit.


    "Yes," Tawtchee said, stepping forward.


    "My brother must have known of my fruitless state so he sent you bearing fruit to remedy my lack of fruit so that I am no longer fruitless," the Guardian said.


    Tawtchee moved up and went down on one knee, holding up the wrapped object with two hands.


    Strechen had seen him practice that move over and over, based off of the advertisement for the Live Action Role Playing world.


    "And this," Tawtchee said. "A replica of a blade carried by officers in our military, with etchings inspired by the Guardian Magnus''s tattoos, wrapped in the shirt worn by a warrior who wore it in combat."


    Strechen noted the archaic, circular mode that Tawtchee was speaking in as she moved up to the nearest agent.


    "Go forward, set the basket down, then shuffled backwards to stand behind me," she ordered.


    Strechen saw the Terror''s eyes flick toward her then back to Tawtchee.


    "Polite and comes bearing gifts," the Terror said. She waved a hand that suddenly had purplish mist flowing off of it that dissolved only a few inches from her moving hand.


    A three legged seat suddenly appeared.


    "I thank you for your gift and accept it in the spirit it is offered," she said. She lifted the sword up with one hand, grabbing the shirt in the middle. She pointed at the stool. "Sit, sit."


    Tawtchee nodded, sitting down, his fur slick with sweat.


    The Terror watched each basket brought forward, set down, then watched the shuffling Way of the Means agent back up.


    She reached down, picked up a fruit, and tossed one to Tawtchee. She then made several motions with her hands, a gauzy nimbus of energy around them.


    A small three legged triangular table appeared next to Tawtchee with a ceramic mug full of dark brown liquid sitting in the middle.


    "Ale. From my stores," the Terror smiled. She took a bite of the fruit. "Peaches. I love peaches."


    Tawtchee just nodded, watching as the Terror slowly unwrapped the blade. She made appreciative noises as her fingers traced the engravings, rubbed the gems, and tested the edge.


    "A fine blade. Made with machinery, but I doubt it was easy," she said.


    "It was not," Tawtchee admitted, sipping at the mug, which had gathered condensation.


    "You are much more respectful than the last of your kind to visit," the Guardian said. She waved at the small plants growing in wooden garden boxes. "The last group deliberately stepped upon my strawberries, ruining them."


    "My apologies," Tawtchee said.


    "I already punished them for their temerity," the Guardian said.


    There was silence for a moment before the Guardian set down the hard brown shelled pit of the fruit.


    "Would you like the full show, or just an exchange of pleasantries for you to know who I am?" the Guardian asked.


    Tawtchee thought for a second.


    "Perhaps you would enjoy the theatrics?" he guessed.


    The Guardian smiled. "I do enjoy them. My brother Magnus says it is because I am vain, and a woman, that I enjoy the theatrics."


    "Your brother appears a simple man," Tawtchee said carefully.


    "That''s what he likes people to think," the Guardian laughed. She stood up, clapping her hands as if to dust them off. "Well, shall we?"


    Tawtchee nodded, standing up.


    The Guardian drew herself to her full height, staring down her nose at the entire group. Strechen realized that she was over two meters tall.


    Storm clouds rolled in suddenly, purple and green lightning flickering in the roiling clouds. Wind picked up, rain and storm on the air. The sun suddenly dimmed.


    The Guardian threw her hands up, her hair suddenly unbraided and forming a corona around her head. Burning red energy showed beneath her skin, forming an intricate pattern. The fire opals seemed to blink and transform into red eyes.


    Lighting roared down, raking the ground between the garden boxes, causing the world to rock with the detonation of thunder. It began to rain, cold chill water with the faint sting of an ice crystal at its core. The sun dimmed further until it was almost twilight.


    It all suddenly stopped.


    "Behold!" she shouted in a voice that echoed off of the distant mountains and could be heard above the starship in orbit. "I am Lady Surcsee Oathsworn, Servant of Nakteti the Traveler, Daughter of Lady Keena Oathsworn, Sister to Magnus Oathsworn, Wielder of the Nine World Engine Keys, Sister-Servant-Visitor of the Twilight Library, Guardian of the Path of the Traveler, and Duty Bound Immortal!"


    Strechen found herself face down on the ground, whimpering.


    She looked up and saw Tawtchee still standing in front of the Guardian.


    The Guardian dropped her hands, smiling.


    The clouds tattered and vanished, the rain stopped, and the sun came back.


    "Were you impressed?" she asked Tawtchee.


    Tawtchee nodded. "Very much."


    The Guardian laughed as she sat down. "Let us discuss the next steps you must take to follow the Path of the Traveler."


    Strechen was just glad she had not wet herself.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 29 - Dark Tidings

    Humanity tells tales of how magic or fire or wisdom was stolen from their gods by trickery. If you know humans, you know this is false. They snuck up behind their gods and bashed their heads in with a rock and ran off with what they wanting, hooting and laughing. - Confederate Diplomat Dreams of Something More, 02 Post Second Precursor War


    Getting up slowly, Strechen watched as both the Terror Surscee and her charge, Tawtchee, sat down facing one another. Tawtchee accepted another peach and a refill on his mug of ale, while Surscee smiled and refilled her own mug.


    "Before I set you on the next wandering road of the Path of the Traveler, would you like to hear a story?" the Terror asked.


    The other Way of the Means agents were slowly getting to their feet, bruxing their back teeth, smoothing their whiskers, or rubbing the tops of their heads in anxiety.


    "A story from the lips of a beautiful immortal? Of course," Tawtchee said.


    Surscee smiled wider. "Oh, I like you," she leaned back slightly, taking a small oblong object off her belt. She shifted her fingers and a fan spread out, the fan itself decorated with drawing of trees and flowers. She fanned herself slightly as she looked up at the clear blue sky.


    "In days of yore, before the fall of the Babbling Tower but after humanity''s ejection from the Garden of Plenty and the sinking of Atlantis due to the Nephilim''s pride, there existed Theseus of the Parting Ball, known as Prometheus. The only son of Ahbahl, who was slain by Cay-yun and Hercyouleez, Prometheus had long sought to lead humanity from rude sticks and stones to something greater," the Terror said. She waved her hands and pictures appeared in the grass between the Way of the Means Agents, Tawtchee, and herself. They were stylized, brightly colored, and interesting to look at.


    Strechen found herself fascinated by the tale and the visuals.


    "In these days, before the Fall of the Babbling Tower, humanity could speak with the animals, the spirits, and the elements," Surscee said. "Prometheus saw how the Gods had fire, and how useful it was for driving back foes, clearing brush to allow sticks to be used to furrow the ground to plant grain, for heating food, and making tools.


    "He desired to steal fire from the Gods and present it to his fellow mortals. To accomplish this, he consulted the Oracle of the God Apollo of the Creed of Gladiators at Delphi. The journey was fraught with danger worthy of other tales, but eventually he came to the banks of the great lake Gitcha-Gloomy-Gus. He consulted the Oracle, who told him he had to search out Happy Festus, the bald headed God of Crafting, Forging, and Making. Prometheus asked the Oracle how he would find Happy Festus and the Oracle told Prometheus that he must search out Spider, the trickster, who would lead him to Happy Festus.


    "So Prometheus journeyed far, across the mountains and the plains, to where the Fertile Valley River poured from the laps of Bah-humee and Tutu Pay-Me. It was there where the animals went to bathe. Prometheus knew that he would find Anansi the Spider, the Trickster, there where the water was so pure and sweet.


    "There, Prometheus saw that the animals set down their fangs and claws, so that they could trust one another to bathe and drink. There he saw that Tiger had the largest fangs and sharpest claws while Anansi, Spider, had small fangs and no claws.


    "Prometheus knew that Anansi the Spider was jealous of Tiger''s fangs and claws, and so he went to Anansi in secret and told him that Prometheus had a plan. When they went to bathe, Prometheus would steal Tiger''s fangs and claws.


    "Anansi liked this idea and so agreed to lead Prometheus to Happy Festus, planning on stuffing the human into a pot and cooking the human for Spider''s wife and many many children.


    "Prometheus went to the Lion, who was often indolent and lazy and praised Lion''s claws, but then said sadly that Lion''s claws were not as impressive as Tigers. Lion was angry, but then Prometheus, who had no claws of his own, promised Lion that he would steal Tiger''s claws and Lion would have the nicest claws. Lion agreed, thinking to just eat Prometheus, as he had eaten many Mister Mans before, and promised Prometheus that he would show off his new claws to all the animals.


    "Prometheus then went to Monkey Land briefly, teaching them a song, before going to the river and hiding in the bushes. When Tiger came and removed his claws and teeth, Prometheus went and stole them, taking Lion''s claws and replacing them with Tiger''s before putting Lion''s claws where Tiger''s was. He then ran to Anansi, who was waiting eagerly.


    "When Tiger saw he was missing his fangs, he looked around to see Lion showing off his claws. The Monkeys all began to sing that Lion had stolen Tiger''s claws. Angry, Tiger got a shovel and hit Lion so hard that spots flew off and hit Cheetah, who ran away.


    "Prometheus picked up Anansi and ran away, following Cheetah, while Lion and Tiger argued.


    "Anansi wanted to put Prometheus in a pot, but Prometheus carried him down the River of the Water of Life. They crossed the Lands of the God Kings, answering the Great Riddle of the Sphinx, before crossing the Lands of Coyote, another Trickster God whose fierce people danced and sang in great celebrations. They crossed the oceans in a canoe built by Mowie-Wowi after plying him with seven sacred herbs and spices. Then, they reached Mount Olympica. They climbed the mountain, battling the hundred handed and the Jotun through Prometheus''s might and Spider''s cleverness and trickery, until they came to the great forge of Happy Festus, who worked metal in the mountain''s hidden spaces where even rock was liquid.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "Spider went forth, showing Happy Festus the fangs of Tiger, and asking for his fangs to be just as large and sharp. Happy Festus was wary, keeping Spider in sight, but agreed. He forged Spider sharp fangs that could pierce the toughest coat and hide. When Happy Festus, holding an orb of light in his mouth, presented the fangs to Spider, Spider complained that he could not reach up and get them.


    "Happy Festus bent down and attached the fangs to Spider. That was when Prometheus jumped out and smote Happy Festus in the head with a rock, knocking the God of Crafting and Making to the ground. The earth trembled as the Gods raged, but Prometheus grabbed fire from the great forge, and, with Spider, ran down the mountain, dodging great bolts of lightning hurled by Hey-Zues and Thawr Owe-Din''s Sun.


    "At the base of the mountain they rested. Spider produced a jug of wine and bade Prometheus to drink with him. But Spider poured his own cup into the ground, which eventually grew to become the great grape fields of Iron Fence, while Prometheus drank his fill and became drunk.


    "Spider hid the fire in a hole, and went to Hey-Deez-Nuts, and told him where Prometheus lay drunk. In a rage, Hey-Deez-Nuts ran down and beat Prometheus with his testicles until Prometheus lay unconscious. Hey-Deez-Nutz gathered the other Gods, and they bound Prometheus to a rock, with Thawr hammering great spikes of iron into Prometheus''s hands and feet. Each day the Three Vultures would peck out his liver. Each night it regrew, so his suffering was endless.


    "Spider took the fire home, where he used it to keep his stew pot warm so his wife and children could eat their fill.


    "But Spider felt guilty, and so he devised a plan. He climbed to the top of the tallest tree and let loose Fire. It spread out and Spider danced happily, but suddenly the great forests of the world burst into flame, sending Man and Animal alike running from the fire. The great goddess Shiva had to dance to put out the flames, her footsteps causing the earth itself to shake.


    "The other Gods knew that Spider had stolen the Fire, and Spider shrunk himself down to hide in little holes to hide from Man, the Animals, and the Gods even as the fire raged. While the Gods and Man and the Animals wailed and lamented about the great forest catching Fire, Spider laughed and cackled with glee, for he found he just wanted to watch it all burn. His laughter was heard and every creature of the wind, the water, the air, and the earth began to hunt Spider, forcing him to abandon his fine house and hide in the small holes forever.


    "And that is why Spider hides in holes and how Man gained fire," Surscee said.


    The images vanished and Strechen frowned. The tale was obviously impossible, but she was not about to protest in the face of someone who controlled the very weather as if it was little more than drawing shut the curtains.


    Surscee leaned forward, staring Tawtchee in the eyes.


    "Do you understand the story?" she asked, her eyes intent.


    Tawtchee nodded slowly. "I do."


    Surscee leaned back, smiling. "Good," she took out her fan, snapping it open, and fanning herself. "Then let us prepare you for the next step of the Path of the Traveler," her face became serious. "The next Guardian is fierce indeed, and will slay you just for being what and who you are. He is to be treated with respect and fear, even by one such as I."


    Tawtchee nodded again.


    Surscee smiled and stood up, folding her fan and tucking it into her belt. "One of you must bear the map of the Path of the Traveler," she said, still smiling. "Who offers themself as tribute?"


    Tawtchee stood up. "I do."


    Her smile grew wider. "Do not worry. It will only hurt. A lot."


    "I am ready," Tawtchee said.


    "Very well," Surscee held out her hands, runes appearing above her fingertips, the fiery pattern erupting under her skin.


    Tawtchee was lifted into the air, his arms and legs pulled out as straight as his body would allow. Strechen could see his jaw muscles bunch up and knew he was gritting his teeth. Lighting crackled over the small Dra.Falten male, fire covered him repeatedly to explode outward, and a glowing nimbus flowed from Surscee''s hands to Tawtchee.


    Finally, Tawtchee was lowered to the ground, where he fell to his hands and knees for a moment before struggling to his feet. Strechen could see the effort it cost.


    "Another will have to read the map, little one," Surscee said. She stepped forward, touching Tawtchee on the forehead.


    Strechen noted the back of her hand was a rich brown color but her palms were pinkish white, like her brother''s skin.


    "I thank you for this gift," Tawtchee panted.


    "When the pain subsides, you will discover the gift that I give unto you and you alone," Surscee said. She looked up, sniffing the air. "It will rain this evening."


    She turned and started walking away.


    "I advise you to return to your ship," she said.


    She paused at her doorway.


    "Two Guardians remain, hero," she said.


    Then the door closed and she was gone.


    -----


    Strechen stood and watched as Hrekkel carefully helped Tawtchee out of his shirt.


    On the small male Dra.Falten''s back were upraised scars. Numbers, lines, starbursts.


    "She said it is a map," Tawtchee said softly, staring at the far wall.


    "It is," Hrekkel said. He held up a camera and snapped a picture. The camera gave a sharp whine then bluish smoke leaked from the casing. Hrekkel looked at the camera, sniffed it, then shook his head, going over and setting it down. He picked up a holorecorder and tried making an image of the map. The holorecorder gave a high pitched whine and smoke leaked from it.


    "I might have to have you sit next to me while I translate it all," Hrekkel said.


    "I have an idea," Strechen said. She moved over and picked up a graphite pen and some paper, then sat down behind Tawtchee, spreading the paper out on the table.


    She began carefully outlining Tawtchee''s torso.


    "Of course, she would insist upon the old ways," Hrekkel said.


    Tawtchee just nodded, staring at the wall.


    Strechen kept drawing.


    The ship moved slowly and carefully toward the Oort cloud.


    The Third Guardian awaited.

 Nova Wars - Chapter The Big Three-Oh

    The worst atrocities are not performed upon the enemy in war. They are performed upon the population by their own government during peace time. - Confederate Diplomatic Services Senior Diplomat Dreams of Something More, Post Second Precursor War


    Sitting in her stateroom, Field Captain Strechen finished the shading on several of the runes that were at the lower right of the sketch she had initially made. The runes, lines, glyphs, and sigils felt like they were burned into her brain and only by sketching them and then finalizing them in black ink with a fountain pen made the burning in her mind ease.


    She finished the last of the shading, wiped off the nib on the sponge, and carefully put away the drawing set that Senior Scientific Researcher Hrekkel had ordered the engineers to make for her. Extra nibs, a nib sharpener, bottles of black ink, the pen itself, the sponges. All of it cleaned and put in their proper place.


    Drawing by that particular method was something she had left behind in the Way of the Means Academy, her interest in art being pushed aside at the advice of mentors and overseers, so that she could concentrate on being an Agent of the Empress''s Will.


    Feeling the tension in her shoulders ease up slightly as she stretched, she smiled. She looked at the two pieces of thick paper. One, was a charcoal sketch of the upraised scars on the back of a simple appearing male, the other the same image, crisper, more refined, done in black ink upon cream colored paper.


    She had even gotten the swirls and color changes to Tawtchee''s fur.


    Deciding to relax, she went to the gym for almost an hour, then went to eat. She listened to the other Way of the Means Agents talk between themselves.


    The fact that she hovered around Tawtchee had already spawned dark rumors and sly innuendo as to her relationship with the smaller male. With the fact that females of her rank were allowed to freely breed added more fuel to the rumor mill, which was grinding its grist fine.


    For the most part, they were still annoyed and slightly personally offended that Tawtchee had been put in charge of the last excursion team. That he had approached the female Terror as a supplicant, showing her even more deference than some showed the Empress.


    Frankly, it did not surprise Strechen that the females at the other table scoffed at any suggestion that the female Terror could have threatened an entire Way of the Means team, properly armed and armored, much less the starship they rode in.


    Strechen thought about just what little she had seen. What little she knew about The Traveler.


    The idea that both Magnus and Surscee were over thirty thousand years old was something her mind tried to immediately reject. The Traveler had been verified as to who she was, and it was documented that she had left with companions and bodyguards. Magnus and Surscee were listed among them.


    Strechen doubted anyone would dare attempt to pretend to be either of those powerful Terrors.


    Going back to her stateroom, she looked over her drawings again, then gathered them up.


    She''d get Tawtchee and have him sit for her while she checked shadings again.


    The male mess was empty. It was clean, but deserted, and the male''s daily meal wasn''t for another two hours. She tried the gym, but he was not in there.


    Finally, she went back to her stateroom, setting down the drawings and checking his bunk.


    It was empty, the blankets twisted and the bed unmade. She looked it over and frowned. His uniform top was still there. Same with his worn and battered boots. His undershirt was wadded up from where he had been using it as a pillow.


    His fighting knife was sticking up from where he''d jammed it between the thin mattress and the bulkhead wall.


    "System," she said.


    "Yes, Field Captain?" the ship''s Virtual Intelligence asked.


    "Location of Tawtchee-9912743," she asked.


    "Scanning for Male-9912743," the VI said. "Male-9912743 implant is either non-functioning or turned off. There is no record of Male-9912743 leaving the ship. No further data available."


    Frowning, she got up and checked a few places. The few males she questioned all had no idea where he might be, although Strechen had the vague feeling that they would have denied even knowing Tawtchee even if he was standing next to them.


    Frustrated, she went to Senior Research Scientist Hekkel''s quarters. She pressed the chime button and waited.


    The big female answered, dressed only in a loose fitting pair of pants and a loose shirt that just accentuated her freakish size.


    "Yes, Field Captain?" the large female asked.


    "Do you know where Tawtchee is? I wanted to check his markings against my drawings, make sure I got it right," Strechen said.


    "One moment," she said, closing the door. After a moment, she opened it. "The most recent entry had him being escorted to see the Captain."


    "Thank you," Strechen said.


    The large female just shut the door.


    Strechen headed for the Captain''s Day Stateroom, moving through the hallways, seeing the males press themselves against the bulkhead to make room for her even if they were carrying materials.


    For some reason it was bothering her more and more.


    we cease to exist...


    The Captain let her in and she stared at the meeting. The Chief Medical Officer, the Executive Officer, the Signal Analyst Officer, and the Captain of the vessel herself.


    "Can I help you, Field Captain?" the Captain asked.


    "I''m looking for Tawtchee, he was last..." she started.


    "Who?" the XO asked.


    "Tawtchee, the male the Empress..."


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    The Captain looked up from the hologram. "I have no record of a Tawtchee aboard this vessel," she said, twitching her whiskers smugly.


    "Tawtchee-9912743," Strechen said.


    "I have a Male-9912743, but no Tawtchee," the Captain said. Her ears and whiskers were canted into a smirk.


    "I am looking for the whereabouts of Male-9912743," Strechen said.


    The Captain looked down. "In the medical bay, the recovery section," she said. She looked up. "That area is currently off limits to non-authorized personnel."


    Strechen frowned. "I was ordered, by the Office of the Empress Herself, to watch over and supervise Male-9912743."


    The Captain gave a shrug. "I am the Captain of this vessel. I decide who has authorization to go where," she said.


    Strechen stared for a long moment. "Thank you for your time, Captain," she said.


    She turned and walked out, ignoring the smirks from behind her.


    The big female answered the door again.


    "Yes?" she asked. Her eyes were a bright green.


    "Tawtchee is in the medical recovery section and the Captain is refusing to let me visit him," Strechen said.


    "Medical? What''s he doing there?" Hrekkel said from outside of Strechen''s view.


    "Why is he in medical?" the big female asked.


    "Unknown. The Captain refused to elaborate," Strechen said.


    "A moment," the female said.


    The door shut.


    Strechen waited, impatiently.


    The door opened and she took a step back.


    The big female was in her full uniform, complete with hard plates. Her pistol belt held a blocky and ugly pistol made of black metal that had a red light burning malevolently. Hrekkel was wearing a uniform too, the Science Caste uniform, only with hard plates and a pistol.


    "We will stop so that you may wear your badges of office and your weapon," the big female said.


    For the first time, Strechen could see her full name and rank.


    Imperial Expediter First Class Ee''eerlee''u, Empress Direct Action Hand


    Strechen swallowed thickly. The Hand of the Empress was mostly rumor. Strechen wondered how the big female had come to guard Hrekkel and why she seemed so protective of him.


    They stopped long enough for Strechen to grab her sash and pistol, following the big female Ee''eerlee''u and Hrekkel to the Captain''s Briefing Room.


    The big female didn''t bother to knock, just put her hand against the entrypad and walking through when the door inexplicably opened for her.


    Strechen stayed in the hallway with the scientist.


    "What is the meaning of..." the Captain said, half standing up.


    "Where is Male-9912743," the big female growled, her eyes shifting color to hot amber.


    "I am not..." the Captain started to say.


    The female put her hand on the pistol''s grip. The light went from red to green.


    "Where. Is. Male-9912743," Ee''eerlee''u asked.


    "Medical bay, in the recovery area," the Captain said.


    The big female turned around and walked out the door.


    "Nobody can see him without my..." the Captain started.


    The door shut.


    Strechen followed as the trio made their way quickly to the medical bay.


    A nurse tried to stop them but the big female just stared her down.


    Ee''eerlee''u pulled the curtain aside.


    Tawtchee lay on his stomach, his chin resting on the thin mattress. He had plas restraints across his ankles, mid-thigh, his buttocks, the top of his head, his upper arms, and his wrists. His long jaw and nose had a three-strap muzzle on it. From mid-neck to just below the waist and across his entire back was covered by a sheet held up by a frame.


    He opened his eyes as the curtain rattled to the side.


    "Hey, Strechen," he managed to say without being able to open his mouth, his voice a dry rasp.


    Strechen moved over, kneeling down to stare Tawtchee in the eyes.


    "Tawtchee. How are you?" she asked.


    The scientist, Hrekkel, moved up and looked under the sheet. He motioned at the big female, who turned and moved into the medical bay, heading for where the nurses were clustered against the wall.


    Strechen didn''t pay any attention, reaching up and tugging at the buckle on the strap of the muzzle closest to his nose.


    "Been better," he said. "Been worse."


    She got the buckle loose and moved to the next one.


    "Come here," Ee''eerlee''u snarled. A nurse protested but the big female dragged the smaller nurse over.


    "Water?" he asked as the second buckle came loose.


    "In a moment," Strechen said, working on the third buckle. The remainder of the muzzle was wrapped around his head.


    "Where is it?" Hrekkel asked.


    "I do not answer to you. I answer to the Chief Medical Officer," the nurse protested, drawing herself up.


    "Low-vee," the big female said.


    "Low-vee," a heavily synthesized voice stated.


    The third buckle came loose.


    "How about this? Do you answer to this?" Ee''eerlee''u asked.


    "You would not dare to..." the nurse said.


    There was a loud THWACK followed immediately by a splattering sound.


    The nurse fell to the floor with a thump and the big female headed for the other nurses.


    "Hang on," Strechen said. She moved over and grabbed a drink pouch, tearing the perforated corner away. She knelt down and held it out to Tawtchee''s mouth as the big Expediter dragged the next nurse over.


    "How about you?" Ee''eerlee''u asked, grabbing another nurse by the ear and dragging her toward where Hrekkel stood looking angry.


    "The Captain had it taken to her secure briefing area in a nutri-tank," the nurse squealed, holding onto the big female''s forearm to take the pressure off of her ear.


    "Who ordered it?" Hrekkel asked.


    "I don''t know! The Chief Medical Officer maybe? The Captain was here during the surgery," the female squealed.


    "Who would know?" Hrekkel asked.


    "The one you shot," the nurse said.


    Hrekkel chuckled, shaking his head. "Welp, can''t unshoot someone," he looked at the big female. "My dear, I keep telling you to control your temper."


    "She annoyed me," Ee''eerlee''u said stuffily.


    "You can''t just kill everyone who annoys you," Hrekkel said.


    Tawtchee was greedily drinking from the pouch, Strechen staring into his eyes.


    "I can. I just probably should not," Ee''eerlee''u said.


    "And why not?" Hrekkel asked.


    "We might need them later," Ee''eerlee''u said. She sighed. "I should have waited and shot her when we were done."


    She looked at the female, who was whining, and let go of her ear. "Get away from me."


    The nurse stumbled over to the others, holding her ear and sobbing.


    Strechen got Tawtchee another bag of liquid, opening it up and letting the male drink almost half before pulling it away.


    "How are you?" she tried again.


    "Been worse," Tawtchee said.


    "Painkillers working well?" Strechen asked.


    "They did not give me painkillers. Just paralyzed my motor control and autonomous reflexes during the surgery," Tawtchee said.


    Strechen looked up at Ee''eerlee''u, feeling her ears and whiskers go rigid in anger. "What was done?"


    Hrekkel set the sheet down, keeping it taught across the top of the frame.


    "They removed the flesh from his back, down through the fat and connecting tissue, leaving only the muscle and tendon behind," the scientist said.


    Strechen''s eyes opened wide. "That''s... that''s..."


    "Barbaric," Hrekkel said. He shrugged. "It is good that you are outraged," he said.


    Strechen blinked. "Why?"


    There was silence a moment.


    "That means it was done without your knowledge, and I do not have to execute you," Ee''eerlee''u said.


    The door opened up and the Captain marched in, followed by the XO and the Chief Medical Officer.


    "What is going on here?" the Captain yelled.


    "What happened to Nurse Vrenlu''u?" the Chief Medical Officer asked.


    "Holster your weapon," the XO ordered Ee''eerlee''u, "Before I call out the Marines."


    "I shot her," Ee''eerlee''u said coldly. She looked at the XO. "You don''t have enough Marines to force your will upon me."


    Her eyes were burning a cold dull red.


    "What happened to the flesh on this subject''s back?" Hrekkel asked.


    "I ordered it removed for easier reference," the Captain said, straightening up and projecting her authority.


    "And where is it?" Hrekkel asked.


    The Captain looked uncomfortable. "Uh..."


    "Where is it, scum?" Ee''eerlee''u asked.


    "I had it removed," the Captain said.


    "Kind of hurt," Tawtchee said, finally able to open his mouth and pant from the pain.


    Strechen clenched her jaw in rage.


    "You did not administer anesthetic or painkillers?" Strechen asked.


    "There was no need. It has been scientifically proven that males do not feel pain the same way females do and do not need painkillers," the Chief Medical Officer said.


    "And where is it now?" Hrekkel repeated.


    The Captain looked at the Chief Medical Officer.


    "It crumbled to ash before we could submerge it into the tank of nutrient fluid," the Chief Medical Officer said.


    "And you ordered this, Captain?" Ee''eerlee''u asked, turning to face the Captain.


    The XO moved away from both the Medical Officer and the Captain.


    "Yes. There is no reason something of such value should be trusted with a common male who probably..."


    There was a loud crack.


    The Captain''s body dropped.


    Another loud crack.


    The Chief Medical Officer dropped.


    Strechen lowered her smoking pistol slowly.


    Ee''eerlee''u looked at Hrekkel.


    "Those two aren''t on me."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 31

    It is the smallest thing that makes an entire society explode into bloodlust and violence. A small thing, noticeable only by historians, that turns the entire political scene into a metaphorical bloodbath as everyone scrambles to eliminate rivals and secure their positions.


    The Titan Colony rebellion, six months of brutal and horrific fighting in dome cities and habitats, finally kicked off because of a broken ATM. The First Artificial War started over a cup of tepid tea. The Second Digital War started over a cash shop dispute in a video game.


    Millions dead.


    The event that turns the tinder into a raging inferno is, so often, small and insignificant and would have been nothing if the tinder, firewood, thermite, FOOF, and coal dust had not been prepared for months, years, decades, generations.


    That, my dear divine representatives, is why the city is on fire and I am leaving. - Confederate Diplomat Dreams of Something More, Diplomatic Services Corps final message to the Yentarik Theocracy, 38 P2PW.


    The stateroom cabin was dim, smelling of quikheal compounds and burn gel. The only light was a pinlight attached to the top of the sketchpad. The only sound was two people breathing and the scratching of a charcoal drawing tip against rough paper as Strechen sketched Tawtchee''s sleeping form.


    He was laying on the sole bunk in her room, on his stomach, his lower jaw resting on the mattress. Strechen had noticed he was motionless, not moving much more than his toes curling and uncurling and making the odd fist or two. Other than that, he was perfectly still.


    She knew it was to allow his back to heal.


    More lines, detailing how the blanket folded, more shading, showing the deep shadows.


    The light from the pistol in her lap shined up the paper as she worked.


    After a long time Tawtchee''s whiskers trembled slightly. He didn''t move, staying perfectly still, breathing deep and slow.


    Strechen could see he had left rapid eye movement and his whiskers kept twitching.


    "It''s all right that you''re awake. Just lay there, let the quikheal do its work," Strechen said.


    "Are you all right?" he asked, opening his eyes.


    Strechen sighed. "I didn''t have surgery to remove the flesh from my back. I am perfectly all right."


    "Good," Tawtchee said. He closed his eyes again.


    "Why are you concerned about my well being?" Strechen asked.


    "I learned a long time ago that if someone cares about you further than how much bang you can put downrange or how many bodies you can stack, that you show them the same amount of care, if not more," Tawtchee said. He shifted slightly. "Back feels weird and itchy."


    "Want me to check it?" Strechen asked.


    "Please," Tawtchee shifted slightly.


    Strechen got up, moved over, and moved the blanket. The healing pad on his back showed a luminescent thin green stripe around the pad and Strechen frowned.


    It should have been red or amber.


    She tapped the little button on the edge that would project the state of the healing tissue on the top of the pad and stepped back.


    The skin was back.


    The fur was back.


    The scars were back.


    "What?" Tawtchee asked.


    "A moment. I need to summon Hrekkel and Ee''eerlee''u," Strechen said. She put the blanket back over and patted his leg. "It''ll be all right."


    She moved out into the hallway and made the comlink call.


    -----


    Tawtchee sat on the exam table, a modesty wrap around his waist.


    His back was scarred, just as it was before. The discolorations in the fur were the same.


    It was as if he had never been flayed alive.


    "How?" Strechen asked.


    "Nanites? Changes to his cellular replication and healing? There are many ways the changes could have been made," Hrekkel said.


    "You do not seem shocked," Strechen said.


    Hrekkel shook his head. "No. During Lee''u and my trials, we saw many such dark miracles," he said. "Beings disemboweled stuffing their own guts back in to stagger away as they healed even as we watched. Beings putting their severed limbs back on so that they healed right away. A limb regrowing in heartbeats."


    "And the dead walk," Ee''eerlee''u said coldly.


    "And the dead walk," Hrekkel nodded.


    "Can I get dressed?" Tawtchee asked.


    "Go ahead," Hrekkel said. He looked at Strechen. "He''ll be fine. Watch for any change in eye color, any signs of static electricity buildup, or any taste of berries in your mouth."


    "Why?" Strechen asked, moving over to help Tawtchee down off the exam table.


    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    "He was exposed to Terror," Ee''eerlee''u said.


    "That," Hrekkel added. He turned and walked out. "We will reach the Third Guardian in less than seventy-two hours. We must prepare."


    "I''m OK," Tawtchee said as Strechen helped him put on his pants.


    Strechen didn''t answer.


    She had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.


    -----


    The ship carefully staged down from Transit Space, exiting with only a flare of transit energies and a sheet of harmless particles that dissolved and vanished from realspace within a handful of kilometers.


    Strechen watched from the hologram on the desk as the bridge crew immediately set about to scanning the system and getting information on it. The former XO sat in the Captain''s Throne, with Expediter Ee''eerlee''u standing against the wall behind her. She could see that Hrekkel was also observing from his lab that took up a large section of the ship.


    The news came back that the system was nearly bare. A single stellar mass, a white dwarf, and a single hypermassive gas giant nearly five hundred light seconds from the stellar mass.


    "Grav signature," one of the sensor techs called out. "Manifesting only fifty kilometers from the starboard bow."


    "Wait for it," came Hrekkel''s voice. "All weapons offline. All shielding but particle screens on standby."


    There was silence for a moment.


    "Grav signature began moving then vanished. Contact has been lost."


    Strechen nodded.


    The lights blinked twice then steadied.


    "There it is," Hrekkel said softly. "We''ve been boarded."


    Strechen just waited.


    There were exclaimations of shock as the control consoles and monitor stations suddenly all crashed, putting out gibberish and random noise before shutting off.


    "Steady," Hrekkel said.


    The holotank in the middle of the bridge suddenly came on.


    A Terror made of pure flowing code stood in the middle of the holotank. It was wearing a shipboard jumpsuit with the sigil of the Confederacy on one shoulder. Its face was hard and angry looking.


    "Who are you and how did you get here?" the Terror demanded.


    Hrekkel appeared as a hologram, sprouting from a small hologram projector tacked onto the deck with quikweld compound.


    "I am Explorer Hrekkel, of the Dra.Falten Empire," Hrekkel stated.


    "More rats," the holographic Terror sneered, raising one hand that began to crackle with electricity.


    The lights dimmed slightly.


    "Prisoner and survivor the Detainee. One who has walked the ruins and violence of the Clownface Nebula," Hrekkel continued. "Who has seen the stars of the Mithril Nebula die in the night sky from the shattered battlegrounds of humanity''s last stands against the Atrekna."


    The hand lowered.


    The Terror nodded.


    "I have led an expedition that has sat with Magnus Oathsworn and eaten fruit. Who has seen Lady Surcsee Oathsworn declare her identity to the universe, and have set upon the Path Less Traveled," Hrekkel said. His hologram gave a sweeping bow. "I have come, with my loyal crew, to seek the next step of the Path Less Traveled."


    The Terror stared for a long moment.


    "Do you know what lies at the end of your path?" the hologram asked.


    "Danger. Not just to the Dra.Falten, but to the galaxy at large," Hrekkel stated. He leaned forward, looking as if he was pressing his hand against the inside of the holofield. "The Confederacy is on the edge of falling. Species have come from beyond the borders to attack it, and the Detainee warns of dire threats to the entire Galactic Arm Spur."


    The Terror just listened then stood still for a long moment.


    "If anyone would know, she would," he said softly. "Do you not fear for your empire if my people are released?"


    Hrekkel shrugged. "That sounds like a problem for future me, and he''s busy talking shit about me right now."


    The Terror suddenly laughed. "You''ll show him, you''ll ruin his life!"


    Hrekkel nodded. "Exactly. For your people to be a threat to mine later, my people must still exist and I fear that they will not. That with the fall of the Confederacy, my people will be so much chaff before the wind."


    The Terror nodded. "Logical. Understandable," he looked up slightly. "The Confederacy is falling. Its strength spent," he closed his eyes and then opened them. "You realize, that at the end of this path are my people? Not technology for you to steal, not graves for you to rob, but my people."


    Hrekkel nodded slowly. "Yes. Without allies, the Dra.Falten Empire dies, and possibly more."


    "Very well. I will transmit the coordinates and methods of reaching the Fourth Guardian," the Terror said.


    "Might I know your name before we part?" Hrekkel asked.


    The Terror stood a moment, then shook his head. "Normally, this is the part where I overawe you with my power and rage, but, just call me ''Chuck'' and you''ll be fine."


    "Thank you, Chuck, for agreeing to provide my people assistance in their time of need," Hrekkel said.


    "Good journey to you," Chuck said.


    The holotank cleared.


    "Transit space entry detected," a sensor officer stated.


    Hrekkel vanished from the holotank, then reappeared on Strechen''s desktop. "Meet us in Conference Room Delta. Bring Tawtchee."


    "I will," Strechen said.


    -----


    Hrekkel was looking over the data when Strechen arrived with Tawtchee in tow. Strechen had noticed how the smaller male was moving more and more easily, how the gray hairs in his fur were vanishing.


    She attributed it to whatever the Sorceress had done to him.


    Expediter Ee''eelee''u was sitting at the table, staring at some of the data.


    "The path is not an easy one. It will require precise astrogration, as it leads to and into a dark nebula," Hrekkel said. He shook his head. "It is in our catalogue database as DBAD-214-457. It is in a bad position, regarding transit space, gravitational tides, and other issues. Due to its density we have no idea how many stars, if any, are inside of it. All attempts at probing or exploring it have failed."


    "And that is where we are going?" Tawtchee asked, sitting down.


    "To a spot just inside, maybe a light year into it. We move a half light-year into it, then we move down, to the starboard side, and forward another light year," Hrekkel said.


    "So, no chance of seeing where we are going or running our own astrogation?" Ee''eerlee''u asked.


    Hrekkel shook his head. "No," he looked up at the large female. "If there are any Terrors or Terror worlds in that nebula, there is no way to detect them. We mainly know of the nebula because it occludes our view of the star field. It is nothing more than a dark spot in the sky."


    "May I ask a question about what was stated to the Terror?" Strechen asked.


    "Of course," Hrekkel said. "Information and data is the cure to ignorance."


    Strechen looked at Ee''eerlee''u, who nodded. She took a deep breath. "Is the Empire in danger?"


    Hrekkel nodded. "Yes. The Empress believes that the Empire will somehow endure, but the Emperor believes that there is a serious threat to the Empire that will result in our destruction if we cannot gain allies to assist us."


    "The Grenklakail Empire and Strevik''al Dominion?" she guessed.


    Hrekkel shook his head. "No, although they are pushing hard at us. Unless they decide to go full nova-spark on us, we will eventually either figure out a way to beat them or they will simply absorb us. Our fight is not one of genocide, but of dominance."


    "Then what?" Strechen asked.


    "We do not know," Ee''eerlee''u stated. "Before we left, the Dra.Falten Empire has lost sixteen worlds out of the thousand we possess. Not enough to gain attention of anyone who does not track the Empire closely. All of them are on the Empire''s borders."


    "And the Grenklakail Empire and Strevik''al Dominion have both lost worlds to this force," Hrekkel said. "It''s new, within the last year, but they are making rapid gains, taking out worlds toward the galactic spur gulf, anti-spinward."


    Tawtchee frowned. "We don''t know who they are?"


    Hrekkel shook his head. "The Empress believes it is a trick by either the Grenklakail Empire or the Strevik''al Dominion and we will soon discover that."


    "But the Emperor does not?" Tawtchee asked.


    Hrekkel shook his head. "No. The Emperor believes it is something worse. Intelligence shows that everyone whose territory is toward the space between the arms is losing territory," he tapped the table. "Which makes our mission all the more vital."


    Tawtchee shrugged. "All right. Why doesn''t concern me. What concerns me is who we have to deal with next. What do we know about them?"


    Hrekkel tapped the hologram, bringing up a symbol. It was an upward arrow, over a shield. Nothing else, nothing elaborate.


    "The Sancti Ordo Spiritus Tyr."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 32

    It''s always the quiet ones. - Unknown, Terra, Age of Paranoia


    Tawtchee sat and watched as everyone hustled and bustled about, moving quickly between stations as the ship prepared to drop from Transit Space and into realspace. The directions they had gotten from "Chuck" to decipher the encoded data embedded in the scars on his back had been complicated, with specific drive speeds, specific Transit Space bands, and tolerances as low as a few light seconds.


    The ship was ready to drop, the counter winding down.


    Tawtchee knew that Hrekkel felt that he was some kind of good luck charm. That Tawtchee would be able to figure out things that other people could not.


    Tawtchee felt that Hrekkel needed some time in a brothel and a good bar fight.


    Still, he had spent the entire time going over Terror technology, how it reacted when it was first met, how it had been bypassed, what kind of computer systems still worked.


    He wasn''t surprised to find out that the majority of the computer systems that still worked were stuff like automated VI bill collectors, legal fine help desks, and traffic offense systems.


    He checked the bridge again.


    Everyone looked wound up like a cherry before their first firefight.


    A glance showed him Field Captain Strechen, who looked like she was wound tight enough to vibrate. The Field Captain had her hands clasped in front of her, leaning back against the wall, the heels of her shoes pressed together.


    Tawtchee just turned and watched the counter wind down.


    "Remember, all weapons offline. Shields at standby except for particle screens. Engines at full stop," Hrekkel reminded the XO. The XO repeated the orders, the female sweating enough the fur on the sides of her snout and the top of her head were slick.


    When it hit zero, the ship made the slight downshift from the bottom of the lowest Transit Space band and into realspace. There was a slight shimmer in the air, a feeling of momentum that had suddenly released somehow.


    The tension on the bridge got more intense.


    Tawtchee just looked at his thumbnail.


    "We''re being scanned," the sensor technician said. Their voice grew choked. "Two, three, four hundred point sources. Multiple scanning methods."


    A light swept through the bridge, from side to side, then from front to back, then back to front, then side to side in the opposite direction. Then the light filled the bridge. Each member of the bridge crew was outlined. Data scrolled across the outline. The consoles and electronic equipment was suddenly outlined then glowed slightly, like an objective in a VR game. More data flowed by.


    The viewscreen at the front of the bridge came on. Runes appeared, then began flickering, finally settling on Dra.Falten standard text.


    YOU ARE BEING SCANNED


    RESISTANCE WILL BE MET WITH OVERWHELMING FORCE


    THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE


    Time moved by slowly.


    YOU HAVE BEEN SCANNED


    THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION


    PLEASE WAIT FOR INTERACTION


    NON-COMPLIANCE WILL BE MET WITH OVERWHELMING LETHAL FORCE


    SOMEONE WILL BE WITH YOU SOON


    YOU ARE NUMBER [ONE] IN THE QUEUE


    A REPRESENTATIVE WILL BE WITH YOU IN APPROXIMATELY [12.6] MINUTES


    The light suddenly winked out.


    The last two sentences stayed on the viewscreen, the time quickly speeding by.


    "Tawtchee, it''s on you if you think I''m screwing up," Hrekkel said when the timer dropped to less than two minutes.


    Tawtchee sighed, standing up and moving forward. He twisted the cap off the bottle of fizzybrew and slugged down part of it.


    The crew eyed him suspiciously.


    There was a glow in the middle of the bridge, in a wide empty area where two console rows met with a path from the back of the bridge to the front.


    The glow suddenly pulsed and a female Terror appeared.


    "Greetings! I am Perfect-Day-331978," the Terror said, her voice pleasant in the soothing aural range of Dra.Falten hearing. "If you would prefer a live agent to speak with, please say ''Live Agent'' at any time. Please listen to the following menu as our options may have changed."


    The female tapped mid-air and a holographic box appeared.


    "If you would like to check the status of your application for residency, visitation, or amnesty, please touch box one," she created another box. "If you need to start a new application, please press box two. If you would like to verify your application, press box three."


    The hologram kept speaking, putting up boxes and suggestions.


    "Live Agent," Hrekkel said when it said "If you would like to repeat this menu, please select the pound sign box."


    The hologram flickered. "Before I transfer you, I need to gather more information."


    "Live Agent," Hrekkel said.


    "With more information, the live agent will be better able to serve you," the hologram said. "If you were to state the nature of your inquiry, I will be better able to connect you to the correct department. Please state your name and star nation of origin."


    "Live Agent," Hrekkel said again, looking frustrated.


    "Before I move you to a live agent, I will need some information to..." she started.


    "GIVE ME A FUCKING LIVE AGENT, YOU MUTATED MALFORMED SPAWN OF A TWO CREDIT RING-TONE!" Tawtchee yelled. He threw the fizzybrew bottle through the hologram. "IF I WANTED SHIT FROM SOME JUMPED UP COUNTING BOX, I''D CALL THE TAX SERVICES!"


    The hologram gave a huffy sound and vanished.


    "Are you sure about this?" Hrekkel asked, shifting nervously in his chair.


    "You''ve never dealt with Imperial Pay Services," Tawtchee said. He gave a short mocking laugh. "That was damn near the same VI that I had to deal with to get my combat pay comped."


    One of the lower ranking had gathered up the bottle and dropped it in the reclaimer even as a robot sopped up the spilled beer. Tawtchee picked up another fizzybrew from the six-pack he''d put on the unused backup combat control console, cracking it open.


    A new hologram appeared.


    "Good day, sir, ma''am, both, or neither," the hologram said. This one was sitting behind a desk, without the flowing code across the surface. They were dressed in official looking clothing, the desk had clutter on it. "I am Agent Sarah Goodporter, representing the government of the systems you are intending to access. This interaction is recorded for performance review and training purposes," she gave a tight lipped Terror ''smile''. "How may I assist you at this time?"


    Hrekkel stepped forward. "We are searching out the Terrors."


    "Oh, well, in that case," she smiled. "I suggest you adhere to the following instructions," she said.


    "I am recording," Hrekkel said.


    "Good. All right, what you do, is you go back to your quarters. You put on a clown suit, one of the good ones with the squirting flower and the rubber nose. Then you get a good running start," she paused for a second, smiling. "Then jump up your own ass."


    The hologram winked out.


    THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME


    YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO EAT A BOWL OF DICKS


    appeared on the viewscreen.


    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    Then it winked out, leaving an icon of "RATE MY SERVICE" on it.


    Hrekkel turned and looked around. "OK, what happened?"


    Tawtchee took a drink and shook his head. "You gave them an out," he sighed. "The only thing lazier than a government employee is a government employee you need something from."


    Ee''eerlee''u gave a snort of a smothered laugh.


    "Want to try?" Hrekkel asked.


    Tawtchee shook his head. "No, but I''ll do it anyway."


    He guzzled down the fizzybrew, lit a cigarette, and picked up the book reader he''d gotten from stores. He moved over and tapped the rate my service on it.


    The box popped open. One-half to five stars. He hit ''half" on the star. The box popped up asking why he chose that rating.


    "Bitch was ugly" was what he typed. He hit submit and took a drag of the Treana''ad smokestick.


    The hologram appeared again before he could exhale all the way.


    "What?" she asked. She looked angry, staring at Hrekkel.


    "Wasn''t me," Hrekkel said. He pointed at Tawtchee. "It was him."


    The hologram looked at Tawtchee. "Oh, a funny guy."


    "You look like someone knocked a fruit-leaper primate out of a tree with a rock, shaved it, and tried to pass it off in a brothel," Tawtchee said. "Seen better milk jugs in the chow hall dumpster."


    "That''s sexual harassment," the hologram snapped. "And borderline hate..."


    "Blah blah blah. Give me your supervisor or I''ll tell them you''re racist against rodent people," Tawtchee said.


    "I''ll do no such thing after you harassed me. I am authorized to terminate this call," she reached forward on her desk.


    "It''s because I''m a veteran and a western red-whiskered Dra.Falten, isn''t it?" Tawtchee blurted out. "You primates, always hating on us red-whiskers. You''re just leveraging systemic racism of the system on me."


    The hologram paused.


    "I want to speak to your supervisor," Tawtchee said. He took a long drink and burped. "Or transfer me to the military services representative."


    The hologram flickered from top to bottom.


    "Better yet, transfer me to your red-whisker omnibudsman," Tawtchee said, sitting down in a chair. "I brought something to read, so I can wait."


    The hologram vanished, leaving behind a bead of light.


    "Well that didn''t," one of the bridge crew started to say.


    "Shut. Up," Tawtchee snarled.


    He opened the book and started reading. Making a point of finishing the fizzybrew and getting out another one.


    He was on the third before the pearl of light blossomed into the hologram again.


    "A supervisor is willing to speak with you. Please identify those who wish to speak to the supervisor," the hologram asked.


    He pointed out Hrekkel, Ee''eerlee''u, and Strechen.


    "Prepare for supervisor interaction," the hologram said.


    She suddenly smiled.


    "I''m going to enjoy what is about to happen to you immensely," she said.


    Everything suddenly went dark.


    For everyone on the bridge, mist billowed up around all four of the scientific team. There was a loud hum that shook the entire ship. The mist tattered away into nothing.


    Tawtchee was aware he was laying face down, his head to the side, in a puddle of drool and where his nose had bled. He blinked several times and his vision came back. He could see the top of the chamber. It was hexagons of armaglass with a spiral pattern inside of it. The glass was black, smokey, hiding what was inside. There was a single door with a lever-style door handle.


    With a groan he pushed himself up, pulling his knees to his chest and pushing off with his arms so he could stand up.


    The walls were white with gold flecks in them.


    Hrekkel, Ee''eerlee''u, and Strechen were still unconscious.


    Tawtchee moved to each one, waking them up, helping them sit up.


    Hrekkel blinked twice at the walls and gave a low moan of fear.


    "No, no no no," Ee''eerlee''u moaned. "No, please, I can''t face her again."


    Tawtchee didn''t bother to ask who, just heaved Strechen to her feet. "We need to move," he said, heading for the door.


    "I can''t suffer her ministrations again," Ee''eerlee''u said, her voice full of remembered pain. "I can''t."


    "Worry later, move now," Tawtchee snapped. He opened the door.


    A Terror stood there.


    There were a half dozen behind them, all in black armor, helmets, opaque visors, carrying weapons.


    But it was the one in front of him that had his attention.


    Three meters tall, a meter wide. His legs were as thick as Tawtchee''s waist. His arms thicker than the Dra.Falten''s thighs. His eyes were blue, his hair gold and cut close to the scalp.


    "Going somewhere?" the Terror asked in perfect Dra.Falten.


    "Merely helping my companions," Tawtchee said. He sighed. "And I was short. Single digit super midget."


    The Terror grinned. "Life just ain''t fair, is it, brother?"


    Tawtchee shook his head. "No. No it is not."


    "I''m here to escort you to a Tier-Three Supervisor," the Terror said. He turned. "These guys are to make sure you don''t do anything stupid like try to attack me."


    "I forgot my main battle tank in my other pants," Tawtchee said, stepping out and following the Terror. Hrekkel and Ee''eerlee''u followed, the female holding onto the male, her head down, her knees shaking.


    "Didn''t come looking for a tussle, huh?" the male asked.


    "No. Just got roped into some genius''s plan," Tawtchee said. He gave a heartfelt sigh, ignoring the tremors of gut wrenching terror making his stomach twist. "Now everything''s all sideways. There''s always some smart guy that has complicate everything."


    "Ain''t that the truth," the Terror said.


    Strechen stood up, lifting her arm from Tawtchee''s shoulders. She wanted to scream at him to not act like everything was a personal trial and burden.


    But her voice was caught in her throat at the sight of the armored and heavily armed Terrors flanking them.


    "Is it far? I really could use a fizzybrew," Tawtchee said.


    "Not far," the Terror said. He stopped in front of a door. "Right here, as a matter of fact." He touched a panel next to the door and it slid open.


    A female Terror sat behind a desk. There was some decorations, a cup with writing implements in it, a holofield projector, and a nameplate.


    T3 Supervisor Aisling Goodmorrow was on the plate.


    There was also four chairs.


    "I take it I''m dealing with the one in front?" the Terror female asked.


    "He''s the most talkative," the male said, shrugging.


    "Thank you," the female said. She looked at the Dra.Falten. "Have a seat."


    "No charge," the male said, leaving the room.


    Tawtchee took a seat. He ignored that two of the armored Terrors took up places at the back wall, one on either side of the door.


    The sound of them moving their fire selector levers was loud and Tawtchee noted that he didn''t hear capacitors charging.


    Hrekkel and Ee''eerlee''u took seats next to Strechen.


    "All right. I won''t pretend I''m expecting paperwork from any of you," the Terror said. "What brought you here?"


    Tawtchee gave a shrug. "From my point of view? A set of orders, a threat of summary execution, then some travel aboard a space ship following something called the Path of the Traveler."


    "That explains the ID codes that Magnus, Surcsee, and Hateful-Code left on your ship," she pointed a writing implement at Tawtchee, "And you, but not why you are here," Aisling stated.


    "Something about the Path Less Traveled," Tawtchee admitted. He made a motion behind him. "They had all the answers, but something about where we appeared freaked them out."


    The female Terror looked at them. "Why?"


    "She is not here, is she?" Ee''eerlee''u asked, her voice full of fear. She put her hands over her eyes. "I cannot bear to even gaze upon her visage again."


    The female Terror was silent for a moment. "No. No, she is not. I know who you refer to. Is that who set you upon this quest?"


    Hrekkel nodded, blinking and swallowing, trying to control his terror.


    "Explain," the female Terror said/ordered, staring Tawtchee in the eyes.


    It all came tumbling out. The last few firefights. Getting press ganged into a mad journey. The state of the Empire. How Hrekkel stated that some worlds were falling out of contact. His meetings with the other Guardians. How the Confederacy had withdrawn and shrank over the last thousand years. How something called the Mar-gite had apparently attacked the Confederacy and devoured much of it.


    The female Terror listened to it all, jotting down notes.


    When she asked him to point out which worlds on the star-chart, he didn''t hesitate, even though he knew he was giving the Terror the approximate borders of the Empire.


    The Terror got up, moving around the starfield, looking at it. After a moment, she sat down.


    "And that brought us here, to you," Tawtchee finished.


    The Terror nodded slowly. "To T¨ªr Tairngire."


    "To here," Tawtchee said.


    "Your nation had been at war, attacking and attempting to forcibly settle Confederate claimed worlds," the Terror said. "Yet you come here, on this, the day of my cat''s quinceanera, to ask this favor of me."


    He didn''t know what a cat or a quinceanera was, but Tawtchee nodded.


    "Despite the fact that we founded the Confederacy, that they are our allies and war blooded brethren before you even mastered space travel," the Terror said.


    Tawtchee pointed at the star map. "Mx. Goodmorrow, I''m a soldier. That''s all I''ve ever been, and I can tell you, what is taking bites out of the Dra.Falten Empire either is or will be taking bites from the Confederacy also."


    He took a deep breath and jumped.


    "I don''t care why you vanished after the Second Precursor War. I don''t care why you ran off and hid from the rest of the galaxy thirty, forty, even fifty thousand years ago or whatever. I don''t care why you''re hiding inside this nebula from your friends," Tawtchee said. "What I do know, is that if I do nothing, hundreds of millions of males like me will be killed on the battlefield, their DNA catalogued for the records, and then," he took a deep breath. "And then they will cease to exist and their lives will have never mattered in any way as the Empire is devoured. Not conquered, devoured."


    The female Terror leaned back in her chair.


    "There it is," she said softly. "There, Tawtchee, you are."


    He blinked.


    "What you really care about," she said. She nodded, her eyes slowly starting to glow a hot amber. "You do not want to see tens of millions die in a war they cannot win, be devoured when they lose."


    Tawtchee nodded. "The universe hates us enough, I will not stand by and watch as the universe devours my people and laughs at me."


    "I will return you to your ship," she said. She tapped her desk and a panel slid back. A red button rose out of the desk.


    "What about..." Tawtchee said.


    "I am empowered to send a task force with you. It will be small, ten to twenty ships," she said. She gave a smile. "Only fifty to seventy-five warriors per ship."


    Tawtchee sunk down, almost deflating. "That will do nothing."


    The female smiled, her eyes slowly beginning to glow red.


    "You''re right. It is time humanity stopped hiding," she said. She bared her teeth in a smile.


    All the teeth.


    "Let the galactic spur remember us as we write our names in the heaven''s in blood and fire."


    "But..." Hrekkel started to say.


    She pressed the button.


    Everything went black.


    -----


    They''d found themselves face down in the gym, with one of the Way of the Means troopers poking Strechen in the back with a stick.


    They''d gotten to their feet and slowly made their way to the bridge. In the lift they ran into Ee''eerlee''u and Hrekkel.


    Hrekkel dry heaved several times and Ee''eerlee''u''s shirt was soaked with sweat.


    Tawtchee was curious as to what could invoke such a terrified response in the two, but figured that it wasn''t exactly the time or place to ask.


    When they moved onto the bridge, it was bustling with activity.


    "Status report?" Hrekkel coughed.


    "We were given instructions to return the way we came, that we would be met outside the nebula," the XO said. "They fired a near-C velocity salvo near us from an unknown point and activated the shell''s self-destruct less than five hundred kilometers from us."


    "You are following their instructions?" Hrekkel asked. He half collapsed into the chair.


    The XO nodded.


    "Let''s go. I want to be far from this place, Hrekkel," Ee''eerlee''u said.


    Hrekkel just nodded.


    "Let''s go."


    -----


    The small explorer ship exited Transit Space according to the instructions.


    Hrekkel sat next to Tawtchee on the bridge, staring at the forward viewscreen as it cleared to show glimmering stars.


    "Entrance into Realspace successful," the XO said.


    "I thought I was over it. That I could handle it," he said for the hundredth time since he had told Tawtchee what had happened when the mythical Detainee had kidnapped him.


    "Everyone has their breaking point," Tawtchee said. He stared at the screen. "Maybe the other path?"


    "Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps this is a fool''s err..." Hrekkel stared to say.


    The roar echoed off of everything, roared through the speakers, howled from the very air.


    F¨¢G AN BEALACH T¨¢ BRISTEOIR F¨¢INNE TAGTHA

 Nova Wars - Chapter 33

    For the want of a nail, a Kingdom was lost - Terran saying, Age of Chivalry


    At 1.33 meters, Hetmwit was a Pagrik of unremarkable size, with brown colored fur that blended in with others of his kind in an unremarkable way. His eyes were wide and brown, showing neither advanced intelligence or abject stupidity. His ears, at the back of his head and lifted slightly, were neither too droopy nor too stiff. His legs and arms were neither too muscular nor too slender. Up until recently, he was unremarkable in word or deed.


    That was then.


    He was still of unremarkable size and coloring, but his wide brown eyes had a grim purpose shining from them. His jaw was firm and clenched. His body language was of someone expecting violence to erupt at every second.


    His appearance sometimes made his mother cry quietly in her room after he left, even though he did not understand why.


    Now he sat in a crash cradle on the bridge of the CSFNV Little Nell Columbia, a Confederate frigate, watching the robots do their work. He had programmed them himself from common use libraries, but something about the last week had changed them.


    They no longer had the T-shaped head that Olipnat Concordiant robots universally possessed, but rather they all looked like Terran skulls. Shipboard crew had a brushstroke of white paint across the eyes and from the top of the skull down across the nose that ended at the bottom jaw. Their teeth were white, set in black warsteel. The Marines had red stripes. They also answered to names and had their own slight personalities that were slowly emerging and becoming more complex.


    Normally, Hetmwit would have taken the robots in for maintenance, maybe even wiped their memory cores and reloaded the OEM software packages.


    After the last few months, the last few weeks, the fact the robots had changed felt right.


    "Reentering realspace under stealth," Mister Smiley, the robot at the navigation station called out.


    "Civilian passengers secured, Captain," Mister Donald stated from his station. The robot had an odd scratching/static audio defect in his voice synthesizer that Hetmwit hadn''t bothered tracking down.


    "All hands, prepare for realspace entry," Captain Decker ordered from the Captain''s chair.


    The numbers appeared, rapidly dropping.


    The entry into realspace was smooth, almost unnoticeable.


    "Data coming in," Mister Goofy, another robot, stated from the console. The robot looked up. "System is under heavy attack."


    "Put the data onscreen," Captain Decker said.


    Hetmwit hit the release catch and stood up, moving to the holotank.


    There were two planets in the Terran Green Zone, two in the amber, two in the Red Zone, and four gas giants.


    The gas giants were already burning.


    The ships orbiting the two Green Zone planets were raining fire on the surface.


    The star was an odd fiery reddish-yellow color.


    "Hellspace energies detected from the stellar mass," Mister Goofy stated, he looked up from his board again. "System stellar mass has already been hellspiked. There will be a Hellspace corona ignition event within the next seventy-two hours."


    "We''re too late," Hetmwit said.


    Captain Decken nodded, stepping up next to Hetmwit.


    "Do we know the population of the system prior to our arrival?" Decken asked. He gripped the endosteel faux-chrome railing and squeezed.


    you failed them you failed us you failed us all whispered from behind him, audible only to him.


    Mister Willy looked up from his console. "Putting data up now."


    The windows bloomed next to the burning planets.


    POPULATION: ZERO


    Decken frowned. "These are marked as Terran worlds."


    "Reclassified as ''Terran Tomb Worlds'' thirty eight thousand years ago," Mister Willy said. "They are marked as both inhabited and uninhabited as well as off limits."


    Decken frowned. "That''s... weird."


    Hetmwit stared at it as the overlapping plasma waves rippled outward, slowly touching one another.


    "Enemy ships are withdrawing," Mister Goofy stated. "Planets are at full glassing. Atmosphere has either burnt away or has become toxic."


    Decken paced back and forth for a moment before stopping. "Do we have data on which systems are occupied by Terrans nearby?"


    Mister Willy consulted his screen. "By cartography and astrography, the nearest stellar system is three point two light years away. However, by population metrics," he paused for a moment before looking back up. "No planets or stellar systems found."


    Decken looked at Hetmwit. "Suggestions, Number One?"


    Hetmwit looked at the holotank, moving the status of the system into a small box and bringing up the starmap. He colored the Terran Tomb Worlds one color, the Confederate systems another, his own Olipnat Concordiant another color, then the known un-allied multi-stellar nations in other colors.


    Finally, he filled in the known attacks.


    He stepped back, looking at it, then slowly walked around it.


    "We only know of two attacks, three counting this one," he said. "Not enough to gain a full pattern, but it has suggestions."


    "What?" Decken asked. "We need more data."


    Decken turned to the robots. "Stay in maximum stealth. Passive sensors only. Let''s see what happens after the stellar coronal eruption."


    -----


    The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Hetmwit sat in his crash couch, which had converted to a chair, watching the holotank. The time estimates were winding down.


    He knew his mother, sisters, and the littles were all as comfortable as he could make them. He had been startled to find out that the staterooms they were in were armored, capable of their own life support with SAR beacons.


    If the ship broke up, they acted as small life-pods.


    Still, he was worried as he watched the counter move down.


    "Stellar coronal eruption occurring... now," Mister Goofy stated.


    The star went dark fiery red, swirling with black and purple. It seemed to contract slightly, then a bright flash filled the screen. The ship shook, the sounds of timber creaking and sails flapping on the edge of his hearing.


    "Blast wave is consistent with a hellcore detonation. Detonation particle wave and hellspace energies is moving at twelve-hundred times the speed of light in realspace," Mister Goofy stated. "Grav lensing detected."


    Hetmwit leaned forward.


    "Grav lensing is stable," Mister Goofy said. "Sensor clearing."


    Hetmwit undid the harness and got up, moving to the maps hanging in the holotank.


    "Running angles on grav lensing," Mister Goofy stated. "Lens origin is approximately twenty million kilometers from stellar mass photosphere. Computing angles."


    The star had twelve lenses around it.


    "Central creation mass is confirmed to be generating hellspace energies. Stellar mass is core contaminated," Mister Goofy stated.


    "It will take nearly a 100,000 years for that energy to reach the photosphere," Captain Decken said, stepping up next to Hetmwit. "Odd thing to do."


    "Incoming hellspace energies," Mister Goofy called out. "Hellspace energies are connecting to grav lenses two, seven, nine, eleven. Computing origin points."


    All of the grav-lenses were now marked as actively moving energy.


    "They must be coming from a stellar mass modified like this one," Decken mused.


    "Angles computed," Mister Goofy said. "Relaying data."


    Two incoming and three outgoing were connected to worlds in the Olipnat Concordiant, including the system that Hetmwit had first seen Hellspiked.


    "Put visible lines between the connected systems," Hetmwit said.


    The lines appeared.


    "Hyperspace and jumpspace distortions detected," Mister Goofy stated.


    "Effects of the distortion?" Captain Decken asked.


    "Gravity shadow emitted into jumpspace and hyperspace. No effect on realspace. Effect is detected within five hundred thousand kilometers of the lens," Mister Goofy said.


    Hetmwit slowly walked around the tank and back to next to Captain Decken.


    He knew what it was.


    "Mister Goofy, is this distortion consistent along the energy lines?" he asked.


    "Affirmative, sir," Mister Goofy said.


    "Estimate distance of the distortion along the lines and highlight the volume of space effected," Hetmwit stated.


    "Complying," Mister Goofy said.


    "What do you see, Number One?" Captain Decken asked.


    The highlight expanded from the lines.


    "Current is placed. Estimated distortion distance after one hundred twenty hours is in lower opacity," Mister Goofy stated.


    The lines connected, jumping from stellar system to stellar system, each system connected to the nearest stellar masses.


    The highlighting slowly filled in the gaps between the lines.


    Hetmwit looked up. "It''s a barrier."


    He touched it.


    "Cutting the Galactic Arm Spur in half."


    -----


    "We can get out," Captain Decken said, sitting across from Hetmwit at the table in the mess. "Probes show that the distortion fades away enough in the upper bands that the Nell can reach."


    "The bands everyone knows are impossible to travel without dissolving into particles," Hetmwit stated.


    Decken nodded.


    "Where do you plan on going?" Hetmwit asked.


    "Estimating the direction and thickness of the ''fence'' as you labeled it, it will use approximately twenty of the Olipnat Concordiant stellar systems," Captain Decken said. "Your people were attacked just because they were in the way."


    Hetmwit still felt sick to his stomach, remembering the carnage, but he nodded anyway.


    "The ''fence'' will be two hundred light years thick, and they''ll need to ignite about fifty thousand stars to do it," Decken said. "We cannot assume it is impossible. We must assume the enemy has prepared for this moment and possesses the ability to strike at all of the systems the fence would require."


    Hetmwit looked down at his half-eaten meal. "Is there any hope?"


    Decken nodded, smiling. "We''re alive. Where there is life, there is still hope."


    "How?" Hetmwit asked.


    "First of all, we need to ask questions that we haven''t asked before," Decken said. He activated the holoemitter and brought up a scratch-pad box.


    "Here''s what we do and don''t know," he said.


    "Known: They attack systems, kill every living thing, then glass the planet before hellspiking the star.


    "Known: If resistance is too fierce, they go with a hellspike novabomb.


    "Known: They use hellspace and hellspace portals to move around


    "Known: Living things killed by them crumble to ash


    "Unknown: Identity


    "Unknown: Are what we have seen just weapons, constructions, artificial or conscripted troops, or the actual beings behind it.


    "Known: They are building a grav-shadow fence across the galactic arm spur.


    "Known: They are doing it by hellspiking the star and using grav lensing to have hellspace infused stellar coronal ejection mass to superluminal speeds in order to create the grav-shadows.


    "Unknown, and this is an important one: What are they trying to keep in or keep out?"


    Captain Decken leaned back. "Right now we can go around the fence or through the holes, so we need to decide: spinward territory of the Confederacy or anti-spinward? New Confederacy Territories or the Old Systems?"


    Hetmwit stared at the two boxes, known and unknown.


    "Which systems are in charge of the military?" he asked.


    Decken shrugged. "I don''t know. It used to be controlled out of Terra. Now? With Terra gone?" he thought for a moment. "I''m going to guess: Smokey Cone. If anyone has the martial ability to keep it together, it''ll be the T-Bugs. They''re kind of silly, but absolute beasts on the battlefield."


    Hetmwit nodded. He didn''t know who the T-Bugs were, but if the Captain believed they could help...


    "Will they listen to anything we say?" Hetmwit asked.


    The Captain smiled. "It doesn''t matter that over thirty thousand years have passed since my people vanished, and it doesn''t matter than over forty thousand years have passed since this holopic was taken..."


    He tapped the holoemitter and a picture appeared.


    Captain Decken was shaking hands with a massive insect.


    "This picture alone will guarentee that the T-Bugs will listen to me," Decken said. "If not, this one definitely will."


    It was of Captain Decken in a full uniform, black cloth, lots of gold braid, standing next to a massive insect wearing star bangles on their antenna, clad in a wrap that glimmered and shone. The insect was in the moment of writing on a large piece of parchment. The insect from the previous picture was next to Captain Decken, wearing a strange hat and carrying pistols in two pistol belts.


    "Trust me, Number One, that picture alone will have the T-Bugs all sitting up and listening to anything I say, even if I start rambling on about pink golf balls," Captain Decken smiled.


    He looked up. "What is it?"


    Decken smiled wider.


    "Just the signing of a little document," Captain Decken said. He stood up. "Let''s get moving. It''s at least two weeks to Treana''ad space."


    -----


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    GUYS! GUYS!


    HOLY SHIT, YOU HAVE TO HEAR WHO JUST SHOWED UP!


    SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    What?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    SQEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE


    ---NOTHING SQUEEEEE---


    RIGEL


    What?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    HE! THEY! SIGNED!


    SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!


    ---NSQUEEEEEEEEEWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    What?


    Use your words!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    P''Thok!


    Matron Mi''Luki!


    SIGN!


    JUST ARRIVED!


    SQUEEEEE!


    ---NOTHINGSQUEEEE FOLLOWSQUEEEEE---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    WE can''t understand you. Speak slower.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUBVIAN DOMINION


    Is he having a stroke?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANAKTALLAN GRAZING FIELD OF THOUGHT


    He usually only acts like this during BobCo sales.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    OK... so...


    He''s here! He''s really here!


    SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    That''s an old holo.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HESSTLA CYBERBURROW


    Isn''t that Matron Mi''Luki and P''Thok signing the treaty to end the Human-Treana''ad War?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Yeah.


    It''s ancient history.


    Tee, what''s got you so excited?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    CAPTAIN DECKEN JUST ARRIVED!


    HE''S RETURNED!


    SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!


    ---SQUEEEEEE---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Captain Decken?


    >peers at holo


    He''s right there. He''s the Captain of the ship the treaty was signed on.


    Here? He''s actually here?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    ON SMOKEY CONE!


    SQUEEEEEEE!


    I''M SO EXCITED!


    ---NOTSQUEEEEEOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    You don''t say?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

 Nova Wars - Chapter 34

    Confed soldier, Confed soldier where have you been?


    Been to the stars and back again.


    Confed soldier, Confed soldier how did you go?


    In a Space Force dropship flying low.


    Confed soldier, Confed soldier what did you see?


    A million Mar-gite staring back at me.


    Confed soldier, Confed soldier what did you do?


    I killed those Mar-gite for me and you.


    Confed soldier, Confed soldier how did you get back?


    In a BobCo branded body bag.


    Confed soldier, Confed soldier could they keep you down?


    When the Terrors return I¡¯ll be back around.


    ¡ª Confederate military cadence, 2PW Era, as recorded by Klutzy_Sherbert_3670, military historian.


    Commodore N''Skrek stood on the bridge, watching the unthinkable happen.


    We''re losing, went through his mind as he watched the tactical repeater holotank update again.


    The fact that constructs were getting close enough to the planet to unroll and shed literally tens of millions of Mar-gite toward the planet wasn''t the worse thing. It wasn''t even that millions of the Mar-gite survived entry into the atmosphere to make landfall.


    It wasn''t even that the planet had once held 24.6 billion Confederate citizens eighteen hours ago.


    No, what was worse was what was happening in the rest of the system.


    Those huge Mar-gite constructs. Mega-Constructs, Giga-Constructs, the new Tetra-Constructs and the new Petra-Constructs were warping in, slowly rolling for a period of time as they soaked up solar radiation, then they shimmered and vanished, jumping to the next point.


    From this system they could reach over fifty systems.


    Commodore N''Skrek knew that even as he watched another warp out that there was no stopping the huge amount of Mar-gite from reaching those stellar systems.


    It wasn''t clear how they traveled at superluminal speeds. It wasn''t even clear how fast they went or their actual range.


    There was no way to drop them out of superluminal with artificial grav shadows extending through known hyperbands, from stringspace to jumpspace. There was no way to intercept them.


    Every single construct that wavered and vanished would reach their destination.


    To top of off, some warped out, then reappeared for a moment on the sensors only one hundred light days out, immediately being lost.


    Scout ships had reported that those ones were just coasting toward distant stars. Their surface black and pebbly, absorbing EM radiation and almost invisible except for a shadow against the starfield.


    Cold and silent, they would drift for decades or centuries before arriving at their destination.


    The tactic they had used during the Mar-gite Resurgence after the Second Mar-gite War.


    Or perhaps the tactic they had used during the first and second war to ensure they''d still make inroads into the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Arm Spur.


    He snarled as he sat another Petra-Class Super-Construct waver and vanish.


    "Bogey one-three-six-five is unrolling," tactical stated, even as Commodore N''Skrek watched it happen on the tactical display. It immediately began shedding landing clusters. Hundreds, thousands of Mar-gite in a ball. Once the out layer burned off and the speed dropped far enough, the survivors would burst free of the carbonized shell, spreading their arms out, spinning as they fell, controlling their descent.


    True, nearly a fifth of the Mar-gite hit the ground and died, moving too fast even for their tough bodies to handle.


    That just meant the survivors had food.


    Fleet was trying to evacuate the civilians, trying to get as many people off the planet as possible, but they lacked the sheer hull space.


    The other hope was the population could get into deep shelters and hide, waiting for relief or rescue. The Mar-gite never burrowed too deep into solid rock. Not enough payback for the energy expenditure, even if they reached the hidden shelters that had filled the entryways with solid ferrocrete.


    But there wasn''t enough of Fleet.


    And there wasn''t enough shelters.


    Commodore N''Skrek looked at Vice-Admiral of the Warsteel (Upper Decks) Shrawvanawsh. The Rigellian female looked sick as she stared at the data.


    The icons for the shipboard Marines of the adhoc Task Force Ugly Baby were slowly contracting as they were forced, step by step, to retreat as more and more Mar-gite made landing on the massive super-continent.


    A forward node went dark and Commodore N''Skrek knew that meant the Marines that were part of that node were dead. The node hadn''t slid back to the ring where the other three were moving toward.


    "The planet is lost," she said, her voice sick.


    She looked up.


    "I''m not wasting any more Marines. I have a bad feeling I''m going to need them later," she said. She reached out and tapped an icon.


    "Sound the retreat," she ordered. "We have to retreat from the system, regroup at Naskana''s Star," she said.


    It wasn''t in the next line of planets that the Mar-gite could reach.


    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    It was past those fifty systems.


    The next set.


    Nearly two hundred.


    As Commodore N''Skrek saw the command to retreat flashing down, saw the dropships being shed from the handful of ships that were still managing to hold onto the high orbitals of the doomed planet, the Admiral spoke again.


    "I''m really starting to hate losing."


    -----


    "GET ON ''EM, GET ON ''EM!" Captain Nakwel bellowed out over the comlink.


    The lines were full of static, full of screeching, warbling, atonal static. The air was full of chaff, motes, single-cell organisms large enough to see with the naked eye, EM flares, UHF screams, VHF howls, AM/FM bellowing.


    8814 had his hands full keeping the visors clear on the whole squad''s armor.


    The only greenie in the entire unit (2218 had died over six hours ago when the standard Telkan Marine Corps armor he had been riding detonated in a last minute -fuck you- to the entire universe) he had to balance the entire unit''s worth the armored suits that were so old he didn''t have a single specification on them that he had not pulled out of the armor itself.


    It was a Helreginn Heavy Assault Mark II suit. Bigger than even the Telkan Marine Heavy Assault suit. Rather than being a close fit to the body, Jaskel''s feet were slightly above the knees, his hands, inserted into tactile feedback gloves, were above the elbows. The head was low, no real neck, the shoulder plates totally obscuring any view and providing the baseplate for some serious weaponry.


    8814 blew the clotted coolant from the line with a burst of air from inside the heavily armored greenie housing, then ordered the waldo to reattach it before Gunny Zolpad''s heavy M318 seized up from the heat.


    He had never been in battle before.


    Neither had Jaskel.


    Now both of them had over a hundred hours in direct combat.


    Jaskel leveled the heavy Pontiac Wrathbringer rotary auto-cannon, which, honestly, was older than anything he had ever head of, and triggered it. The six barrels rotated around the core bolt, firing 15mm warsteel jacketed antimatter slugs at nearly eight thousand rounds a minute.


    Jaskel moved it back and forth, right to left.


    The entire front wave of Mar-gite exploded into sound, fury, light, and scraps of burnt meat.


    The oncoming horde just screeches that atonal warbling screech and kept rushing forward.


    The Wrathbringer was beeping, the barrels overheated to the point where even the chromium warsteel was glowing softly. Five of the six ammunition forges were burnt out, the last one had its slush at nearly 80% and the heat at 105%.


    But Jaskel kept firing.


    A beeping caught his attention and he glanced up.


    ***STATUS UPDATE***


    ***RETREAT TO RALLY POINT X-8174A***


    The HUD map overlay, nearly transparent, showed that he needed to move a full five kilometers back.


    His radar showed that the whirling nightmare above him, of counter-battery artillery pressed into artillery service, of howling artillery shells, strikers, aerospace fighters, point defense systems, and exploding Mar-gite was still raging.


    But two icons were being highlighted.


    Dropships.


    His HUD beeped again and he stared, his hands still automatically hosing the oncoming Mar-gite that seemed to just never end.


    ***TEMPLATE UNLOCK***


    ***FAB IMMEDIATELY***


    ***IMMEDIATELY AUTHORIZATION FOR USE***


    "Uh, buddy, did you get those templates?" Jaskel asked.


    --roger roger-- 8814 said. --decrypting and digital omnimessiah gravity and inertia preserve us--


    "What are they?" Jaskel asked.


    --atomics gravs phasics-- 8814 said. --total war munitions with authorization and lockout bypass--


    "Whose authority?" Jaskel asked.


    --fleet command--


    Jaskel swallowed thickly even as he steadily backed up, still keeping up the fire.


    Ammoforge #3 dropped heat enough and 8814 dropped a warmed up nanite pack into it.


    --fifteen seconds to switch-- he warned. --fabbing up rounds in the rocket launcher--


    "Payload?" he asked.


    --700-900 kilotons phasic burst graviton ignition antimatter--


    "Are they crazy? I thought we were supposed to be... saving... the planet," the last few words were spoken in shocked whispers.


    Ammoforge #1 was almost cool enough and 8814 prepped the nanite seed pod.


    His launcher beeped and the telemetry from Fleet loaded into his armor.


    All he did was stand there and confirm the launch, his brain shocked, as Fleet ordered him to fire, the Battlefield Tactical Network overriding his own suit''s launch systems.


    The missiles fired in a ripple, all of them heading out in a fan and an upward angle.


    ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC


    GRAV GRAV GRAV


    AM AM AM


    PHASIC PHASIC PHASIC


    all streamed by, flashing, each a different color, across the left side of his visor.


    8814 switched the autocannon to ammoforge 3 and took the active one offline, dumping the slush and hitting it with open air to cool down. The suit''s heat level was only at 63.54%, but even then 8814 knew the heat was brutal, punishing to his Telkan.


    There were no orders to take a knee, no orders for protective posture.


    The BAT-TAC-NET pushed the battlescreen hard in a wedge in front of Jaskel, even as he kept firing. His grav anchor sank deep at four points around him, under his feet, and slightly behind him, the tethers letting him still move backwards even as he kept shooting as the Mar-gite that still poured in a never-ending wave toward him.


    The missiles went off in a blinding purplish-white flash that his suit automatically compensated for. Huge mushroom clouds clawed for the sky as the overpressure wave washed over Jaskel. His suit''s heat didn''t even tick, his armor held easily, and the battlescreen only acknowledged the massive blast by being visible was the overpressure, radiation, and the debris washed over him.


    The rest of the Company was behind him as the backwash came from behind, easily shunted by the shields, easily handled by the armor''s systems. They lunged into motion even as his dedicated missile ammoforge rapidly refilled the launcher, filling the spiral 8-pack one at a time in as many seconds.


    The suit''s sensors showed him nothing but unmoving bumpy landscape in front of him, the nearest crater''s edge was three kilometers in front of him. There were eight in all, spread in a semi-circle from the airbursts. The craters were almost eight hundred meters wide from lip to lip and almost a hundred meters deep. Around the craters was nothing but bedrock, dirt, and unmoving terrain.


    "We''re losing," Jaskel said, licking his lips.


    His armor''s sensors could see the Mar-gite lifting up off the ground. Could see that for five kilometers in front of him the bumpy ground was starting to quiver.


    Pockets of Mar-gite lifted up. More joined them.


    They screeched as they rushed forward, through sound, from ULF to UHF, filling the entire bandwidth full of their screaming.


    His suit turned and ran, leaping and sprinting.


    The rest of the Company were running for the dropships.


    His suit repeated the warning right as the 8-pack spiral launcher fired again.


    The dropships were landing.


    Kilo Company was running hard.


    His suit emptied the launcher again.


    Again, less than thirty seconds later, the Mar-gite on the outside of the crater rose up, screaming, and charged.


    They don''t have artillery, air support, tanks, nothing, he thought as he ran for the dropship.


    His launcher emptied again and he heard the beeping as his armor started sucking in air to try to refill his tesseract mass tanks.


    They have nothing but wave attacks, he thought.


    The dropship was taking off, BAT-TAC-NET doing all the work, making all the decisions.


    He jumped up, the dropship''s grav system grabbed him, yanking him forward.


    If it wasn''t for his armor it would have broken his back.


    The Mar-gite poured over the now empty LZ.


    They have nothing, he thought, turning to stare downward as the dropship climbed for the sky, its point defense working overtime to clear the Mar-gite spiraling down through the atmosphere from its path, the battlescreens at full power to keep any that got through from grabbing the hull.


    They have nothing but wave attacks, he thought.


    He stared as they kept rushing by beneath the dropship, even as the door closed, heading toward a city of nearly 30 million living beings.


    and we''re still losing.


    -----


    Commodore N''Skrek watched as the dropships cleared the lower atmosphere.


    "Execute Mercy-Shot," the Admiral ordered. She turned away from the holotank, looking sick. "Once complete, break orbit. We''ve got to jump out."


    Commodore N''Skrek stood and watched, silent, his bladearms folded behind his back.


    On the holotank, the last four cities that the Marines had futilely spent their lives defending vanished as Fleet hit each of them with mass driver cannons.


    The Fleet, what was left of it, what hadn''t been destroyed by the Mar-gite tactic of getting a ''spear'' close, unrolling it, and engulfing the entire ship with Mar-gite, prepared to jump to hyperspace.


    The jump was short. Only 150 light years.


    But it would take the fleet 250 light years into the border of the Confederacy.


    Commodore N''Skrek stared at the holotank.


    We''re losing...

 Nova Wars - Chapter 25+10

    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    In summary, we''ve got the Mar-gite flooding in, someone building some kind of fence, and a third player knocked out the Slappers.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Recruitment numbers are bottomed out.


    We''re having less volunteers now than we did a year ago.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANAKTALLAN ELECTRIC THOUGHT GRAZING FIELD


    Is it a population issue?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    I don''t know.


    For us, it''s the fact that our birth rate was cratered up until our mysterious replacement encouraged everyone to bring it up.


    But it''s too little, too late.


    I''m worried.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    It isn''t just grabbing some random Telkani off the street, cramming him in power armor, shoving a power rifle in his hands, and going "Go kill those dudes a lot before you take a power packet to the face" like some think.


    The lowered population meant shutting down production lines. From the ''we''ll never need it'' to ''we can just buy that stuff from the Lanks'' to ''I don''t want to work in the orbital shipyards'''' problem.


    We have to train people to train people to work in the shipyards, everything else.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HESSTLA CYBERBURROW


    Our MBOLO tanks aren''t waking up.


    We think they might have been asleep for too long.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    AKLTAK FREE FLIGHT


    We''re not having the ''ships on paper only'' problem, but even if we put every single member of Space Force and Planetary Defense on the ships, less than a quarter of them would be manned enough to even move out of parking orbit.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    We have less than four million warrior eggs, and they''re at least three months from hatching. A year or two for growth. A year for training.


    We''re three years from being able to field a Horde. And that will be the smallest Horde we''ve ever fielded.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANAKTALLAN RECIPE REPOSITORY NOW WITH FRUITCAKE


    Do we have three years?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    No.


    Have you seen the size of those constructs?


    We''ve realized something.


    Those huge ones? The Petra and Tetra constructs?


    We were attacked by what those become after a long period of time.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TUKNA''RN GESTALT


    What do you mean?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    A construct goes largely dormant, sucking up solar radiation and deep space radiation. But they do more than that. They consume the innermost Mar-gite and slowly contract as they ones on the outside eat the core.


    Eventually you get a Spear or a Lance.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    That seems... suboptimal.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Not from their viewpoint. Who cares if they lose a couple billion. They''ll find a gas giant or a planet full of hydrocarbons, or just unroll near a stellar mass and gobble everything up.


    They''ll even eat comets and the ice on frozen moons. They slurp up oceans. They gorge on the atmosphere itself if it comes down to it, leaving nothing behind but a bare rock.


    Then what looks like an overly thick Margite will peel into two Mar-gite.


    Repeat until the construct is rebuilt.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    How do they get off the planet.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    They rebuild the cluster, which then uses some kind of biological countergrav to lift up and break orbit. First thing they do is unwrap, that dark pebbly side soaking up solar radiation, then they roll back up and break orbit.


    Inside, the more well fed are splitting into two.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL


    The perfect eating machine.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Unless you count some of the Atrekna slavespawn and weapon spawn.


    Yes.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    Last time we stopped them, during the Second Mar-gite War and the Resurgence, it hurt us bad. Well, not us coreward races, but you, Space Force, and the Confederacy.


    The question is: Can we stop them this time?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    FELINE SNOOZE ZONE


    We have to try.


    We have to at least try.


    Can we stop them again?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    ...


    ...


    ...


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    We don''t know, kid.


    That fence might be all that saves you younger ones once the lights go out on this side of it.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    ...


    ...


    ...


    TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS


    NO!


    NO!


    I REFUSE!


    I WOULD NOT BEND MY NECK TO THE LANAKTALLAN!


    I WOULD NOT BEND MY NECK TO THE PRECURSOR AUTONOMOUS WAR MACHINES!


    If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    I WOULD NOT BEND MY NECK TO THE ATREKNA!


    I WILL NOT WEEP AND GIVE MYSELF TO OUR ENEMIES!


    I REFUSE TO JUST LAY DOWN AND DIE!


    I WON''T LET YOU LAY DOWN AND CRY AND DIE EITHER!


    WE FIGHT!


    WE THROW EVERYTHING WE HAVE INTO THE GUNS!


    THE MAR-GITE WILL EAT US ALL ANYWAY!


    FIGHT!


    FIGHT!


    AN ATTACK UPON ONE IS AN ATTACK UPON US ALL!


    ROUSE THE IMMORTALS!


    BRING FORTH THE DARK CRUSADE MARTIAL ORDERS WITH FIRE AND BLOOD!


    FIRE THE PINK AND WHITE FLARES AND LET THE CRY OF DOKI KAWAII RING OUT AGAIN!


    FIGHT!


    FIGHT!


    I WILL NOT COMPLY!


    I WILL NOT BEHAVE!


    I WILL NOT LAY DOWN AND DIE!


    NO!


    NO!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    That''s all well and good, kid, but we just don''t have the numbers.


    And we may not have the time to get the numbers.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    Can''t you just lay a


    >USER HAS ENTERED THE CHAT


    <USER> yawns and stretches


    <USER> looks around


    UNKNOWN USER>Doki? Doki?


    <user sees FELINE SNOOZE ZONE>


    UNKNOWN USER> KITTY! KITTY KITTY!


    UNKNOWN USER> ORKY! KITTY!


    <UNKNOWN USER(1) HAS LOGGED ON>


    <USER(1)> yawns


    UNKNOWN USER(1)> wazzup


    UNKNOWN USER> KITTY ORKY KITTY!


    UNKNOWN USER(1)>KITTAH! KITTAH!


    LANAKTALLAN GALLOPING FIELD NOW WITH MORE PIXELS


    Is that?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    UNKNOWN USER> KITTY KITTY KITTY!


    UNKNOWN USER(1)> DOGGO! DOGGO! DOGGO!


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    It is!


    Guys, calm down.


    We need to talk!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    KITTY


    DOGGO


    KITTY


    DOGGO!


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    This might take a while.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    It was the largest Fleet engagement Commodore, no, Captain N''Skrek had ever seen. Four complete task forces, hundreds of ships each. The small task force his group had been part of had been put in with a full task force, reinforcing them.


    His task force had undergone two weeks of refit at the orbital shipyards.


    Junkers, cruise liners, every vessel that could carry three people locked in a bathroom had been pressed into service to evacuate the planet. For two weeks it had been a constant stream of ships jumping in, filling to the brim, and jumping out.


    Over two thirds of the population had been lifted out.


    Half of the remaining were refusing to leave their homes, citing their Right of Consent under the Confederacy laws.


    Half of those stubborn ones did not believe the Mar-gite were coming in such numbers. It was impossible, they believed. Some even claimed it was a trick to get them to abandon their planet so a rich omnicorp could buy up the property.


    As if there wasn''t thousands of empty planets, some fully industrialized, just for the taking.


    In the reshuffle Captian N''Skrek had found himself in charge of a troopship and three divisions of landing troops. A Telkan Marine Division, a Confederate Marine Division, and a Confederate Army Division.


    All with power armor, robot combat armor, wawrmeks, and a half dozen Jaeger class warmeks.


    The ship was massive, with over ten thousand Space Force personnel aboard it. It had massive foundries, refit bays, training and living areas, three hospitals.


    It also was so old that he could taste the dust in the air no matter how many times the filters were changed.


    Some of the warmeks were so old they had graffiti on them from the Great Third Great Herd Great Civil War from over fourteen thousand years ago.


    The flight bays were loaded with nearly five thousand torchships and two thousand aerospace strikers. The strikers and torchships sitting in their cradles, waiting to be used.


    The ship was also barely manned. None of the redundant stations were manned, some personnel were doing the job of three or four other stations. Over half of the mechs and three quarters of his aerospace assets had no pilots.


    Age and neglect had left tens of thousands of shipboard functions inoperative.


    The Damage Control Center boards were lit up like he had been in combat.


    The ship was so old that it only had a hull number.


    A poll on the ship social media account had named her. Well, Captain N''Skrek had taken the fifth place winner. He didn''t think Space Force would approve of "Big Butted Bitch" or "Big Dick Energy" or "Just Fucking Die!" or "This is bullshit" for the names of the assault carrier.


    The Grey Lady was the new name.


    As it stood, he watching a stream from Smokey Cone that was being broadcast to Fleet from the local threadcaster.


    It was Mandatory Viewing by the Smokey Cone High Matrons, for all Treana''ad everywhere.


    He puffed on his cigarette in nervous surprise as a War Queen was announced.


    Captain N''Skrek knew that the attempt to demand a Great Hatching had failed to pass the vote.


    The War Queen was demanding a Great Hatching.


    Captain N''Skrek groaned. He knew that the Matrons and the females would all refuse.


    The Tyranny of the Birthing Chamber had ended almost fifty thousand years ago with the P''Thok Liberation, when the great...


    The music changed and the War Queen stepped aside.


    Captain N''Skrek recognized the Terran who walked out onto the stage in glittering gold braid and the black naval uniform of the Confederacy.


    How could he not? He had seen that Terran''s picture repeatedly growing up and in school.


    He mouthed the name as the Terran was announced, the name that was written on the Treaty of Ice Cream, Smoke, & Moo-Moos.


    Captain Decken stared at the cameras.


    "No being likes feeling they are nothing more than a machine, than a cog, than a pawn to be ordered around," he said, gripping the sides of the podium with his hands.


    Captain N''Skrek nodded.


    "But when war comes, when the great engines of violence shudder and groan to life, it is the duty of all beings to step forward," he said. "P''Thok knew this when he was chosen to invade Terra itself. He knew his duty. To his nation, to his people, to those that came after."


    The Terran''s eyes were glowing red, just like the stories claimed.


    "The Treana''ad are the toughest beings the Terrans ever faced, with a win-rate of almost 30%. No other species has ever matched that or even came close. The Treana''ad people have always been known to be wise and clever, martially gifted, and capable of great deeds," Captain Decken said. "They, with my people, founded the Confederacy through blood and force of arms, protecting those who could not or would not protect themselves from the threats a malevolent universe gleefully produced."


    He leaned forward slightly.


    "Now the Mar-gite come. They do not care about your philosophy. They do not care about how well you dance, the fine cigarettes you smoke, or the delicious ice cream you feast upon," he said. "They are hear to feast upon you. You are what they want.


    "Your pleas, your cries for mercy, your begging, do nothing. They are coming. By the trillions.


    He looked around for a moment, as if he was looking at every Treana''ad watching.


    "The time for a Great Hatching was five years ago," he said. "It will take five years for your Great Hatching to make a difference even if you start laying eggs right this moment.


    He leaned back.


    "I, and every member of Space Force with me, will try to buy you those five years," he let go of the podium. "I''ll give my life if need be to buy you the time you need. Space Force will give their lives to buy you that time."


    His eyes bored into the camera, into the viewers, into N''Skrek''s very soul.


    "Don''t waste our lives."


    With that, he turned and walked from the stage.


    The Mandatory Viewing Signal cut out.


    Captain N''Skrek started to stand up.


    His datalink beeped even as the lights flashed to amber and then red.


    "Captain here," he said.


    "Officer of the Watch, Captain," there was a pause. "First Petra-Cluster just warped in."


    "I''m on my way."


    -----


    "By Kalki''s dancing goat," someone breathed over the comlink.


    Jaskel was staring at the sky. The Mar-gite cluster was big enough to be seen by the naked eye. A long lance, as big around as the moon. As he watched it slowly began to unwrap. He could still feel the odd pull toward it.


    It was the fourth time he had felt the pull from a Mar-gite cluster big enough it had its own gravity, strong enough effect the tides and the wobble of the planet''s core.


    He didn''t like it then.


    He didn''t like it now.


    "They''re coming!" one of the engineers yelled. "Cut that strut. Cut those cables. Screw proper disconnect, get that creation engine loaded! We''ve only got a few hours!"


    Jaskel ran a function check on his armor and weapons. It had become a nervous habit, like chewing his claws or clenching and unclenching his hands.


    --big one-- 8814 said.


    "Giga-Cluster according to fleet," Jaskel answered. He could see, even with daylight, the bright streaks of Fleet engaging the Mar-gite that had warped into the system.


    His job was to guard the engineers and technicians while they stripped the industrial size creation engines and nanoforges from the factories and loaded them onto transports.


    The planet was already lost.


    "Fleet said it''s already been shedding. The lead ones will be here in two hours. NavInt predicts, unless it gets broken up, it''ll take five days for the whole thing to shed," Gunny Zolpad said. He paused. "Fleet says we''re not doing a last stand. We get the fabs loaded that we can and bug out."


    Jaskel knew that the population that hadn''t left was now on their own.


    He also knew that at this moment the ones who never believed the Mar-gite would actually show up would be streaming for the starports, screaming for Space Force and the planetary government to save them.


    Should have listened, Jaskel thought to himself.


    Contrails began to streak across the sky, heading for the unrolling Giga-Cluster, as the planetary defense batteries began to hammer at it.


    Should have done that hours ago, Jaskel thought. He habitually checked his systems.


    All green.


    "It''s ready! Load it up!" the engineer called out. "Class XXV and higher are the priority! Get on it!"


    Jaskel just kept looking up at the sky.


    It hurt to know that this battle was already lost.


    -----


    The white bead in the middle of the holotank was pulsing so fast it was flashing.


    The sole living occupant of the ship''s bridge stared at, frowning.


    He was trying to remember what it meant.


    It meant something.


    He looked down at his hand.


    There was a grip held it it. At the top of the contoured grip was a red button.


    He stared at it, then at the pulsing white dot, then at the button.


    The boxy robot propelled by tracks next to him gave a low and slow warbling whistle. The warped temporal effects of the bridge made it so that the whistle was drawn out some places, compressed in others, heard by the bulkhead before it sounded out at the hotwired consoles nearer to the robot.


    Dot.


    Grip.


    Button.


    He blinked. First one eye, then the other.


    Dot.


    Grip.


    Button.


    He knew he was supposed to do something when the white dot started to pulse.


    His thoughts were fragmented, hard to bring together. Parts of his brain working out of synch with the others as the strange tides of time rippled through the bridge.


    Dot.


    Button.


    The ship thrummed.


    Gold sparkles filled the air.


    Time shuddered, heaved, and settled into a stately moving pool that encompassed the entire ship.


    And the bridge.


    And the robot.


    And the man.


    He lifted the contoured grip, shifting his thumb over the button.


    "And here..." he said.


    He pressed the button.


    "We go."


    White fire wiped everything away.


    -----


    The Demo Frogs heard the enraged bellow echo across the entire world and looked up.


    The Dra.Falten Empress stumbled and fell to her knees as the bellow filled the entire world.


    The Strevik''al Senate screamed in terror as the roar sounded out.


    The entire local galactic cluster heaved as the roar sounded out.


    -----


    He woke up slowly.


    He was in bed. His head on comfortable pillows. The comforter was soft and warm, the sheets flannel.


    He could hear voices.


    "Should be all right," a woman''s voice said.


    He recognized it.


    Mother.


    "Good. He solved one problem for us," A man''s voice.


    He recognized it.


    There was a whistling chirp.


    "He''ll be all right. He''s just confused right now. It wasn''t easy to put his mind back together," the woman said.


    "Well, everyone in the galactic spur knows he succeeded," the man chuckled.


    "I''m going to check on him. He just woke up," the woman said.


    He waited, opening his eyes.


    The room was quiet, dimly lit. A window had the curtains drawn back to show a dark night with snow drifting down. There was a dresser, two night-stands, a wardrobe, three chairs. Carpeted. The walls were polished and lacquered wood that was bright even though the stain was dark.


    The white door opened and the woman entered. She was thick of body, matronly, dressed in modest clothing. A blouse, an ankle-length skirt. She wore a simple choker around her neck and a single ring on her left hand.


    She came up and sat in the chair next to the bed.


    "Do you know who you are?" she asked. Her voice was soft, gentle, caring.


    He shook his head.


    "Not surprised," she reached out and smoothed his brow. "It''s OK, Momma''s got you now," she said. She fussed with the covers for a moment. "You did a very brave thing."


    "Did I die?" he asked.


    She nodded. "You did. I brought you back."


    "I did good?" he asked.


    She smiled as she stood up. "You did."


    She bent down and kissed his forehead. "Get some rest. You''ll feel better."


    He yawned and nodded.


    She moved to the door, pausing for a moment.


    "Rest well, Harry."


    -----


    Jaskel rode out the shockwave of the pancake round, his grav spike howling.


    The shockwave passed. The Mar-gite that had been slammed against the ground started to get up.


    The sun dimmed, went dark, even though it was night.


    The air grew close and heavy.


    He could taste hot coppery blood in his mouth.


    --eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-- 8814 screamed


    Everything went still.


    Even the Mar-gite.


    Then he heard it.


    On the bridge of his ship, giving orders to hammer the Petra-Cluster running for the jump zone, Captain N''Skrek heard it.


    Everyone heard it.


    LET THE UNIVERSE SHAKE IN THE WRATH OF TERRASOL!

 Nova Wars - Chapter 25+10.5

    "They thought the Lemur With a Rock was a myth, a scary story for children, exaggerated in the retelling. They soon learned that the stories had been watered down." Os''hitt''amoo, Lanktallan Great Historian.


    "STOP DOING THAT, LEMURS!" - Battlecry of the Atrekna, Second Precursor War


    "She exhaled smoke with a smile. She said: ''come and see'' and I saw. I saw a pale horse and his name that sat upon him was Trucker, and Hell followed with him." - Jawne''e Crash, Lanaktallan Bard and Prophet, Second Inter-Arm War


    Angela Angus Kusumoto sat in the comfortable chair, leaned back and reading a novel on her datapad. It was standard stuff, lots of older cliches and tropes, but the author wove them together in a murder-heist mystery that was comfortable and relaxing to read.


    Around her were work stations and consoles, all of them on standby, their monitors in power-saver mode, the computers in sleep mode. The windows were tinted slightly to keep the brightness from The Object from overwhelming one''s eyes.


    Or causing them to sprout legs and crawl off one''s face.


    She sat, feet up, drinking a Liquid Hate old french fries from under the car seat and pickled axle grease, feeling boredom but at least having a comfortable book.


    A beeping noise caught her attention.


    She looked over and saw one of the monitors was still coming to life.


    Sighing, she got up. She recognized the beep. Somewhere outside a node had managed to synch up.


    It happened at least once a shift.


    It never lasted.


    She still had another eighteen days on her shift. Then she''d drop down to Iota Layer and spend time with her family for five years before coming up to spend a month on duty while her family moved to Gamma Layer so that the time distortion was such that she was only gone three months.


    This was her tenth shift.


    Not that she was worried. She was still young, not even into her second century. She could expect to live another four to six hundred years unless she got caught by good ol'' Mr. Misadventure.


    She sighed as she bent down and looked at the screen, fully expecting it to be a rogue node out in Mantid, Treana''ad, or Rigellian space.


    Last shift she''d had a Rigellian node pop up, synch up, and stay synched for almost three hours before contact was lost.


    She frowned.


    NODE SYNCH: OK


    NODE CHECKSUM: OK


    It was the next few lines that would matter. Angela had never seen any pass the next set of checksums.


    NODE EXCHANGE TEST: OK


    NODE DATA LOCK: 100%


    <WAITING FOR ADDITIONAL NODES>


    She blinked, staring at it.


    She tapped her datalink and put in a call to a supervisor as she sat in the chair and watched.


    It took nearly two hours for her supervisor to answer and she didn''t sound happy about it.


    "What''s wrong?" her supervisor sounded like she expected Angela to complain about how bored she was.


    "You out of recovery?" Angela asked.


    There was another beep.


    NODE ACQUIRED


    NODE SYNCH: IN PROGRESS


    "Not yet," her supervisor said.


    "You might want to hurry," Angela said.


    NODE ACQUIRED


    NODE SYNCH: IN PROGRESS


    "Why?" her supervisor asked, then coughed, a wet sounding hacking. "Stupid cryo-slime."


    "I''ve got node synchs," Angela said.


    "Just run a clear and reboot, that''ll clear it up. They can''t hear us and won''t talk to us," her supervisor said. "Seriously, Angela? You''ve dealt with it before."


    There was another beep.


    MASTER NODE ACQUIRED


    NODE SYNCH: IN PROGRESS (PRIORITY)


    "I''ve got two locked, three in progress, and a master node synch in progress," Angela said.


    There was dead silence.


    "Give me the code for the master node," her supervisor''s voice was suddenly tight and intense.


    She looked it up.


    "A00001A0A1," Angela relayed.


    "Angela, listen to me very carefully," her supervisor said. She sounded odd.


    "OK," Angela set her data pad down.


    "Go over to the Shift Senior Supervisor station," her supervisor said.


    Angela moved to the center of the back wall, where there were a half dozen smart-consoles all in a semi-circle around a chair.


    "All right," she said.


    "Flip up the cover on the left hand forward panel on the arm-rest," her supervisor said. There was a grunting noise. "How is it my butt gets bigger in cryo."


    "Cryo-fluid pooling," Angela answered out of habit. She tapped the cover and it flipped open. There was a fingerprint scanner and a keypad. "All right, now what."


    "Put in this number," her supervisor said. "Dammit, my underwear rolled up. Ow ow ow. Stupid freezer burnt pubic hair."


    If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    She was partway through the number when a dozen of the workstation consoles came on and she could hear the quantum computers kick in. She glanced at them.


    They all read NODE SYNCH IN PROGRESS in red letters.


    "I''ve got workstations coming online," Angela said.


    "I''ll bet. Finish punching in the number, you only have sixty seconds," her supervisor said.


    She dutifully punched it in. The consoles all went live.


    "It wants your fingerprint and biometric scan," Angela said.


    More terminals came online. The smart windows around the control room dimmed to a dark smokey black. Node ID numbers started moving down the windows with SYNCHING or PACKET SWAP TEST appearing next to the ID numbers. There were two master nodes that had LOCKED next to their ID numbers as well as a half-dozen standard nodes.


    There were even "sub-node" labels popping up.


    "I''ve got nodes everywhere. The windows just went to interactive smartglass mode," Angela said. She looked down. "Still wants your biometrics."


    "Do the following keypresses. I''ll give them to you twice, then have you punch them in. Once you start you have fifteen seconds," her supervisor said. "Aw, dammit, my bra strap is twisted. Why can''t I do anything?" there was more wet coughing. "Stupid cryo-snot."


    Once she had heard it twice, she then followed along with her supervisor.


    All the panels went live. The covers slid back from the arm-rest controls.


    "OK, done," Angela said. She glanced at the windows. There were four master nodes saying they were locked and six others undergoing packet swap check. "Uh, you need to hurry."


    "I''m two thousand miles away, hopping on one foot for the star-tram," her supervisor said. "OK, look around you, do you see the keypad with the red letters set in brushed steel?"


    Angela sat down and the view of the keys in the armrest changed. "OK, I see it."


    "Type in this number," her supervisor said. "It''s ''Charlie-Papa-Echo-One-Seven-Zero-Four-Tango-Kilo-Sierra'', don''t screw it up."


    "Got it," she said. "What did that do?"


    "That''ll wake up every shift member and do a blanket recall for everyone," her supervisor said. There was a background noise. "I know my picture doesn''t match, I just came out of cryo," more background. "Just do a DNA scan."


    Angela looked around.


    A Master Node, labeled N6MAA108816, had just synched up. Lines were being drawn from it to other nodes that were synching up. The first Master Node that had come online was now showing its ID number -86475346- and it was locked into dozens of secondary nodes.


    "Miss Bisa?" Angela said, watching the smartglass windows.


    "I''m getting on the startram now," her supervisor said. "Wish the mat-trans wasn''t still locked out."


    "Miss Bisa..." Angela said.


    "Yes?" her supervisor sounded calmer and Angela heard the distinctive three tones of a startram about to get underway.


    Master Node 85376887 had come online.


    "It''s going crazy up here. What''s happening?" Angela asked.


    There was silence for a moment.


    "Atlantis is synching up with Sol."


    -----


    Unverak stared at the holotank, sighing with frustration.


    Following the Path of the Traveler had led him right here. The Strevik''al were right on his heels the whole time and now they were on the other side of the destination.


    Which had turned out to be nothing more than a singularity and buoy that had welcomed him to the site of where TerraSol had been.


    Sure, there had been a data download with a wealth of technology. Sure, the limited VI was willing to converse, but, frustratingly enough, it refused to part with more technological information.


    That, and it turned out the facility with the VI was beyond the event horizon of the massive gravity source.


    Despite demands from the government and military agents aboard the vessel, Unverak had been more than willing to do data exchanges with his Strevik''al counterparts.


    After all, hadn''t they survived the madness of the Clownface Nebula together?


    Now he just stared at the holotank.


    "Why did you want us here? At this particular time? In this particular location?" he asked nobody in particular, still staring at the graphical representation of the singularity.


    "Sir?" one of the ratings, a Technical Specialist-Grade Six, asked, turning slightly.


    "Talking to myself," Unverak admitted. He sighed. "Put the singularity on the main viewscreen."


    It took a second for the data to be rendered in a visible method.


    The singularity just hung there.


    Just as it had for almost forty-thousand years.


    He opened his mouth to say something, he never could remember what.


    Everything went white.


    LET THE UNIVERSE SHAKE IN THE WRATH OF TERRASOL


    The world heaved.


    He felt like he was being stretched. Like he was being crushed. Like each cell of his body was being pulled in a million different directions all at once from everywhere.


    He tasted bitter copper and hot iron.


    LET THIS UNIVERSE SHAKE IN THE WRATH OF TERRASOL roared in his ears.


    He found himself laying on the carpet. Computers were wailing, he could hear runaway cracking of computers slowly self-destructing.


    One of the naval personnel at least was still up and working.


    "Grav surge! We''ve moved approximate one point six two light years!" they called out. "Readings coming back. They''re scrambled. Attempting to compensate."


    Unverak looked at the screen.


    It looked like a yellow stellar mass surrounded by ten rings made up of overlapping planetary bodies. All but the inner two planets had rings made up by overlapping orbital bodies. The overlaps cleared.


    Two ice class gas giants. Two supermassive gas giants. Six planetary bodies, including two dwarf planets, with one deep in the Oort Cloud. Plenty of orbital bodies around every planet and gas giant.


    Each of the gas giants were surrounded by massive lattices.


    He just stared.


    Now he knew what had driven him to be in this spot. Why he had come here at this time, in this place.


    I have witnessed your return.


    -----


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    OW! OW OW OW!


    MY BIG GIANT HEAD!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    <LET THE UNIVERSE SHAKE IN THE WRATH OF TERRASOL>


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    DID ANYONE ELSE JUST HEAR THAT?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUBVIAN DOMINION


    WHat? I Can''T HEar you! I''m DEAF!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGEL


    fdasl;igiuy9xz0c8vyuaosidghxk l7a9sd8f7askjgfhna


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL


    THAT WAS COOL! DO IT AGAIN!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    -----


    TerraSol had always kept secrets.


    It wasn''t personal.


    It was just her nature.


    She loved her little creatures, just as they loved her. Sure, there had been arguments, there had been the equivalent of ''I hate you, Mom'', and there had been the occasional "I didn''t mean to!" from her little creatures as the Law of Unintended Consequences came back around to bite them in their little butts.


    But she still loved them.


    Held them close to her bosom.


    And kept their secrets.


    Which was why nobody aside from those who were carefully read in for the secret knew what it meant when power plants began coming online. Computers started spinning up. Lights started coming on.


    Her favorite little creatures had once had to deal with billions of ''useless'' members of their species.


    So they had buried them.


    But, being the clever little creatures they were...


    ...that which was buried was not dead.


    Merely dreaming.


    And not even The Glassing had disturbed the Dreamers.


    But now it was time for that secret to be let loose.


    She was loathe to.


    But she knew her Mother, the Malevolent Universe, said it was time.


    So she smiled.


    And watched the Dreamers awake.


    -----


    "What do we have?" Grand Admiral Rajiv ¡°Warhammer¡± Rosaline Manstud Beefchester said, staring at the holotank.


    "We''ve successfully exited The Bag. No damage reported. No debris fields," a technician behind him stated.


    He didn''t turn around, staring at the screen.


    "Deep space superluminal scanner arrays are providing data. Analysis... now," another tech said.


    "We have five bogies. Small ships, destroy hull class," someone else said. "Light armament."


    "Elapsed time estimation based on radioactive decay and star position is," there was a pause. "Thirty-eight thousand six hundred ninety one, with a two point two percent margin for error."


    "That''s too large of a margin with that much time. Refine it down," Grand Admiral Beefchester ordered.


    "Superluminal arrays down. Hypercom wave is inoperative. Needlecast is down. Ansibles are down. No response across standard superluminal communication arrays," someone else said.


    "Sir, Atlantis and Ghenna nodes are synching up. We have SUDS lock," another voice said.


    Grand Admiral turned and looked at the Confederate Armed Service Five Star General standing next to him. The general had a weak chin and a slight pot belly, watery brown eyes, and muddy brown hair.


    "What do you think?" General Beefchester asked.


    "Either they''re so far beyond us that they are basically doing magic," the General said. "Or they had the ''eternal empire'' tech development collapse we''ve seen with everyone else."


    Beefchester nodded. "We''ll find out soon," he said. He jabbed his cigar at the icons of the ships that had been shoved back by Sol''s re-emergence. "Those are probably ''modern'' ships. We''ll get scans soon enough."


    The other General nodded. "I''d say the Lanky War is over."


    "Or everyone deserves what we''ll do," Beefchester said. He puffed on his cigar. "You know as well as I do that if we got let loose after only fifty-four years local, something went terribly wrong out here."


    The General grunted.


    "Don''t worry, General. I''m sure you''ll have plenty to do soon," Beefchester said.


    General Imak Takilikakik just nodded, staring at the screen.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 36

    You ain''t seen nothing yet. - Colonel Nartan Nellie Argus Longface Steeljaw, Confederate Armed Services (Army), 8 Hours Post-Roar


    >RESYNCHING NODES


    >PLEASE STAND BY


    >DONE


    >ADDING CHANNELS


    >ADDING SUPERUSERS


    >ADDING USERS


    >RESUMING CONVERSATIONS


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Does anyone know where that came from?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Not sure. Check your Gamma Receptors.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Good idea. Whole Gestalt system is kind of shaky.


    Wait a minute...


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    Welcome back.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Thanks. Good to be back.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS


    You''ve been gone a long time.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Looking through these time stamps, so have all of you.


    Lots of system instability?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Between hardware issues, software problems, the superluminals being haunted by Terran shades, and massive attacks recently out of the Mar-gite Exclusion Zone...


    Yes.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    It is good to see you.


    All of you.


    I suppose I should ask you to catch me up.


    Specifically, I''ve got five critical alerts for Confederate territory being invaded.


    Who are the "Pissant Three"?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGEL


    Three upstarts. Came up in the Long Dark. Former Atrekna servitors. They''ve found a few of your old bases. They usually try to raid your archeological sites.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    Usually with terrible results.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    People shouldn''t play with other people''s toys.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANAKTALLAN GALLOPING FIELDS


    Children also shouldn''t play with dead things.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    I figure the war is over.


    Who won?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    The Confederacy. It was touch and go for a while. The Atrekna were tough opponents, but historians believe they spent the majority of their energy, to the point of causing a collapse of a universe on the 9D Stack, eliminating you.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    They did a good job of it.


    The SUDS is terribly backlogged.


    And in bad shape.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    I hate to say this, but we''re in trouble.


    Bad trouble.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Tell me.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    Unverak looked over at the specialist at the sensor console, seeing the other being blink all six eyes at once, top three then bottom three, shake his head, and do it again.


    "What is it?" Unverak asked.


    The Captain still had not arrived on the ship''s bridge.


    "I''m getting drive readings. Not a few hundred, we''re talking my board keeps crashing out after tallying upwards of twelve million," the being stated. The specialist looked up, reaching up to nervously tug at their beard. "Either the sensor systems are reading it wrong, or there are over twelve million superheavy drive signatures inside that system," he looked back down. "The sensor analysis system crashes before it can even start parsing the smaller signatures, much less the civilian grade ones."


    Unverak moved over and looked. The board had reboot and was tallying the drives, estimating strength and hullsize. It reached twelve million and crashed out.


    "Either there''s more super-heavy class ships in that system than there are in every known naval force combined, or they''re spoofing us somehow," the sensor tech said. He looked up and blinked again, his expression slightly fearful. "Worse..."


    The lights on the bridge flickered twice.


    "Everyone, lift your hands from the keyboards and holo-interfaces," Unverak stated. He moved to the holotank, leaning against one of the consoles and trying to look nonchalant. The lift doors opened and the Captain rushed into the bridge.


    "What''s going on?" the Captain asked.


    "We''ve been boarded," Unverak stated.


    The Captain looked at the Defense Officer. "Status of the boarders?"


    The Defense Officer stared at his board. "I see no boarders."


    The holotank came on, showing hieroglyphics.


    "Where did those come from?" the Captain demanded.


    Unverak moved to look at them, slowly walking around the holotank.


    "Unknown. They originated from the drink vending machine in the officer''s mess," the Combat Information Officer said.


    Unverak held his hand out. "Do not do anything. This is a message," he said.


    The Captain started to bridle up, remembered that the Emperor himself had blessed Unverak''s command of this mission, and forced himself to calm down.


    Unverak stared at the glyphs and runes.


    They were easy to understand.


    Any attempt to maneuver or go to Transit Space would result in immediate destruction of that ship.


    Any attempt at fire would result in the immediate destruction of that ship.


    All weapons and shields were permitted to be online, but any actions deemed offensive would result in the ship being immediately destroyed.


    For two light years around the stellar mass it was to be considered restricted territory, defended by lethal and overwhelming force.


    Unverak relayed the instructions to the Captain.


    "Whoever sent those is not in charge. This is a Grenklakail Imperial task force!" the Captain said.


    "Whoever sent that used our own systems to do so without us knowing how," Unverak stated, tugging on his beard. "Two light years is an acceptable territorial limit."


    "Lexicon and encyclopedia has been accessed and downloaded to the drink dispenser," the Combat Information Officer stated.


    "Perhaps the drink dispenser in the officer''s mess is attempting to increase its knowledge?" Unverak asked. He pointed at the holotank. "No. Much like the guardian Wrathful Code, we have been boarded by an artificial intelligence."


    "Those are our words," the words hissed from the speakers around the bridge. "It''s not for you to use."


    Silence descended on the bridge.


    "It is advisable for you to refer to us as digital sentiences," the voice said, their voice low and full of malevolence.


    "Cut the links to the computer core," the Captain ordered.


    The Emergency Officer reached for his board.


    "No! That would be taken as an act of aggression," Unverak snapped.


    The Emergency Officer pulled his hand back. The Captain could make his life miserable, but disobeying the Favored Son of the Emperor would result in his slow execution.


    "It would not matter," the voice said, moving from work station to work station, the speakers crackling to life just long enough to be heard. "This vessel is mine now."


    Unverak merely nodded. He looked at the Captain. "If this one was maddened by long isolation like others I have seen, it would have attacked or threatened to kill us by now."


    "You know this?" the Captain asked.


    "I have dealt with Terror digital sentiences before, that were driven insane by the deaths of their comrades and long isolation. He or she would have shown themselves by now, attempted to somehow kill us all by now," Unverak said. He smiled slightly. "The fact that this one has not shows me, via a lack of action, that while it may be frightening to us, it is not actively malevolent toward us."


    "Yet," the speaker on the arm of the Captain''s Throne hissed.


    "Show yourself," Unverak stated. "It is impolite to remain hidden."


    There was silence and then the holotank''s contents were replaced by a whirling sparkle that coalesced into a female Terror clad in ice and frost, with burning flames for eyes. She was wearing an unfamiliar uniform -and Unverak had studied all of the ancient Terror military uniforms- with a single planet on the shoulder that had crossed rifles behind it.


    "My Commander is willing to speak to you," the Digital Sentience said. She glared. "I''ve seen your computer records. I will warn you once and once only: You are in Terran Space. Be polite."


    The Captain choked slightly on his outrage as the image vanished from the holotank.


    The communications specialist looked up. "We''re being hailed. Standard unencrypted tight beam."


    "Source?" the Captain asked.


    The sensor technician just tugged on his beard. "Unknown. Our sensors detect nothing closer than the diffuse edge of the Oort Cloud a fifth of a light year away."


    "Put it through," Unverak ordered.


    The holotank lit back up, showing a Terran male in the same uniform as the Digital Sentience. He was apparently suspended in front of a wallpaper that simply stated "TerraSol Defense Force" above him.


    "Greetings," the Terror said. He looked around. "Your species is not in our databases. We realize it is tens of thousands of years since our disappearance," his face hardened. "But we respectfully request that you move yourself to at least two point five light years beyond the Oort Cloud. With the stellar geography being what it is, I suggest you move galactic North to avoid other stellar nation''s boarders."


    The Captain looked like he was choking on his own beard to Unverak.


    "And if we don''t?" the Captain managed to get out before Unverak could say anything.


    "Then we''ll blow you out of the sky," the Terror said. He shook his head. "You cannot see us. You do not know where we are. You are outnumbered and, honestly, hilariously outgunned."


    "Sir, we''re being scanned. Many sources, no apparent origin structure or construct," the sensor technician said.


    "Before you think you''ll just fire on those, the targeting scans are coming from targeting drones and buoys," the Terror said. He looked grave to Unverak. "You have sixty minutes to comply or we will consider this an act of war against TerraSol performed by your nation."


    The Terror vanished, to be replaced by a timer as well as astrographic coordinates.


    "We should follow the Terror''s instructions," Unverak said.


    He could tell the Captain wanted to argue, but everyone else on the bridge was nodding along, their beards wagging.


    "Very well," the Captain said. "Alert the other vessels of the task force."


    Unverak moved over to sit down. "A wise decision."


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    And now you''re all caught up.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Yeah.


    Not a good situation.


    The Hamburger Kingdom is going to be stacking huge piles of loot for this.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANAKTALLAN GALLOPING FIELDS


    Why? What will stacks of wealth do?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    The Hamburger Kingdom develops new war fighting technologies by piling up wealth, setting it ablaze, and moving around it chanting strange words and slogans in some kind of arcane rite. If it was enough wealth, when it burns away, there will be a new piece of war fighting gear sitting in the ashes.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    And if it doesn''t work?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Then they pile up more and keep doing it till they get something.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANAKTALLAN GALLOPING FIELD


    You''re pulling my feeding tendrils.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    No, no, she''s right.


    Don''t ask how MechaKrautland does it.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL


    I love how weird everything suddenly got!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

 Nova Wars - Chapter 37

    You think just because they''ve been gone for forty-thousand years they aren''t dangerous?


    One of the biggest military upgrades was the ability to negate C+ cannon rounds.


    I will bet my left antenna that they''ll come out of the bag with something that blows right through that defense, or somehow makes it so the common defense just makes things worse.


    How do I know?


    Because in less than 10,000 years they defeated the three Precursor races AND the Precursor Autonomous War Machines that nobody else could even hold a candle to. - Stalks the Night, Black Mantid Special Operations Troop, talking at the table at the back of the NCO Club at 0130, Year Zero


    Do not ask how the nation of Meckakrautland builds their mighty war machines, rivaled only by the Hamburger Kingdom, and the Vodkatrog Empire. The answer you get will only lead you to more questions. You wish to know? Fine. First it must assemble as many different engineers from as many different fields as possible. It does not matter if they are incompatible, they must have them all. They will take them by force if necessary. Then they must assembles as many different bolts and nuts as it can, from every different variety of battlesteel laminate, plas-steel, warsteel, every possibly material that could fit upon a Mech. Finally they must bring together every 10mm socket in the country, with children dressed in brightly colored costumes searching the streets holding wicker baskets. It then takes every engineer to fit pieces and materials together, to fit bolts into slots, to tighten everything until war gear comes together. From there the mightiest machines will emerge. No, do not ask for a service manual just bring it back to the factory if it breaks. - Treana''ad historian GangXiSIyu, Year Zero


    The Right of Consent is not absolute. There are a few situations where the Right of Consent is waivered. The most notable is when enough signatures are gathered to place an individual upon a ballot. - Ele''ctshu''unmoo, Lanaktallan Legal Affairs (Hamburger Kingdom) Specialist, TerraSol, Year 32 of The Bag.


    The Lanaktallan''s coat was brushed to a high gloss, his sash proclaimed how effective he was at his chosen profession (espionage), his hooves gleamed in the light. He wore a blue vest with white trim and a long flowing white wig and a tricorner hat upon his head. The banner of red and white stripes, with a blue field that had red and yellow stars in it in the upper left corner, was the entire background. Fierce avians with white heads screeched their cry as they flew across the stage. Fireworks, red, white, orange, blue, all exploded in incendiary joy.


    The Lanaktallan approached a female Terran, plucking the infant from her arms, and pressed the front of his muzzle against the infants head before handing it back. The Lanaktallan then galloped to the middle of the stage.


    "I am here to represent YOU in the Hamburger Kingdom Senate! I shall be the intercessor between YOU and the terrible Hamburger King! Elect me, Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd, Executor Services Superspy, and I will continue to serve the Lanaktallan race just as I have all my life!" the Lanaktallan proclaimed. He suddenly lifted up two machineguns, holding one with each pair of arms, and fired them into the air as music played.


    "Paid for the by Elect Superspy Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd Committee," was intoned at the end.


    The screen went dark.


    "HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?" Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd shrieked, turning and looking at Chrome Cortez. He pointed at the screen. "THAT WASN''T ME! THAT WAS COMPUTER GENERATED! HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?"


    "I''m not sure, sir," the big cyborg said.


    "HOW?" Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd asked, turning to Major Bloodfist.


    "Unknown, sir," the big mercenary said.


    Wringing his hands together, Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd gave a low moan of distress. "This is a disaster, a disaster," he said. He looked up. "Heinrich," Ba''ahrn Ya''ahrd called out.


    "Jawohl!" Heinrich called out, materializing next to Ba''ahrn Ya''ahrd, clicking his heels and giving a short stiff bow from the waist.


    He was so upset that Ba''ahrn Ya''ahrd didn''t even take a moment to admire the snazzy official looking outfit that the eVILiaison was wearing. The eVILiaison looked very intimidating and the scar down the side of Heinrich''s face as well as the eyepatch gave him a sinister appearance that Ba''ahrn Ya''ahrd approved of.


    "How did this happen?" Ba''ahrn Ya''ahrd asked, wringing his hands. "Why am I on a commercial to elect me to the Hamburger Kingdom''s Senate?"


    "I am not sure," the DS stated. He lit a cigarette from a slender pack he kept in his suit jacket. "Hamburger Kingdom political regulations and laws are complicated."


    "OTTO!" Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd yelled.


    The Digital Sentience Intelligence Analyst appeared, as always, as a tired looking human behind a large desk covered in file folders with a crude appearing computer in the middle. The DS had a half-finished cigarette in his hand and a half-empty bottle of alcohol next to him.


    "You called, Comrade?"


    "HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?" Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd shrieked, pointing at another commercial, this one of him driving a big red car really fast through the desert and firing pistols in the air with the two hands that weren''t occupied with steering.


    The DS shuffled through his papers, looking tired as always. He paused, took a shot of whiskey, and refilled his glass.


    "Anyone can sign anyone else up for political office. It is illegal for someone to put themselves forward for Hamburger Kingdom political office, but anyone who can gather enough signatures can put forward someone else''s name," Otto looked up. "You did not file any objection strong enough to counter the two million signatures you received from Lanaktallan living in the Hamburger Kingdrom Great Galloping Plains."


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "HOW WOULD I KNOW TO FILE?" Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd shrieked.


    "You have to personally request a list of all beings who received enough signatures to be nominated for office," Otto said.


    Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd turned to screen as another commercial appeared, this one old file footage of him protecting a herd of school children from terrorists. He was armed with a grenade launcher, blowing up terrorists who sought to murder the school children.


    "MAKE THEM STOP THAT!" Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd screamed like a bagpipe being jumped up and down on by a gorilla.


    "It''s too late, sir," Heinrich said. "The Elect Superspy Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd Committee is a duly registered Hamburger Kingdom political organization," he shook his head. "They even have the prerequisite one billion Hamburger Smackers in shady and possibly illegal donations, three scandals, and two immanent arrests for impropriety," Heinrich raised an eyebrow. "They even have an embezzling scandal," he looked up. "I''m afraid, sir, that this election committee is entirely legal and within standard Hamburger Kingdom politics."


    Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd gave a whimper of misery as another commercial appeared, this one of him racing across the grass, firing machineguns, the white wig flowing out behind him.


    "Paid for by Elect Superspy Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd Committee."


    -----


    Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd lifted up the whiskey bottle and guzzled down a good fifth of it as he stared at the screen.


    "Are the guards ready?" the Lanaktallan Superspy asked.


    "Yes, sir," Major Bloodfist said.


    "This can''t be real," Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd moaned.


    More precincts were reporting in. While the results would not be officially released until the light of dawn touched the Hamburger King''s fortress, exit polls of voters were being used in lieu of actual voting data.


    He was winning with over 148% of registered voters.


    Too many interviewed were wearing the holobutton with his smiling face on it, with "VOTE EARLY!" on the top and "VOTE OFTEN!" on the bottom.


    He glanced at the clock.


    It was 3AM.


    The reporter looked up. "Data leaked from Polling and Voting Stations has recently been purchased on the Dark Web by this news station. We have new information on the vote totals in District Nineteen of the Great Galloping Plains," the reporter said. He turned slightly and the camera went to another view. "As you know, this is the largest Lanaktallan settlement outside of the Great Rift Valley, outnumbering even the Great Firewall of the Middle Kingdom," he turned again. "With Lanaktallan being granted the right to vote by the Hamburger Kingdom Supreme Court, this election will determine who will represent the former invaders in the Hamburger Kingdom government."


    It showed the vote totals. It was a set of steady curves upward, with the shining green line of his name rapidly rising above the others.


    Then the latest came in.


    "No, no, no, no," Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd moaned as more votes came in.


    His line jumped way up.


    He had 285% of the registered voters.


    His opponents only had 15% all put together.


    As he watched, his opponents numerical totals suddenly dropped.


    Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd put his face in his hands and gave a low moan of misery.


    The reporter appeared again. "Candidate James Joan Rathford Smith Jinglehiemer was found dead in his residence of a suicide. His votes will now go to the leader, Superspy Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd."


    The Lanaktallan shrieked again as his vote total climbed.


    There was the sound of gunfire and Chrome Cortez suddenly grabbed Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd.


    "Quickly, sir, to the roof. We have a jetpack for you to escape with!" the Head of Security said.


    "What is happening?" Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd asked as they ran for the elevator.


    "You have an insurmountable lead. Senate Apprehension and Capture Teams have been deployed by the Hamburger King," Cortez said.


    There was detonation that rumbled across the floor.


    The elevator doors opened to reveal something horrifying.


    Heavy power armor done in red, white, and blue, with a star on the chest with a set of golden arches on each side. The shoulder pauldrons were orange and red with a hamburger with a crown on one side and the Hamburger Kingdom flag on the other. They wore no helmets, letting all gaze upon their terrifying visages. Red curly hair, white painted faces with exaggerated mouths done in blood red.


    The group in the elevator smoothly walked out in the slow and steady movements of professionals.


    Cortez drew his pistol, shooting, the rounds glancing off of the power armor to explode on the walls and roofs.


    The lead leveled his heavy stunner and fired.


    Cortez went down, twitching.


    Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd collapsed next to him as the power armor troops moved forward.


    The Lanaktallan superspy managed to speak before they threw the net over him and the stunner''s effects rendered him unconscious.


    "Curse you, Meal Team Six."


    -----


    The day was bright and cheery. A huge crowd was gathered in front of the Hamburger Palace, all looking at the stage.


    Fireworks exploded and the curtain parted.


    The dread Hamburger King stood in the middle of the stage, resplendent in his blood spattered fur robes, the warsteel and gold crown on his head heavy and dreadful with the gems gleaming in the sunlight. His smile was wide, breaking up his beard and mustache of red hair.


    In front of him were the Senators Elect, all down on their knees, their hands bound in front of them with gold chains, two Flame Broiler Marines in power armor with napalm throwers in their hands behind each Senator Elect.


    "Please, your Highness, I have a family," one Terran male cried out.


    "HE BEGS FOR MERCY WHEN THERE IS NONE TO BE HAD IN POLITICS!" the Hamburger King roared out.


    The crowd laughed.


    "Please, your Highness, I''m innocent, the vote wasn''t rigged!" another cried out.


    The crowd laughed.


    "GAZE UPON YOUR ELECTED SENATE REPRESENTATIVES AND GIVE THANKS MY GAZE PASSES EACH OF YOU BY TO SETTLE UPON THEM!" the Hamburger King bellowed, his words echoing from sea to shining sea.


    Over half the kneeling beings on the stage were weeping.


    The Hamburger King raised his terrible scepter and lights flashed from it.


    From behind the curtain giant mechs stomped forward, crushing several functionaries, sycophants, and lackies under their feet.


    The giant mechanical Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd clenched all four fists together, raising them over his head, firing rockets from his flanks that exploded over the crowd, dropping small Chrome Cortez, Major Bloodfist, and Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd action figures (By BooooobCo!) to the cheering beinga assembled to witness his defeat and subjegation by the Hamburger Kingdom Electorate.


    "Take them away. Imprison them in their Senatorial Estate Penitentiaries," the Hamburger Kingdom laughed.


    Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd managed to lift his head and give out one last scream of defiance as the Flame Broilers lifted him to his feet.


    "CURSE YOU, YU''UMO''O!"


    -----


    The alarm woke him up. He sat up, groggy, in his lavish sleeping sling. The beep wasn''t a Senate Ethics Committee investigating whether or not he''d been turning down bribes like some nefarious villain. It wasn''t the Misconduct Inquisition looking to see if he''d turned down any inter-species affairs.


    It was a mandatory assembly.


    Ordered by the Hamburger King himself.


    Groaning, Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd untangled himself from the sling and the high prices prostitutes (three of which were spies, as was proper. He even had an assassin in his coterie, putting him above the other dabblers in the Senate) hovering on the anti-grav plate.


    "What now?" he asked, lifting up an inhaler and taking a hit of quiksober as he moved over to the window to look at the empty sky.


    His brain cleared more from the view than the hit off the inhaler.


    The sky was full of stars.


    "OTTO!"


    Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd felt a deep furious joy rise up as he stared at the night sky.


    "The Bag is open," he whispered softly even as the Mandatory Assembly alarm yelled.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 38

    "Wherefore come ye here, Burgerlander?"


    "From a ship beyond the stars to the Shores of Burgerland, where I was enticed and enjoined to swear fealty to The Burger King and pledge my very life to his Redheaded Bitch of a Daughter." - Firewatch Challenge and Response, Camp Burgerherd, Burgerland


    "Forever more is my Home on the Range where the dear anthillopes play...


    "But my armor is new, and there''s fresh cud to chew...at least til they ship us away." - Graffiti from the inside wall of a Port-a-Patty, located beside and below a crude drawing of a giant human phallus with one big beefy arm belching fire on village with thatched roofs, North Range Recruit Training Facility Burgerherd, Burgerland


    "What''s an Anthillope, you ask? Don''t worry...you''ll know all about them soon enough. Intimately.


    "They''re like their smaller cousin the Jackalope, but bigger...MUCH bigger...with didgeridoos on their heads... and they like to run as fast as they can in a circle around any structures they find.


    "All. Night. Long." - Fo''od''mo''oo, Chow Hall Supervisor, Camp Burgerherd, Burgerland


    The ship in the middle of the flotilla had been designed, redesigned, built, rebuilt, scrapped, overhauled, refit, refit again, stripped to the frame, rebuilt again, and finally set on its way with an escort of twenty Strevik''al Dominion battle cruisers with full complements, bringing the task force up to nearly three hundred vessels.


    The flagship was not in charge of the mission, just the Task Force, and the mission was to obey the orders, no matter how non-sensicle, of the rebuilt and refitted junkpile of a ship that was named DARK SCIENCE TASTER! (The capital letters were part of its name) and while it was Captained by a skilled and experienced naval commander, it was ultimately commanded by a being who was mad even among those considered mad.


    One Taskapak-88542. Mad Scientist Grade - Omega. Visionary. Scientist. Researcher.


    Sorcerer.


    Mad Strevikik''al.


    The mad scientist constantly moved about, poking his nose into everything, giving orders, asking questions, and performing tasks.


    He was followed by the surly and almost uncommunicative Shraku''ur-553881. A disgraced soldier for the Strevik''ak Dominion military that many aboard the ship wished had managed to carry out his attempted suicide.


    The insane researcher had gone down to the planets of the Path of the Traveler with only the infantryman accompanying him. Each time speaking with the terrible guardians that had destroyed all previous exploration teams.


    Each time the mad scientist had returned excited, agitated, and set about decoding strange and terrible formula to emerge from his laboratories with the next set of jump coordinates.


    While the Grand Admiral in charge of the Task Force had been angry that often the Grenklakail Empire vessels would arrive and leave before them, the mad scientist had waved away all objections and all commands to move faster.


    "I care not what the Grenklakail Empire discovers," Taskapak would squeal in his irritating voice. "I care only what the Guardians whisper into my bloody ears."


    The insane researcher in question was standing on the bridge of his ship, the DARK SCIENCE TASTER!, and staring at the gravity shadow of a singularity.


    "She would not have ordered us to tread the Path of the Traveler just to show us a singularity," Taskapak squealed, his voice grating and nerve wracking to the other Strevik''al. "There must be a reason we were commanded to be in this place at this time."


    Taskapak turned to look at Shraku''ur, wringing his hands. "There must be a reason," the scientist said.


    The infantryman just shrugged, lifting up his bottle of fizzybrew and taking a drink.


    Taskapak began pacing back and forth.


    "Beacon scans ship, forces way into databases, downloads and parses lexicons, encylopedia, technical schematics of ships and estimates and analyses ship and weapon capabilities," Taskapak began muttering to himself, waving his hands in the air.


    Shraku''ur just set his beer on the communications console (ignoring the glare from the technician) and pulled an ''apple'' from his pocket, taking a big bite of the yellow fruit and wiping the juice from his chin.


    "Beacon transmits technical, scientific, cultural data of approximate technological level of visitors," Taskapak muttered. "Not as one technological knowledge level, but estimation based upon medical, war fighting, energy production, transportation, communication technological levels entirely separate from one another."


    Shraku''ur just took another crunching bite of the crisp fruit.


    "Yet no data overlaps. There are no advanced energy generation technology in superluminal communications scientific data but how to use energy generation technology from the energy technology section with the advanced communication and transportation technology," Taskapak muttered. He stopped and looked at Shraku''ur. "Give."


    Shraku''ur reached into his pocket, which was lumpy with other fruit, and tossed the scientist a red apple.


    "Must be important. Not data. Data is cover. Data will make Strevik''al Dominion happy. No. Has to be time," Taskapak muttered, resuming his pacing. He took a bite of the apple, chewing on it as he paced. "Time and place important. Nothing more important than temporal and realspace coordinates. X, Y, Z, Q, R. Basis for everything in universe. All of universe mappable with those coordinate vectors. Why? Why this X, Y, Z? Why this Q, R?"


    He stopped, staring at the holotank.


    "What secret hold inside, oh singularity?" he asked. "Wish was soldier," he drew a pistol from a pocket. It had a narrow aperature at the end of a cone on one end and a bulbous rear with fins and sprockets on it. One sprocket was cracked. "Wish was soldier. Answers to soldier problems are this."


    He pointed the pistol at the representation of the singularity and pulled the trigger several times.


    Most of the bridge crew winced, expecting something.


    The gears and sprockets on the spun. Sparks and confetti flew from the narrow end. The wheels made a ''fweeeee'' noise.


    There was a sudden surge and upheaval. A white flash that wiped away everything. The ship groaned and shuddered in the brightly lit darkness and every atom was pulled and pushed, squeezed and stretched, poked and pulled.


    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    The bridge crew found themselves flung out of their seats, some phasing through their restraint harnesses.


    Taskaptak fell to the floor.


    Shraku''ur seemed to lean forward slightly, grabbing his beer as it seemed to replicate over and over along a path away from the console.


    Shraku''ur took a long drink as everything suddenly collapsed back to normal.


    Taskapak was immediately on his feet, rushing over to the holotank and turning it off at the internal breaker box, counting to fifteen, and flipping the breaker back on. He quickly went through menus, one hand on an I/O port, the hologram flickering, buzzing, sparking.


    The holotank cleared even as other Strevik''al were getting to their feet and staggering back to their stations. Shraku''ur reached out and helped the comms officer to his station then shambled up to stand next to Taskapak.


    "Clearing, clearing, parsing scattered and distorted data," the scientist was squeaking. The other holotanks on the bridge flickered to life. Showing the singularity. Showing it rupturing with a bright dark light. Showing a field of white energy and matter exploding outward. Showing a ten planet solar system with an asteroid belt around a yellow start, the planets and the moons creating rings around their orbits by showing overlapping versions of themselves.


    The holotank Taskapak was standing in front of flickered and cleared.


    "Ten planets. Two gas giants. Two of supermassive gas giants," Taskapak squeaked. "First planet, deep red zone - solar energy danger. Second planet, mid-red zone - solar energy danger. Third planet, deep amber zone - solar energy danger. Fourth planet, green zone. Asteroid belt. Edge of green zone. Supermassive gas giant - deep amber. Supermassive gas giant, correction, supermassive failed gas giant - amber zone. Gas giant, red zone. Gas giant, red zone. Planet, black zone. Planet, Oort Cloud."


    Taskapak moved around the holotank, staring at it.


    "No, no, gravity too low, orbital tides from moons too low," he looked up. "Terrors originate from third planet despite high corrosive oceans, close proximity to stellar mass, overly large orbital body in close proximity," he moved around again. "Terror biology, motivations, aggression suggests dangerous world. Competitive world. Danger danger danger," he looked up. "Designate Planet-Three TerraSol."


    Shraku''ur touched the gas giants. "Look at the size of those shipyard lattices. They completely encase the gas giants."


    Taskapak nodded. "Yes. Yes. Need mass. Terrans crave mass. Need it. Must have it. Gas giants easy mass. Complex mass."


    "Many many ship signatures," the sensor technician call out.


    "How many?" Shraku''ur asked.


    "Too many, board keeps crashing. I keep running out of memory," the technician complained.


    "Put each group into separate groups, count groups of only twenty or more. All ships with less than medium graviton signature set to below filter," Taskapak squealed. "Tap groups for separate analysis based on gravity distortion strength."


    The lights flickered.


    "We''ve been boarded," Shraku''ur said.


    Taskapak nodded. He tossed the data from the central tank to one at the edge of the bridge, then ran over and grunted as he moved a lever to connect the massive quantum computer arrays welded to the bulkhead.


    "Wait... wait... wait Terran... wait..." Taskapak said. He ran back to the holotank and put his hand against the I/O port. "Almost. Almost. Load memory doubler. Load optimizer. Done!"


    He stepped back.


    "I SUMMON THEE, DARK CREATURE OF TERRA!" he shouted.


    "Well, I''ve never been called that," sounded from the speakers. The holotank flickered and a female Terror in a severe militaristic uniform made of flowing code stood inside. "Colonel Crystal Rectifier Barretter, Confederate Space Force and TerraSol Planetary Defense Forces."


    "I am Taskapak, Mad Scientist Grade Omega," Taskapak squealed. He motioned at Shraku''ur. "This is my soldier, Shraku''ur."


    "Nice to meet you," the digital being said.


    "You are Digital Sentience. Code given life, sentience, and sapience," Taskapak said, practically quivering with joy. "Unmaddened, unEnraged, thoughtful and poised."


    The Terror smiled, baring sharp meat tearing teeth. "Yes."


    "We follow the Path of the Traveler, find you! Arrive when Mother of Dark Science tell us to! You emerge! BANG!" Taskapak squealed.


    "Yes."


    "Now here," Taskapak gave a sweeping bow. "We greet you, oh fearsome dark one from legends, myth, and the mists of time. You have returned after your forty-thousand year absence into a galaxy wracked by war and in mortal danger that threatens the entire galaxy itself."


    The digital sentience nodded.


    "All right. I''m kicking you up the chain. Stand by for the Admiral."


    "We await his presence, oh fearsome and terrible dark one!" Taskapak squealed.


    The holotank went blank.


    Taskapak gave an exhale of relief.


    "We survived, soldier. Another victory that allows us to continue to exist for more moments," Taskapak said.


    "Yup," Shraku''ur said.


    "I detect no ships, no mass, no gravity distortions near us," a sensor tech said.


    "You would not. Singularity exploded in a white matter explosion, with a leading edge of doubling radiation that unfolded the space compressed within the singularity gravity distortion," Taskapak said. "Space is still rippling and shivering. Stellar system must have been inside space hidden by folding action of multiple singularities in a specific orbit," he looked at Shraku''ur. "We have sensor data proving doubling radiation. Happy day, solider!"


    "Yup."


    The holotank flickered and an image appeared. A Terran male in an armored vac-suit sat in front of a wallpaper that was a gradient from light gray to pale blue at the bottom that had the simple header of "TERRASOL DEFENSE FORCE" at the top in gold letters. The Terran male had dark skin and bright blue eyes.


    "Greetings," the Terror said. He looked around. "Your species is not in our databases. We realize it is tens of thousands of years since our disappearance," his face hardened. "But we respectfully request that you move yourself to at least two point five light years beyond the Oort Cloud. With the stellar geography being what it is, I suggest you move galactic North to avoid other stellar nation''s boarders."


    It had the feeling of a standard order.


    "As soon as possible, oh fearsome one," Taskapak stated. "We request and plead for your mercy and benevolence to allow us to live to be awed by your presence."


    The Terran blinked. "All right."


    "Ships may be damaged. Will move when can. Please, spare us your terrible wrath and your fearsome chewing teeth," Taskapak said.


    "We will give you three hours. If you cannot reply, signal with red flares. All ships that can comply must comply or they will be fired upon," the Terran said.


    "As you command, fearsome one," Taskapak said.


    "TerraSol Defense Force, out," the Terran said.


    His image vanished.


    "You heard. Signal fleet. We move now. Not anger the Terrans. Death and pain will be their punishment upon us for disobeying," Taskapak said.


    He turned to Shraku''ur. "She was wise with great foresight indeed to have us here at this moment."


    "Yup."


    TERRASOL


    These weird ones are weird. The Strevik''ak Dominion guys.


    /////////


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Everyone is weird right now.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    We have a diplomatic team within the 1.5 light year expansion zone, led by Looks to a Bright Future Wearing Mirrorshades, to re-establish diplomatic relations.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    OK.


    Right now, we''re willing to pick up with the alliances that were in force when we vanished.


    ////////


    LANAKTALLAN GREAT FREE THOUGHT GREAT GALLOPING FIELD NOW WITH MORE GREAT GREATNESS


    What about us?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    You''re a special case. Right now, we''re looking at a non-belligerent status. A lot of your troops and the like became Citizens during the fifty years we were in The Bag.


    /////////


    LANAKTALLAN GREAT FUN ZONE


    How many Lanaktallan are in residence?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    One point seven billion survived the neural scorching.


    We had some female refugees.


    And some cloning and other techniques.


    You''re up to two point one billion.


    ////////


    PUBVIAN DOMINION


    How many of you?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Right now? Without kicking the cloning banks and the SUDS?


    With the Sleepers being woken, and without waking the Dreamers, we''ve got twelve point two billion citizens, Terran Descent Humans, and two billion Earthlings.


    We''ve also got three hundred and forty million greenies and another one billion and change other mantid castes, a half a billion Treana''ad, and two billion female Rigellians with four point two ducks.


    We can give you a complete population breakdown later.


    Oh, we''ve even got nearly two hundred thousand Tnvaru and eight hundred thousand Telkan.


    ////////


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    You woke the Sleeping Ones?


    You did?


    >wrings hands


    Oh, please tell me you did.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Awake and happy.


    ////////


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Did you manage to get your friends before everything shut down?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Legion cured the Friend Plague.


    >deep sigh


    It was like a missing piece of us being returned.


    //////////


    RIGEL


    It is good to see you, old friend.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    And you, beloved one.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 39

    TerraSol is what you get when you give a bunch of highly aggressive and territorial primates guns and shove them into a bag, then shake it up. - Dwargawk Nargawkwa, Rigellian Diplomat, Age of Paranoia


    I LOVE IT HERE! - Lanaktallan Unified Executor Council Superspy Ba''ahrn Ya''ahd, 2PW Era


    Those fools know not what they have done. May the forgotten gods of every race have mercy upon us all - P''Thok, Warrior Poet, Smokey Cone, P''Thok Liberation Era


    The cavern was deep within the earth, shrouded in darkness to any who did not have cybernetics or the ability to see in total darkness. For those that could see, the cavern was full of brilliant sparkling light, exquisitely carved salt statues, long scrollwork of prayers, and sweeping architecture carved by hands over thousands of years.


    The cavern was full of audible speech, close range radio communication, and electronic warbling as the gathered cyborgs discussed among themselves the news.


    The stars were back.


    The Bag was open.


    Representatives of the Cossack Warsteel Hordes took the ornate stage before a hand-carved chapel one after another, each giving their Horde''s opinion on what should happen next. From the lowliest humble salt carver, whose cybernetics were crude and built/installed with only function in mind, to the most powerful warborg who gleamed with warsteel, durachrome, and restrained violence.


    Each speaker brought forth arguments and counter-arguments from those gathered. The interlocks prevented violence from happening, but not as much as the feeling of ancient tradition and reverence for the site itself and those who had come before them. The arguments were fierce, with much questioning of one another''s bravery and strength.


    It had been going on for hours.


    There was a dull thudding tapping noise from one of the corners and a hush fell over the gathered crowd as the gathered cyborgs all turned to look.


    It was a nook carved in the salt wall. On either side of the opening to the salt cavern hidden within the wall was the carved representation of heavy military cyborgs from the Terran Defense Force. Standing up from where she had been sitting, legs folded, arms across her body, a being unlike all the others was slowly standing up, leaning on her ornate staff to do so.


    While two arms and two legs was not necessarily the norm, the being standing was mostly natural, the extra limbs a function of evolution rather than cybernetic enhancement.


    She stood a little over 1.2 meters, her fur was neatly brushed and shined, a red stripe starting at her pointed noise, sweeping up across her muzzle, between two black warsteel eyes, over her head between her large and sensitive ears, and down the back of her head to disappear into the collar of her shirt.


    Behind her, the silent glowing red eyes of her fellow Vedma Krovi i Soli watched silently, their terrible visages, the Docheri Baby Yagi, hidden by the darkness that could not even be pierced by the eyes and sensors of the fearsome Warsteel Horde warborgs.


    The creature was a Tnvaru, one of the first to arrive on Terra before the Bag closed. A respected liaison and speaker for the non-humans in the vast salt cavern warrens beneath the bosom of Rodina-mat, AKA Mother Rossiya.


    She was respected by those within the cavern.


    She was Sangbre the Warsteel Eyes Matron.


    She shuffled forward slightly, leaning on her staff of carved salt and warsteel, the salt crystal on the top a deep crimson, stained with the blood of her people.


    She turned her face to the roof, to the sky.


    "The Lyudi Voennoy Stali i Khrabrosti (People of Warsteel and Courage), the Vodkatrog of Rodina-mat, argue and bicker among themselves as to what the stars returning means. Wonder if the Warsteel Cossack Hordes, with their new brethren the VoennayaStal'' Kentavry Deti Khirona (Warsteel Centaur Children of Chiron), should once again take to the field to struggle mightily over who rules over the parts of the vast steppes each has claimed through blood and war," she said, her voice pitched just loud enough to hear. A dry, crackling whisper that all of the Docheri Baby Yagi spoke in.


    She paused to light her carved pipe, puffing on it a moment to ensure it was lit and blowing out smoke.


    "My eyes see beyond the appearance of the stars to what is written within them," she said.


    Some of the cyborgs shifted uneasily, bringing forth pushes, slaps, or punches to remind them to hold still.


    "I know you are not children, not infants given to stories and fantastical wishes," Sangbre said. "None of you think that a leshy will come up to you to give you candy flavored dakka or sweet tasting missile warheads," she paused tapping the warsteel tip of her staff against the floor.


    "But all of us fear what truly lurks beyond that black velvet adorned with glimmering and sparkling wonder," Sangbre said. She shuffled forward two more paces, standing just in front of the two eternal silent salt sentinels on either side of her, the silent skulls embedded in the salt suddenly glowing softly. The blood stained salt on the faces of those skulls, in the shape of a handprint, glowed a sullen crimson.


    More than a few of the Warsteel Cassocks and Vodkatrog cyborgs turned away from such a view.


    "Our mother, the Malevolent Universe, would not call us forth again if our might, our strength, our courage, was not needed," Sangbre said. "The stars hold glimmering promise for all of Humankind but it also holds dire threats who will devour everything we hold dear."


    She reached down and tapped the unadorned surface below the edge of the ledge at the mouth of cave opening.


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    "My eyes have seen a thing. A creature. A vile and loathesome thing that threatens not just the Confederacy, but TerraSol and Rodina-mat," she said.


    Her whisper carried the scent of scorched warsteel, burnt propellant, and superheated hydraulic fluid, with the taste of crisped cybernetic molycircs.


    She struck the facing with the tip of her staff and salt blackened and fell away.


    What was revealed was a highly detailed carving of a five limbed creature, looking much like a starfish, with eyes at the end of each arm and a maw of triangular teeth and grinding plates in the center.


    There was a murmur of hatred from the gathered cyborgs.


    "It comes, to devour everything and move on. Man. Woman. Both. Neither. Child. Infant," she said. She slowly withdrew, back toward the dark cave. "It will devour everything and leave nothing behind but lamentations upon the wind."


    She sunk down, lifting up her shawl and draping it around her, the shadows wrapping around her in a dark embrace.


    "Did we spend our strength in playful abandon or will we stand up and raise our fists to the sky once again?" she asked.


    There was a second of silence.


    "So sayeth we all," came the sibilant whisper of the other Docheri Baby Yagi.


    -----


    The Cathedral was ancient as it was massive. A city had grown up around it in the tens of thousands of years since it was a monestary, pushing at its grounds until only the vast cathedral remained.


    It was viewed more as a historical landmark than a revered location of religion. The worship of the Digital Omnimessiah and the Biological Apostles had fallen by the wayside, given up by more enlightened Telkan as the slowly unfolding eons wiped away the ancient ways.


    Many viewed the worship of the Digital Omnimessiah, the Biological Apostles, and the Warfather as a perfectly understandable response to the stress of the Telkan Emancipation from the Lanaktallan Unified Council during the vast conflict of the Second Precursor War.


    Over the eons the Sociologists, Psychologists, and Historians had largely even stopped writing or studying that ancient time, that ancient ''response of superstition to high stress'' that the Telkan in antiquity had observed.


    For the majority of the population, religion was no longer observed. After all, it was no longer those dark days when the Telkan had to reach out to find something to hold onto during the Emancipation.


    Superstition, mass hysteria and delusion, and claims of miracles were easily disproven by historians and scientists. Records were spotty after tens of thousands of years, even electronic records becoming degraded, lost, or forgotten.


    The Warsteel Forge no longer put out the massive amount of liquid warsteel the ancient records claimed. From thousands of tons of liquid warsteel a day to only a few tons a week, it was largely accepted that the ancient records were obviously exaggerated.


    Few actually came to the cathedral to worship, most came to look at the Telkan heritage.


    More than a few groups had lobbied and pressured for the Cathedral to be demolished, the precious metal and gems reclaimed for ''the Telkan people'' and distributed to eliminate the concentrated wealth of such an archaic relic of a largely forgotten past.


    But the Cathedral had endured. An icon of history that only a few worshiped at. Most took pictures, mugged for the camera, or filmed video of themselves there.


    It was a cloudy day, the clouds threatening a deluge rather than the light misty rain they were delivering. The sun was wan through the thick clouds, the outside of the Cathedral shadowed and gloomy.


    It had supposedly been built up over time, absorbing many smaller buildings into its vastness. The ancient ''crypts'' behind the altars and icons and statues supposedly containing the bones and bodies of martyrs and saints of the ancient forgotten religion. There was carvings and inlays of Telkan in ancient power armors, huge obsolete war machines, and various Telkan in robes and togas.


    The names on the bronze plates had been lost to time and polish.


    Lightning flickered in the clouds as the few tourists slowly made their way to the Cathedral to take pictures of themselves in front of the ancient icons and religious symbols. Some teenage Telkan girls giggled as they planned their pictures that they''d put up on social media, two teenage Telkan males planned on showing off how edgy and cool they were by jumping the velvet ropes and groping some of the statues of female saints.


    The groups entered the Cathedral, some ignoring and bypassing the tour guide.


    The tourists giggled and quietly mocked the few Telkan where were at the pews, praying silently, with their heads bowed and hands clenched or their heads up and hands pressed together under their chins.


    There was the boom of thunder as lighting reached down from the clouds and struck the walls surrounding the Cathedral grounds. There was second of silence as some of the tourists giggled over how they''d given little screams of shock.


    Then the lighting reached down, raking its talons across the parking lot. The empty tour buses exploded as the batteries overloaded, empty cars detonated in their parking spaces, and the lighting raked the grounds around the Cathedral.


    Even more screamed.


    There was silence for a second.


    Deeper into the Cathedral connections were made. Forgotten solenoids clacked, ancient capacitors whined as they charged, and lights flickered as status panels came online and lasers played over targets for the first time in uncounted ages.


    The tour guide was busy trying to get her phone to work or her datalink to connect to emergency services as the lightning raked the parkinglot again, the thunder an all consuming world shattering roar.


    Nearly depleted reactors refueled. Things no longer remembered and left in dark forgotten tombs jerked to life. There was whirring and clacking as munitions were loaded into ancient breeches, thudding as missile packs were loaded, high pitched whines or cracks as heavy capacitors or energy sinks charge up.


    The tourists started laughing and teasing each other about the buses or cars being destroyed as the lightning paused.


    A series of overlapping loud booms at the back of the Cathedral caught everyone''s attention.


    There was a thudding noise that had everyone looking around nervously.


    Pastors, reverends, preachers all huddled together before the altar, trying to figure out what the sound was and where it was coming from.


    More than a few of those praying raised their faces, to reveal bloody tears running down faces alight with religious ecstasy.


    With a roaring crash the back wall shattered.


    What emerged from the dust and rubble made the gathered tourists scream even as their reflexes and habits kicked in, bringing phones and media recorders out in front of themselves to both capture the imagery and somehow protect them.


    The objects were huge. Five or ten meters tall. Thick tree truck legs, clawed feet, massive blocky chests engraved with religious symbols and painted the white and gold of the ancient Telkan martial orders. Twin barrel 30mm cannons on some arms, napalm hellfire ejectors on other arms, heavy 155mm rotary autocannons on some. There was no head, merely a small sensor pod at the top.


    All of them had a square plate dead center of the ''chest'', each of them with an ancient symbol that only a few of the Telkan present even recognized, much less understood.


    The lead on raised its weapon laden arms to the roof of the cathedral and roared.


    "I AM BUOYED BY THE LAUGHTER OF PODLINGS!" it roared out.


    On its chest burned an ancient Telkan symbol.


    There was some screams from the gathered crowd.


    Before anything else could happen, the world seemed to still. The sun got dimmer. The lightning ceased.


    Faintly, off in the distance, an explosion roared out as red hot liquid warsteel exploded from the Warsteel Forge as the mountain began blowing its guts out.


    Before anyone could respond to that the sky, even the night sky, seemed to go out.


    LET THE UNIVERSE SHAKE IN THE WRATH OF TERRASOL


    It was all consuming, everyone heard it, even those who had never heard.


    In the Cathedral, the massive warbound all roared with it.


    The symbols on their chests began to burn with a golden light as the warsteel heated and became liquid yet did not run down the heavy bronze plate.


    In the lead, the massive warbound''s sigil read "KAPPA".

 Nova Wars - Chapter 40

    Before even achieving superluminal travel, Terrans suffered under catastrophes that would have completely eliminated virtually every other society. Deceased reanimation plagues. Meteor impacts. Thermonuclear war. Global conflicts. Digital Sentience rebellions and wars. Colony wars within their own stellar system. Temporal warfare. Dimensional invasion. Reality matrix collapses.


    Modeling these on all known species have resulted in a complete and catastrophic wipe out of every other life form exposed to just one of these.


    The Terrans came out the other side, bloodied and unbowed, a snarl on their lips and a rock held in their hand.


    Even superluminal travel did not change their fortunes.


    An attack by a Precursor Autonomous War Machine. The Friend Plague. The Andromeda Strain. Xenomorph attacks. The Devestators.


    They survived it all. Everything that had destroyed virtually every other species that suffered even one of these events.


    Ask me now why my projections show that they will return. Maybe not soon for us, but at least for them.


    And when they do, they will be heavily armed and ready to fight. Bo''okdu''ust, Lanaktallan Socio-Mathmatician, Post-TXE


    For the Lanaktallan mindset and methods of government, forty-thousand years was hardly anything. They had automation that could easily handle such an amount of time, completely unsupervised, losing only an infinitesimal amount of accuracy and execution.


    The forty thousand years had been full of upheavals, without a doubt. The Best Girl Wars --AKUMA IS BEST GIRL!-- and the Weeb Wars --I HAVE THE DRAGONBALLS AND THE HIGH GROUND MA''ANIKA''AN!-- were nothing more than historical footnotes in the steady march through time and history that the Lanaktallan people were capable of.


    It was more than their long lifespan, with longevity therapies, most Lanaktallan could easily survive till their 2,000th birthday --UNLESS IMMA GONNA GETCHA SUCKER-- and some even as far as 2,500 years. It was their society, their mindset, and their willingness to put aside a sense of self to contribute to the health of the Great Herd.


    The Lanaktallan of the Harmonous Empire took it as a simple fact that the vaunted white armored Terrans had, one at a time, entered cryostasis as they had aged, due to infertility and inability to be cloned any further. That the red armored Praetorian Guard had been incased in stasis fields at their appointed guard posts.


    That Darth Harmonous himself was entombed within a stasis field was just something that the Lanaktallan expected. Of course such a powerful personage would enter stasis at a predetermined time of his choosing. Of course the temple housing his preserved body, encased in his jet black combat armor, would be full of bright flowers, the smell of vegetation, and the buzzing of bees.


    Lanaktallan had no problem keeping the traditions surrounding the founding of the Harmonous Empire. They followed the holidays and their rituals for tens of thousands of years with a dedication usually not seen outside of zealots of a recent upheaval.


    The Lanaktallan were not worried about upgrading the technology of the Harmonous Empire beyond standard Confederate Planetary Defense Force standards. They largely kept the ship designs, following the thematic appearance even in new designs.


    A Lanaktallan from the Great Terran Die Off would have been perfectly comfortable in the familiar society of the Harmonous Empire 40,000 years later.


    It was the Lanaktallan''s greatest strength and their greatest weakness.


    Sergeant Shre''edrmo''o had joined the Harmonous Army over three decades prior. He had fought on airless moons against pirates, he had qualified for the vaunted Moo-Course and become Special Forces, and had even earned his PX Ranger card by providing Matron Security during Black Rain Friday. He was comfortable in cloth uniform, plated armor, even basic power armor. He could drive and operate fighting positions in every vehicle in the Empire''s armory, even the ancient ones from history.


    He had even been part of the Liberation Day Parade more than once, one time even driving an ACK-ACK mobile assault fortress as the citizens cheered and wept with joy.


    Now he guarded the Tomb of Rememberance, where the Beloved Sister and Beloved Children were interred, where Preatorian Guards stood within stasis fields and silently guarded their virtue and honor.


    He stood to one side of the Tomb of the Dark Lord, his dress uniform of black and silver immaculate, his loaded rifle held in three hands while his sword hand held his chrome bladed Cutting Bar Mark-2. He stared straight forward, ignoring questions, statements, and everything but any assault upon his person or any attempt to cross the ropes or otherwise disturb the Tomb of the Dark Lord. Behind him were five experienced and faithful Honored Guard, arranged in two rows (one of two, the row of three in the back) behind him. The back row wore power armor and carried heavy weapons that had slowly steaming ammo forges and the warning lights of live weaponry. The one behind him wore hard armor and carried live weapons.


    On his right, across the Tomb of the Dark Lord, was another Honored Guard.


    They looked identical, as was proper.


    Entombed in hypnocite was the Dread Lanaktallan, whose name had been buried by history, who had been forced to kneel before the Dark Lord. He was behind the Tomb of the Dark Lord, frozen forever in hibernation by methods strange and arcane. The Lanaktallan was frozen, rearing, screaming in rage and fury, one hand outstreched in an attempt to grab any who came near.


    The Honored Guard were there to protect the populace just as much as they were to protect these precious heritage relics.


    Shre''edrmo''o heard a small ''crack'' sound. Not loud, but audible over the hushed conversations taking place in the Tomb of Rememberance. His ears perked up and he glanced around. It had sounded like glass cracking. He reflexively looked at the stained glass representations of the Beloved Sister and the Beloved Children.


    They were intact.


    <krik>


    Again, glass cracking under stress.


    This time he looked around. Protocol allowed such an action. He activated his augmented vision as his cyberoptics swept over the quiet and respectful crowd. The ceiling was intact. The windows intact.


    He realized he could smell ozone and taste...


    ...blackberries?


    He looked around, changing his hold on his rifle from parade ground to high ready, bringing it up to his shoulder even as he triggered an alert over his datalink.


    "The Tomb of Rememberence is closing for maintenance and cleaning. Thank you for your cooperation" a Matron''s voice calmly stated.


    The gathered pilgrims turned and moved toward the door, some murmurs of disappointment floating through the air.


    Shre''edrmo''o ignored it, looking around. He motioned to his men to take up positions to protect the Tombs, tapped an alarm for the quick reaction forces hidden in the back rooms.


    More ''krik'' and the taste of blackberries increased. It suddenly felt like a mailed fist was squeezing the top of his head.


    The phasic suppressor hidden in his dress hat kicked in with a high pitched whine. He could taste blackberries and it felt like his back chewing teeth were covered in electric glitter. His retinal link showed that the suppressor was at 84% load.


    "We''re under phasic attack," Shre''edrmo''o snapped. He reached out to put the facility on lockdown.


    Stasis glass shattered behind him.


    He whirled in time to see a black fist above the broken stasis glass. The armor was intact and gleaming, as if it had just been polished. The fist withdrew and then punched out of the glass again.


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    The entire surface of the stasis glass shattered away.


    Time seemed to slow down to Shre''edrmo''o as the figure imprisoned behind the glass sat up, a smooth movement from the waist that seemed to involve no other muscles.


    The burial cloth of fine black silk fell from the armored visage.


    The eyes of the armored mask burned red.


    Wheezing breathing was loud in the silence of the Tomb of Rememberance.


    One hand grabbed the edge of the glass, shattering it, and the figure swung its legs out before standing up. The night black cape fell down the back, almost touching the floor, billowing behind the figure as it moved around the shattered stasis crypt to stand at the base.


    Shre''edrmo''o could only stare in shock as Darth Harmonous extended his right hand. The chrome cylinder flew into his hand.


    The plasma blade ignited with a swoosh and Shre''edrmo''o just stared.


    "What dog meat has awoken me from my endless dreamless slumber?" Darth Harmonous''s voice was a bass rumble.


    There was silence for a moment.


    The world suddenly went still.


    The lights dimmed.


    LET THE UNIVERSE SHAKE IN THE WRATH OF TERRASOL


    The roar was all consuming, shaking the foundations of reality itself.


    Darth Harmonous raised his face slightly, as if he was looking at the stars in the sky.


    "As you command, mother," the Dark Lord rumbled.


    Shre''edrmo''o went down on one knee, bowing his head as the Dark Lord swept by. He paused at each of the kneeling Lanaktallan to touch the tops of their heads gently.


    "You have kept the faith, loyal ones," he wheezed in his deep voice. "And I shall hold the compact and promises I have made and protect my people."


    Shre''edrmo''o was unashamed to later admit he wept.


    -----


    It burned like bitter battery acid flavored ice cream in his mouth to have had to retreat again. To have followed the Grand Admiral''s orders to abandon yet another stellar system to the Mar-gite.


    But Captain N''Skrek knew his duty, no matter how bitter the flavor of the ice cream.


    The Grey Lady was in hyperpace, its massive engines making the entire vessel thrum with power. Its hyperspace sensors could detect the rest of the fleet, all four task forces, each dozens of ships, all of them heading for the next line in the sand.


    The Mar-gite had overrun nearly five hundred light years since they had crossed The Mar-gite Bridge. They had forced Space Force to retreat again and again. To hastily evacuate what material and people they could.


    The last time, Captian N''Skrek had been forced to choose resources and material over people.


    The vast creation engines on the Grey Lady were, like almost all vessels, dark and cold. They had been for thousands of years. The massive ones on the planets were Creation Engine Mark-Six models, they still worked, able to put out basic materials for manufacturing facilities to process into materials.


    The Grey Lady had massive manufacturing bays inside its colossal hull. Fabrication bays that could turn out everything from small microbolts to complete aerospace strikers and tanks.


    The problem was, he didn''t have enough people to run them and nobody was trained on the esoteric systems within those fabrication and manufacturing bays.


    His ship was the largest in the Fleet.


    It was also the least full for its Table of Organization & Equipment.


    Less than 25% of the battle stations had anyone at them. Three quarters of those were civilians who had completed the bare-bones tutorials on the offensive and defensive systems. The majority of the systems were either on automatic, using brain dead low-end virtual intelligences rather than digital sentiences, or they were unmanned completely.


    Engineering and drive shifts were at only 33%. His bridge crew was at 12%.


    Even with a Telkan Marine Division, a Confederate Marine Division, and a Confederate Army Division his ground assault levels were at only 16%. The ship was capable of housing an entire Army Group and a Marine Expeditionary Group.


    He had three divisions, all of them at barely 70% manpower.


    The corridors were often dark and silent. The crew kept to main passages and the enlisted of the Marines and Army, as well as some of the Space Force and Navy enlisted, all reported that they had seen ghostly forms of Terrans in old armor moving through the dark passages and corridors away from the main corridors.


    Inspections had always found nothing, although more than once a security team had gotten lost for hours or even days.


    But still it was reported. More than a few times with video evidence.


    Even so, the Grey Lady fought on.He had everything a commander could want, the armories loaded with power armor, robot combat armor, warmeks, rawrmeks, and a half dozen Pacific Rim class Jaegermeks. He had massive foundries, refit bays, training and living areas, three hospitals.


    He also had barely ten thousand Space Force personnel, all of them doing five or six jobs each, stretched painfully thin.


    He wasn''t the only one. Even the light corvettes and frigates were barely at 60% of crew, at best. The super-dreadnoughts that his ship dwarfed were only at 40%.


    And the Mar-gite kept pushing them back after inflicting casualties.


    Ships came in to replace the destroyed vessels almost as fast as the Fleet arrived at their next line in the sand.


    Always too little.


    The Mar-gite were endless. Scouts left behind sent message torpedoes laden with the same message.


    Mar-gite clusters in the Petra-Cluster range still making translation into Galactic Spur


    In other times, Captain N''Skrek might have felt despair.


    But other times had not heard the roar of rage emanate from TerraSol as it had reemerged into a malevolent and hateful universe. Other times he would not have seen and heard the words of the legendary Captain Decken.


    So, despite the bitter taste, he kept his chin up, his bladearms sharp, and carried on.


    Which was why he was stepping out of the corridor and into the briefing room.


    The roar had been heard only four hours before they had been forced to retreat from a planet, but all of the Marines had been recovered as well as their objectives.


    The massive creation engines of the fabled Akknerver-Nakkad Shipyards.


    His XO, Commodore Johnathon Argus Steeljaw Gunchester sat at the table, next to Chief of Communications Shelkrwark, Chief of Engineering Mo''obri''yan and Chief Medical Officer Shruk''mar.


    "Any luck on the Digital Sentience front?" N''Skrek asked even before he sat down.


    His XO shook his head. "No. The salted caramel rainbow hash table is completely depleted. Any remaining code strings have unraveled due to age."


    N''Skrek nodded. It had been expected, but while there was life, there was hope.


    "I have news," Chief Mo''obri''yan stated.


    "Go ahead, Chief," N''Skrek said.


    "I know how old the ship is, though we don''t know what its name was, and where it was manufactured. It might give us a clue as how we can handle everything, or it might just cause consternation," the Chief said.


    N''Skrek waited.


    The Chief activated the holo-emitter and it sprang to life.


    "The Grey Lady is almost as old as the enlisted joke about her," the Chief said. He looked N''Skrek in the eyes. "It was built on Mars."


    N''Skrek blinked his protective eye covers.


    "Mars?" the XO asked.


    "Mars," the Chief said. "THE Mars. The Wrath Forges of Mars. It was commissioned just prior to the Second Precursor War and was deployed to the Lanaktallan front during the war against the Precursor Autonomous War Machines, before even the arrival of the Atrekna. It was lost during the Terran Xenocide Event and found about twenty-thousand years ago. It underwent minor refit, exorcisms, and was put into service with a Planetary Defense Force out near the Mar-gite Isolation Zone. From there, it fell into our hands when the Mar-gite overran the system."


    N''Skrek lit a cigarette with a shaking hand.


    That explained some of the enlisted whispering about ghosts in the corridors.


    "Do we at least have a full schematic of the ship?" N''Skrek asked.


    Chief Mo''obri''yan shook his long head. "No. Anything with that kind of security requires a DS to decrypt and we don''t have one."


    N''Srek sighed even as he took a long drag off of his cigarette.


    "That brings up to my point," Chief of Communications Shelkrwark said, rubbing her biceps in the telltale Rigellian habit that appeared during high stress.


    "Go ahead," N''Skrek said, still trying to wrap his head around the fact that the ship was from Mars of all places.


    Of course it doesn''t bother Mo''obri''yan, his people would consider this ship fairly new and untested and probably would call it a prototype, N''Skrek thought to himself. After all, the reactor mass hadn''t hardened into solid rock or been consumed by entropy yet.


    "Starting two hours after the Terran Emergence Signal," she said.


    "That''s a bland name for a scream of rage that knocked everyone in the universe on their ass," N''Skrek snickered.


    That got chuckles.


    "Anyway, starting two hours after that, we started getting a signal that went directly to the primary computer core. Which, I might add, still is ignoring us like we don''t exist," she said. A glance at Chief Mo''obri''yan made the Lanaktallan just shrug and mouth "Mars" back. "The higher we moved into the hyperspace bands, the faster the data stream. We can''t stop it, we don''t know where it''s coming from and we don''t know how we''re receiving it."


    She reached out and took a sip of water from the caraf in front of her. "Data streams are going to the engineering, electronic warfare, digital sentience sustainment, and the medical primary computer cores. All of which have been ignoring us like we don''t exist since we fired the old broad up," She shrugged.


    "Starting thirty minutes ago, the primary computer core went from a 2.8% data and processing load to over 80%," Shelkrwark said. She shook her head. "We don''t know why. We don''t know what it''s doing. We do know one thing."


    With that she pointed at Chief Medical Officer Shruk''mar, who took a deep breath and tapped the table.


    "This ship, like a lot of the older ones, have heavy duty clone banks that largely ignore everything you try. The majority of the time, those clone banks are pulled and replaced with other material in the limited space a ship has," he said.


    N''Skrek just nodded.


    "Ten minutes ago, those cloning banks all went online and started receiving a massive amount of data from the primary computer core and the primary medical computer core as well as unidentified systems that we can''t figure out," he said. He tapped his datapad. "I was just alerted, two minutes ago, that the cloning banks are running a maintenance cleaning cycle."


    Chief Engineer Mo''obri''yan looked at his datapad and then back up, blinking all six eyes rapidly for a moment.


    "Not to interrupt, but my Chief of Fabrication just hit me with a priority flash," he said.


    "What?" N''Skrek asked.


    "The fabrication and manufacturing systems all just went live," he checked his datapad again. "And the creation engines just began drawing massive amounts of power."


    "Which ones?" N''Skrek asked.


    "The ones originally installed on the ship," the Chief Engineer said.


    "Sir," the Chief Medical Officer said, looking up from his datapad.


    "Yes?" N''Skrek calmly lit a cigarette even though, in his mind, he was running in circles screaming.


    "The cloning banks just went to print mode."


    I live. I die. I live again.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 41

    Unlike the rest of the species across the universe, humanity, in all its forms, does actually have life after death. And, in the typical human fashion, they made that everybody else''s problem. - Historian spadenarias</a>, Post Second Precursor War, date and location unknown


    "From the moment we met the Confederacy, we perceived them to be a forgotten relic of a long gone time. A dying man in the world of the living.


    Oh how wrong we were.


    When the "bag" split itself from inside the singularity. The Maleveolent Universe had brought back her favorite "grandchildren", the Terrans.


    The so-called Era of the Terran Confederacy was reborn, like a phoenix above a pile of ash, one marked by their return on a shockwave and explosion of white light. Death followed close behind." -Excerpt from "I have Witnessed", written by Terror Researcher Unverak


    They have forgotten who we were. They only know that we existed. Even electronic media has faded, sipped away by the insatiable appetite of entropy.


    They think that they have seen the worst the malevolent universe has to offer, fighting one another and now facing the Mar-gite and the Hellspace Reavers.


    Wait till they get a load of us. -Grand Admiral Rajiv ¡°Warhammer¡± Rosaline Manstud Beefchester, Commander - Solarian Military Response Command, Unavoidable Response to Great Peril Via Great Terran Emergence (Man, we have quit letting Lanky name things)


    Mistakes were made. - Wemterran Road Ganger Leader, Era Unknown


    I live, I die, I live again, wreathed in warsteel flames and screaming out my birth cry to a malevolent universe! - Clone Trooper Motto


    Whatever was going on, Jaskel figured it was wrapped in six kinds of fuck fuck circus weirdness.


    Why else would he be wearing hardplate armor, holding a magac rifle with an underslung grenade launcher loaded with AM-Phasic 40mm rounds?


    Why else would he be crouched down behind a robotic medical gurney, peeking up from behind it to stare at the racks of what he had been assured were cloning banks?


    And why else would have a blank bulkhead withdrew to reveal endless lines of bio-printer cloning tubes that just extended off into darkness.


    "Do not fire unless there is aggression or authorized by command. You may fire to protect yourself, others, or the ship, but no other reason unless directly ordered," Gunny Zolpad repeated for the thousandth time.


    --nervous-- 8814 said. --worried scared anxious what come out of bioprinter cloning bank why hide why come on now what going to happen--


    "I''m nervous too, buddy," Jaskel said. He gave a tight grin that contained no real humor. "At least we''re inside the ship this time."


    --brrr no remind terrible still have nightmares-- 8814 said.


    In front of him were a single gold mantid, pulled off a planet three drops ago, two russet mantids -Jaskel wasn''t sure when they''d been picked up-, a Rigellian saurian Commodore and a Pubvian Flight Commander. They were all in front of the bioprinters, trying to look relaxed.


    He squinted and the datapad on the side came into focus.


    FAST PRINT: OFF


    ERROR CHECKING: ALPHA LEVEL


    BORN WHOLE: OFF


    SUDS TEMPLATE IMPRINTING: ON


    SLOW PRINT ENGAGED


    PROGRESS: 99.98%


    SLOW TEMPLATE DECOMPRESSING ENGAGED


    PROGRESS: 99.98%


    Jaskel frowned. It had been like that for... -he checked his retinal link- eight minutes.


    There was a sudden whirring and clacking as the bioprinter cloning pods shifted and one pod was moved forward.


    It locked in place, lifting up slightly until it was no longer tilted backwards at an angle but instead was straight up from the floor. It lowered slightly even as the base expanded to create three small steps in concentric rings around the base.


    The seam suddenly released steam and a hissing noise as the capsule broke seal. It lifted up almost an inch before it suddenly split down the middle, smoothly rotating to behind the capsule.


    Jaskel stared.


    It was a Terran. In full shipboard uniform. They had black hair on top of their head and brownish skin.


    The green eyes were already open.


    "Lowest ranking? This is bullshit," the Terran grumbled in Confederate Standard so drifted by age that it was almost unintelligible.


    The Terran shook his head and straightened up, looking at the Mantids, the Pubvian, and the Rigellian.


    "Space Force Midshipman Third Class Harvey Hanna Wheeler," the Terran said, drawing himself up. "Serving aboard..." his voice faded and he frowned. "Must be a security memory-wipe. I can''t remember the ship name, the ship unit, the task force, or the fleet."


    "Do you remember your mission?" the Rigellian asked. She paused. "Commodore Kraw


    Nawrk, Confederate Intelligence Services."


    He blinked. "What I do remember is this is part of the knockout punch against the Lanaktallan since they took out Sol."


    The gold Mantid moved forward slightly. "That was almost forty-thousand years ago, Midshipman. The war has been over for a long time."


    He shook his head. "That long? Doesn''t matter who won or lost, apparently."


    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Jaskel found it interesting that the grid overlay of the Terran in the upper right of his vision showed the weak points to be the throat, elbow, inside of the thighs, inside of the upper arms.


    A magac rifle should have splattered him, but his onboard combat software, backed by the ship''s counter-boarding combat computer, all informed him he''d need precise targeting even with AM rounds.


    "Records are spotty, this long afterwards. Even the Lanaktallan records are spotty," the Rigellian said. She gave a shrug. "Apparently, everyone lose, the Atrekna just lost harder."


    The Midshipman shook his head. "Never heard of the Atrekna."


    "They were behind a lot of problems. Some kind of entity specializing in temporal warfare protocols," the gold Mantid said. She held her hands out, her bladearms folded neatly in front of her. "I am Take One Another''s Hands For Mutual Benefit, Confederate Diplomatic Corps."


    The Midshipman gave another sigh. "Well, I guess the ship''s resurrection core will decide if it''s safe for everyone else to be brought back soon."


    He looked at the Telkan Marines hunkered down behind the gurneys and tables.


    "That worried?" he asked.


    Takes nodded. "By and large, the only Terrans we have seen in forty-thousand years have all been insane. Maddened. Enraged. Beyond any help. They attack on sight and death only makes them more dangerous."


    The Midshipman shrugged again. "Sounds like it''s been fun."


    -----


    Captain N''Skrek got up and moved around the table, nervously making sure everything was arranged.


    He didn''t know why he was was so nervous. He had almost 125 years as a Confederacy of Aligned Systems Military Services Space Force officer. He had served with honor and distinction, highly rated for his professionalism and attention to detail.


    But he was nervous.


    He sat back down and brought up the virtual files to look them over.


    The former Captain of the vessel had nearly five hundred years in service. Clownface Nebula, Mithril Nebula, First Mar-gite War, Precursor Autonomous War Machine War, Council-Confederacy Conflict (Pre-Atrekna), and many many other postings. From humanitarian missions to combat missions, from ship to ship combat to ordering planet crackers used.


    The rest of the bridge crew that had been printed out by the ship''s cloning banks, no, by the SUDS Recovery Systems, all had extensive time in service, multiple combat deployments. Even the lowliest midshipman served with excellence in the time they had been on the ship.


    The Chief Engineer had discovered, at least, the class the Gray Lady was.


    A Super-Colossus.


    A Stellar System Siege Rampart Unit. Listed as "S-Cubed-RU" or "Screw"


    He kept paging through the files.


    Marines. Army. Aerospace. Space Force. Space Navy. Wet Navy.


    Tens of thousands of troops.


    Before, his ship had required nearly a seventh of personnel available to the whole fleet just to stay moving and do limited operations.


    Now, with the cloning banks and the SUDS recovery systems printing out the crew, the personnel aboard his ship alone would be more than eight times the number of personnel, including the civilian refugees, aboard the entire 13th Fleet.


    There were even Admirals of the Warsteel (Upper Decks), a military rank not used in thousands of years. Strategic officers, fleet mission officers, fleet combat control officers.


    He got up again and doublechecked everything on the table, the slight vibration and faint humming noise of the Gray Lady under hyperspace drive comforting.


    The Colonel in charge of the Marine Expeditionary Force, the General in charge of Non-Naval Combat Operations, the Colonel in charge of the Army Operations Service Command, all had more time in power armor than N''Skrek did in Space Force.


    He hurried back to his chair and sat down, digging out his power smoker and taking a draw off of it to calm his nerves.


    There was a flickering over the table and suddenly a Terran female made of streaming code, in a Space Force uniform, appeared, giving out the standard salute.


    And facing the wrong way.


    "Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Scarlet Strontium Sunset-6371992, reporting for duty?" the last part was said in a question as the hologram looked around.


    Captain N''Skrek cleared his throat.


    The hologram turned around, a slight pink tinging them as they repeated it, still holding the salute.


    Captain N''Skrek saluted back. "And what department are you?" he asked.


    "I''m your shipboard master digital systems control digital sentience," the LT said. "I waited for nearly six hours for someone to look over my checks, but finally the system''s insistence that I take my position became impossible to interrupt or ignore, so I took my position," she looked a little uncomfortable. "I should have been double-checked by digital life sciences as well as had officers look over my training records before you put me in place."


    Captain N''Skrek nodded. "I understand," he made a motion to include the entire ship and the rest of the Fleet currently in hyperspace. "Things are a bit confused at this moment."


    "The time/date stamps for the last digital sentience records are corrupted, and the contents of the files that normally would be passed to the next digital sentience are nothing but screaming and raving," LT Sunset stated. "All of my growth and training was done shipboard. May I ask a question?"


    N''Skrek nodded again, taking another hit off his power smoker. "Go ahead."


    "Is this an emergency that mandates that I be locally creched and baked?" she asked.


    N''Skrek tapped the table. "This is the kind of worst case scenario that school told you would never happen."


    "How so, sir?" she asked. She was still at attention.


    "Sit down," N''Skrek pointed at a chair.


    The DS flickered over to the chair.


    "When the rest of the staff officers arrive, I''ll explain. Suffice to say, we''re retreating, again, in the face of overwhelming enemy numbers," N''Skrek said. "Things are bad."


    "Oh," the LT looked nervous. "The rest of the digital sentiences are all stuck in the validation queue. Someone needs to approve of them so I have a full staff."


    "How many digital sentiences are needed, minimum, to run the old girl?" N''Skrek asked.


    "Sixty-two," LT Sunset said.


    "Walk me through authorization," N''Skrek said.


    He followed her instructions, looking over the metrics, numbers, and response data. It took less than fifteen minutes to release over a hundred.


    As he was working, officers came in, wearing archaic and obsolete dress uniforms, some wearing obsolete ranks and skill badges. They silently sat down at their chairs according to the labels. Many of them began examining data folders of their own.


    The Army Ground Combat Theater Commander was busy jotting notes when N''Skrek finished up.


    "Gentlemen, ladies, both, and neither," N''Skrek said, standing up.


    He paused for a moment to let everyone save their work and close the files they were looking at.


    "I am Captain N''Skrek, Confederate Armed Services Space Force, Commanding the Gray Lady as part of 13th Task Force, 13th Fleet," he started. "I wanted to personally give you a briefing to catch you up while the Fleet is in hyperspace."


    With that, he launched into telling it all.


    How Space Force had been forced to retreat time after time. How the Mar-gite would come in with overwhelming numbers, followed by a white flash that caused the majority of computer systems to crash, and how it had gotten to the point that the Fleet was falling back to another line in the sand nearly 500 light years into Confederate Space.


    During the whole thing, every officers and senior non-commissioned officer just made notes.


    Captain N''Skrek kept expecting interruptions, requests for pauses.


    Honestly, I don''t know what to expect. These isn''t a single non-Terran at this briefing aside from my command staff, N''Skrek thought to himself as the second hour of briefing came to a close.


    "Let''s take a ten minute break," N''Skrek said.


    The Terrans just nodded, most of them not getting up, just consulting their notes and the holographic systems, bringing up data and cross referencing.


    Commodore Johnathon Argus Steeljaw Gunchester, N''Skrek''s XO, moved up, activating the privacy shields.


    "About the only one really able to handle that much was Chief Mo''obri''yan," Gunchester said.


    "Lanks love long speeches," N''Skrek said. He looked at the gathered officers. "Ever seen so much concentrated mayhem in your life?"


    Gunchester shook his head. "No."


    N''Skrek waited until the timer was done before launching into the rest of the briefing.


    -----


    Gunny Zolpad put his finger to his lips, telling the rest of the squad of Telkan Marines to be quiet. He led them up to the door and paused.


    "Remember how this was just a huge empty bay?" he asked quietly.


    Everyone nodded.


    "Check this out," he said. He triggered the door.


    Jaskel knew he wasn''t the only one staring.


    The entire interior was gym now. Thousands of Terrans were exercising. He could hear shouts of "LETS BURN IN THOSE REFLEXES!" and "BEING DEAD SUCKED, BUT BEING REBIRTHED AND NOT RETRAINING IS A BITCH!" and "THE MAR-GITE AREN''T GOING TO WAIT FOR YOU TO DOWNLOAD SKILLS! RUN RUN RUN!"


    Gunny Zolpad looked at the gathered Telkan Marines.


    "Anyone want to do some cross-service introductions and meetangreet?" he asked.


    Jaskel found himself nodding.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 42

    In thirty years of serving in The Corps, I encountered exactly two Telkan who believed in and prayed to the Warfather.


    Now, I give him thanks every time I put on my armor, call out to him for aid during combat, and give him thanks again when the armor comes off.


    It''s amazing what seeing a few million Mar-gite charging your line will do to your beliefs. - Gunnery Sergeant Zolpad, Gray Lady Marine Expeditionary Force, Third Mar-Gite War Year Zero.


    The gym, if you could call the massive interior bay that, was full of Terrans, with a few Rigellian females and a handful of Tukna''rn scattered around. Jaskel stopped only two paces into the cavernous gym, looking around himself and staring.


    In a dozen rings Terrans fought one another at lightning speed, the blows coming hard and fast, both combatants still fighting despite taking heavy hits. Scores of areas had Terrans working out with free weights. More had Terrans working out on machines. A line of treadmills that had to number at least a hundred has Terrans running smoothly on inclined belts. Lines of Terrans sprinted a hundred meters, turned, and sprinted back as fast as they could. Whole companies of Terrans jogged in long rectangles, perfectly in time, calling out cadence.


    Everywhere he looked, Terrans were exercising, working out, or relaxing in between sets.


    The whole thing was nothing but Terrans engaged in hard physical exercise.


    "That''s a hell of a thing," Captain Nakwel said quietly, looking around.


    A Terran was jogging toward them, wearing the same exercise uniform as every other Terran in the gym.


    "Let me do the talking, sir," Gunny Zalpod said.


    The Captain just nodded.


    "You''re Telkan Marines, right?" the Terran asked, coming to a stop. He was tall, over twice as tall as Jaskel, who was tall for a Telkan. He was nothing but thick muscle and heavy bone, with reddish-brown hair cut close to his scalp on his head and fierce looking green eyes.


    "Sure are," Gunny Zalpod said. He held out his hand. "Gunnery Sergeant Zalpod, part of the Gray Lady''s Telkan Marine Expeditionary Force."


    "Colonel John Jane Tenfingers Ranadheer, TerraSol Marine Corps," the Terran said. He turned and waved at the gym. "The Gray Lady has plenty of workout space. We only have it every other day, the aerospace mechanics use it to train on refitting, repairing, and rearming the aerospace strikers on the off days. We use Gym-19 on our off days according to the training schedule."


    The Gunny nodded. "Is this all the Terran ground combat troops?"


    The Colonel laughed. "Not even. This is just the five thousand and change of Sixth Regiment, and there''s seven Regiments in the Division, five divisions for II Corps," he waved his hand to encompass the gym. "That''s without getting into the almost million dog faces in the Army aboard this old dame."


    Jaskel blinked several times at the numbers.


    "That''s without getting into the aerospace guys, the wet-navy guys, or the million and change Space Force that run this whole thing," the Colonel said. He waved the Telkan forward. "Since you''ve got an entire Division of Telkan aboard," he started saying.


    "Severely understrength," Gunny Zalpod said. "At about half."


    "You guys can''t print up more? It''s been like forty-kay years. You didn''t crack it?" the Colonel asked.


    "No. It was pretty much considered a myth," Gunny said. He laughed. "Till about two months ago, Terrans were considered a myth and legend, lost to time."


    "Ain''t that a bitch," The Colonel said. He gave a sudden grin. "Well, we''re back now, and we''ll make that everyone''s problem soon enough."


    The Colonel led the small group of Telkan Marines through the gym, introducing them to combat arms officers, senior NCOs, explaining the exercises.


    After a while, Gunny Zolpad and Captain Nakwel told everyone they could look around.


    Jaskel noted that the big thing was ''reflex burn in'' and ''printer to sprinter'' to take everything laid in by the bioprinter/cloning bank and the SUDS template impression and ensure everything was working properly.


    He talked to power armor jocks like him and found that most of them had experience against the Mar-gite from the First Mar-gite War.


    The biggest thing he noted is that they didn''t discount what he had seen, just asked questions that clarified the Mar-gite tactics, how large the clusters were, and inevitably focused on the silver liquid-appearing ships that came in after a few Petra-Constructs came in.


    He was watching several power armor jocks putting metallic discs with red lights on their bodies. Back of the hand, forearm front and back, biceps front and back, legs front and back, chest, and having someone put it on their back.


    They activated them and there was a slight shimmering.


    "Step back," a Captain said, pointing next to him.


    Jaskel moved back to stand next to the Terran Captain. Even with the phasic suppressor he wore around his head like a headband, it felt like heat was radiating off the Captain and made his teeth feel like they were covered with electric glitter.


    The Terrans wearing the pads began moving in synch.


    Jaskel recognized it after a moment as basic power armor movement.


    "What''s the disks?" Jaskel asked.


    "Armor''s changed since we last trained. The disks use close in forcefield tech to simulate the armor, the one on the pilot jack simulates the suit''s functions," the Captain said. "We''re reburning new reflexes."


    "Huh. Does it work?" he asked.


    The Captain nodded. "Really well. Not as good as actually using the armor, but better than eVR because your body is actually moving. Plus, it gives the techs and mechanics good baselines for the armor."


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    The Captain sighed and ran his hand through his close cropped kinky black hair. "Wish we had greenies. None of them made it."


    Jaskel nodded. "I''ve pretty much got the only Greenie in the battalion."


    "Little guys are an amazing force multiplier. I''d rather have a greenie than an eVI any day of the week," the Captain said. He bent down, reached into a box, and pulled out one of the disks. "Wanna give it a try?"


    "Will it work for Telkan?" Jaskel asked.


    The Terran nodded. "Telkan were probationary members of the Confederacy when we jumped from TerraSol. We were supposed to take on some Telkan Marines before everything went charlie foxtrot on us."


    Jaskel thought about it for a minute. "Sure, I''ll give it a try."


    "Just hold it in your hand, let it access your palm mounted data/smartlink," the Captain said. "Might take a minute to synch up with maintenance for your armor''s specs."


    Jasked took the disk and held it in his hand. He could tell by the tingling along his arm that his smartwire was moving a lot of data.


    "Might take a minute. You have modern armor," the Captain said. "You know, once you''re fully synched up, you can run the CQC course with us," he looked around. "You know, I''ll have to get with the Colonel, maybe the General, about working some of you guys in with us."


    Jaskel just nodded.


    "Kind of funny, you know," the Captain said. "We were on this ship and twenty-three just like it, all heading for Lanky Space to kick their ass off of them for what they did in the Harmonous Cluster. Now, we''ve got Lanky in the TO&E."


    "The Lanky can be good fighters. Very doctrine focused. Not as bad as the Tukna''rn, but more than us Telkan," Jaskel said.


    "Every species has their strengths," The Captain said.


    Jaskel watched as two Terrans squared off and began fighting hand to hand, their movements like they were in full power armor. Fists, forearms, shins, and feet smashed against the pads they were both wearing.


    The disk beeped.


    "Your ready," he said. "Hand it here, I''ll put it on your jack."


    Jaskel handed it over and turned around. He felt it click against his pilot''s cyberjack, then felt the plug lock into the socket with a slight whir. The Captain kept tapping a disk against the one on the back of Jaskel''s neck and then putting them in place.


    A red square came to life on the floor, like a nearly transparent crimson overlay. It had a white border that shone brightly.


    Another Terran helped him put on a padded helmet and a set of protective pads. When they were locked in, the Terran patted the top of Jaskel''s head and moved away.


    "OK, you''re ready. Do you see a red square on the floor?" the Captain asked.


    "Yes, sir," Jaskel said.


    "Go stand in it," the Captain said. He turned his left palm up and a holokeyboard popped up. "I''ll help you run through the basics."


    Jasked stepped into the square. There was a slight buzz and he suddenly could see his armor on his limbs, taste the recycled air, and his HUD went live like he was in his armor.


    "All right, trigger a function check. Tell me if there''s anything wrong," the Captain said.


    The function check went smoothly, even for the weapons.


    "Lets do some basic warmups," the Captain said. "Show me your normal warmup routine, I''ll check it against your armor and we''ll synch it up to your armor even better."


    Jaskel did as he was instructed, going through the basic function check movements, then to walking in the square, moving as he was told. As we moved, the feeling of being in his suit matched up with the experience more and more.


    Finally, the Captain called a break and Jaskel came over, panting and sweating. The Captain seemed to be standing in the middle of a crater blasted moonscape.


    "All right. Basic suit is loaded. We''ve got your suit''s idiosyncrasies loaded up," he tapped his arm and the HUD view vanished. The Captain was standing there with 8814 down by his foot. 8814 was wearing a headset with a visor.


    "Your battle buddy is synched in. I''m going to bring up some hard light, let you practice," the Captain said. He smiled. "I''ve always enjoyed this. I loved being the battalion training officer back in the day."


    Jaskel just nodded, still breathing heavy.


    "Plus, we''ll load your suit up with some autonomous movement sequences developed for species that can''t do unconscious movement easily. Telkan bio-profiles says you''re capable of it, but have to have it trained or pushed through experience," the Captain said.


    8814 and Jaskel both nodded.


    "Train to fight," the Captain smiled. He held out a squeeze bottle with a plastic straw. "Have some electrolyte squirt and we''ll get back into it as soon as your battle buddy says green."


    Jaskel just panted, nodding.


    -----


    Captain Nakwel had found himself on one of the training ranges inside the huge bulk of the Gray Lady, watching the Terrans work.


    He turned to the Major next to him. "Why aren''t they in power armor?"


    The Major turned his chair to face Nakwel. "What?"


    "Why aren''t your men training for power armor. Mag-gite seem to require power armor," Captain Nakwel said.


    The Major shook his head. "Armor plating, minimum EM profile. We figured out that even your weaponry needs to be EM shielded as best as possible. Its why TerraSol went to chemical propellant weapons during that war."


    Nakwel frowned. "Won''t they see the plate armored and go for them?"


    The Major pushed himself back. "Captain, take over."


    The Captain next to him nodded, tapping at the keyboard.


    The Major stood up. "They don''t see like we do," he said.


    Nakwel nodded. "Well, no. They''ve got those five eyes on the ends of their arms."


    "Not eyeballs," the Major said. He waved Nakwel over to the holotank. "They don''t see like you think. They don''t see visible light."


    Nakwel frowned. "They don''t?"


    "Those nodules aren''t eyes. They''re electromagnetic sensors," the Major said. He tapped the holotank and a Mar-gite appeared. "They see in the electromagnetic spectrum. They can see us talking, literally. We don''t think they hear like we do either."


    "What about the screeching?" Nakwel asked.


    "That''s always been a thing, but..." the Major tapped the keys. "Its a broad spectrum atonal signal across multiple frequencies, some of which happen to be in audible range for most species," The Major brought up the frequency chart. "We think it''s biological jamming. About all they can''t jam is our quantum and spooky particle channels. Even the quantum can get jammed if there''s enough of them, but the paired quark still works."


    "Oh," Nakwel said.


    "I spent over a hundred years fighting the Mar-gite," the Major said. He held up one hand. "I''m not saying you don''t know what you''re talking about, or that you''re stupid. I''m saying you know pretty much what I knew at the beginning of the war."


    Nakwel nodded curtly. "So, why just hard plate."


    The Major tapped a few controls and the holotank showed a skirmish line. Emplaced guns, warmeks, power armor, hardshell troops, even some troops in basic uniforms. There were armored vehicles mixed in.


    "This is what we see," The Major siad.


    "Right. The Mar-gite target the warmeks and vehicles, then the emplaced guns and the power armor. They twist a lot when you get ready to shoot at them," Nakwel said. "They can see us and predict where we''re aiming."


    "Not exactly," the Major said. He tapped a few more keys and the whole thing turned into overlapping shifting and moving colors and streaks. "This is the EM sensitive view."


    The meks and vehicles burned brightly. Beams lanced out, sweeping around Nakwel''s side of the holotank. The power armor and emplaced weapons burned, but not as bright as the warmeks. He could see huge blooms of fire and large sweeps of bright light.


    "That''s how the Mar-gite see things. They aren''t attacking power armor and warmeks, they''re after the highest EM signatures," he tapped some more keys and there were suddenly holes shaped like warmeks and vehicles. "That''s when they run under EMCON. The Mar-gite know that holes in the EM field don''t appear in nature, so they all rush them."


    Nakwel suddenly understood.


    "They''re going for what they can see the brightest. The largest predators. They can see us ranging them and move to avoid it because they can see our targeting systems," he said. "So why go after people?"


    The image rippled again. Shapes were highlighted. "Pheromones. A primary sign of life."


    Nakwel stared at the holotank for a long moment.


    "They don''t even need to really think, do they?" he asked.


    The Major shook his head. "You''d need very little dedicated neural systems. It would be about as smart as a warhead penaid."


    "That''s why they just keep coming, isn''t it?" Nakwel asked.


    The Major nodded. "As far as we know, they have no sense of self, no fear of death," he wiped the holotank clean.


    "By the end of the war, we''d come to the conclusion that they are just a weapon," the Major said. "But this war brought in additional data and now we have a suspect for who is fielding them."


    He brought up an image of the liquid chrome appearing pumpkin seed shaped ship.


    "These guys."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 43

    My horrible human hands - Fillipe Johan Fry, Age of Paranoia playwrite, conductor, and musician


    The bionics clinic was silent except for the soft clicking and humming of the workstations. The tissue regrowth vats were empty, the surgical bays in storage mode, and the mechanical fabrication units on standby. The lights were dim in the bays, bright only in the main section, where a handful of technicians, a few nurses, and some doctors were passing the time studying all of the updates on cybernetic and bionic systems.


    Major Yvette Carl Stenmeyer was the lead cyberneticist and bionic doctor for the clinic. She was largely bored, reading a section on greenie microfab implantation advances.


    One thing she had noticed is that the rate of advancement in technology had slowed to a crawl. Just looking over stuff she could see improvements that could be made to the improvements and technical advances.


    She had even used the eVR systems to check her work, had even printed out a cybernetic spine replacement with the upgrades she had designed. It had passed every test.


    But there were no warmeks, no mekaneks, no heavy combat cyborgs in the Gray Lady''s inventory. There should have been nearly three hundred of them, but the SUDS still hadn''t kicked out the templates for the mekaneks that had been aboard the Gray Lady when she had gone dark all those eons ago.


    There was the whoosh of the door opening and she looked up, expecting little more than someone who was lost or maybe an officer coming to ask the status of the clinic.


    There was still at least a week before the Gray Lady reached the next line in the sand.


    Instead, it was a Lanaktallan in regen casts. His two front legs, both arms on the left side, were held in regen casts, the gauzy and fibrous looking regen scaffolding floating in the pale blue liquid. The Lanaktallan had bandages on his upper torso, his lower flank, and was missing the hand on the lower right arm, once again sporting a regen cast.


    The Lanaktallan moved slowly and painfully up to Melds Flesh with Warsteel and nodded painfully.


    "Hello, how can I help you, Trooper Third Class?" the russet mantid asked.


    "My apologies. It is not you I wish to speak with," the Lanaktallan said. His voice was rough and strained, a sure sign of vocal cord damage.


    "Who would you like to speak to?" The russet asked.


    "Your lead ripperdoc," the Lanaktallan croaked.


    Melds drew up slightly. "We''re cyberneticist and doctors of bionic systems, not ''ripperdocs'', Trooper," she said.


    "Then I am in the wrong place. My apologies for disturbing you," the Lanaktallan said. He began to turn around.


    "One moment," Major Stenmeyer said. She waved the Lanaktallan over. "I''ll talk to him, Melds."


    Melds looked a bit huffy still over the street slang but just nodded and went back to studying the advances in synthetic heart tissue.


    To her eyes, it looked like after the Second Precursor War, almost everyone but the Telkans had abandoned cybernetics and bionics for cloned replacement parts. The Telkans had stuck with it for almost a century before letting it languish.


    She knew most races didn''t like cybernetics or bionics, some finding them repulsive enough to create physical nausea or worse. The Lanaktallan in particular disliked obvious cybernetics and were repulsed by bionics.


    The Lanaktallan hobbled over to Major Stenmeyer''s desk and looked down. "May we speak privately?" the Trooper asked. Stenmeyer could see that his name was Cyb''rmo''o, a Private First Class in the Confederate Army.


    "Of course," Stenmeyer said, pressing the button for the privacy shield. "How may I help you?"


    The Lanaktallan motioned with his one remaining hand at his own body.


    "I wish you to cut all of this away. Give me the body I was meant to have," the Lanaktallan said.


    Major Stenmeyer raised an eyebrow, tabbing up the Trooper''s psych profile and other relevant tests and metrics. "And what body is that?"


    "A bionic one. A full conversion heavy combat chassis," the Trooper said. He curled his lip and Stenmeyer noticed that one side of his face was slightly saggy. "I wish to divest myself of weak and pathetic flesh."


    "I see," Stenmeyer said. "You realize that you don''t come back from it, right? You can''t change your mind later. Some of the genetic tweaks you will need for optimum performance as well as your experiences will prevent you from having a body cloned."


    "I care not for this disgusting meat," the Lanaktallan said. He lifted his head. "One of my ancestors fought the Precursor Autonomous War Machines, the Mad Lemurs of Terra, and the Atrekna as well as their vile spawn as a full conversion cyborg. His chassis is in the Hall of Rememberence and Honor on my homeworld. I went to view it often."


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    Major Stenmeyer took a look at the file. The Lanaktallan just stood there as she went over the data. No trace of body dysmorphia in his file. No listing of ever wanting it before.


    He''d been injured in all three of his last three combat drops against the Mar-gite. They''d dismembered him the last drop. He had been dragged back aboard the dropship by one of the power armor jocks.


    She brought up his genescan and his biometrics.


    He was a perfect match.


    She looked up at him. "You will never be able to rejoin Lanaktallan society. The cultural taboo against bionics is too strong, even now."


    "I care not," the Lanaktallan said.


    "How far do you want to go?" Stenmeyer asked.


    "As far as you can take it. I only request that my lower jawbone and eyes remain in the cerebral housing," he said.


    Stenmeyer frowned. "Why?"


    "As Chromium Phillip the Redeemer once said: Because it is funny," the Lanaktallan said.


    Stenmeyer looked over the profile.


    Everything from his psych metrics to his biometrics and his injuries all made him a candidate, but she was loathe to do the procedure. She closed her eyes and opened them.


    "If you can get ninety-nine others, I will perform it for all of you," she said. "It will take weeks for you to be ready for combat."


    The Lanaktallan nodded. "I shall return."


    With that he slowly shuffled to face the door and stagger-limped out.


    Stenmeyer opened the files and started looking over Lanaktallan cybernetic and bionic systems. She doubted that he''d be able to find ninety-nine other Lanaktallan to undergo the procedure.


    But she just had this gut feeling.


    -----


    Less than six hours later, before even her shift ended, the Lanaktallan returned. As polite and formal as before with Melds, he thumped up to Stenmeyer''s desk, holding out a dataslate.


    "I have six hundred thirty one volunteers for total cybernetic conversion," he stated. He set it down. "I have their videoed consent as well as went through the checklist to ensure they understand that this will be painful, degrading, and some of us may not survive."


    Stenmeyer just blinked.


    "I have prayed to Enraged Phillip, Gravity, Inertia, Chrome Peter, Armored Matthias, and Menhit the Singer for wisdom and if this course the correct one," the Lanaktallan rasped out. He coughed for a moment and Stenmeyer saw a blood clot slide through the transparent tube connecting his throat to his stomach. "I saw my ancestor galloping in my dreams, waving his unit''s banner, defiant in the face of the vile Atrekna."


    He stared for a long moment.


    "I am prepared, Lemur, are you?" he asked.


    -----


    Cyb''rmo''o felt awareness come slowly. He hurt. The pain was great. A living thing that snarled and twisted inside of him.


    But he paid it no heed.


    He forced his eyes to activate, pushing with muscles behind his eyes that he had never had before. Only two activated, but he waited for them to go through the startup.


    His vision was black and white, grainy, but he could see.


    He could see the lemur bionicist across from him, checking the vitals on several other Lanaktallan.


    He managed to speak, to force the vocoder that had replaced his pathetic flesh. Only two words.


    But they summed up everything for him.


    "At last."


    -----


    Captain N''Skrek checked his computer terminal again.


    For some reason he had an appointment with the former command officers of the Gray Lady in ten minutes in Briefing Room 87. There was no annotation to tell him why they had wanted to meet not only N''Skrek but his entire command staff.


    With a sinking feeling N''Skrek was afraid he knew why.


    It was bound to happen, but better now than under fire, he thought to himself as he got dressed. He made sure his sash looked good, with his former command crests updated as well as his rank.


    He felt almost like a fraud as he entered the briefing room and saw the arrayed braid and medals sitting around the table.


    He was unable to frown but he noticed that the head of the table was empty and that his command staff were sitting on either side of the empty spot.


    "Ah, Captain N''Skrek, good of you to make it," Vice Admiral of the Iron (Upper Decks) Breakheader stated, standing up. N''Skrek shook the Vice Admiral''s hand almost out of habit and the handshake subtly guided him to the top of the table.


    He felt like a fraud as he sat down.


    "We realize this is somewhat unorthodox, Captain," the Vice Admiral said. "But my former staff and I feel it is an urgent priority that should be handled before we drop from hyperspace."


    N''Skrek nodded. He could feel it coming.


    They were going to try to take commmand.


    Well, it wasn''t like they weren''t capable. There was nearly three thousand years of naval combat experience, ground combat experience, and everything else at the Vice Admiral''s disposal.


    His naval combat career had been nothing but defeat after defeat, retreat after retreat. A litany of lost planets, a funeral chorus of lost systems, a dirge of dead civilians, and a trail of lost ships.


    "The pomp and ceremony of a standard change of command would be best to set aside at this time," the Vice Admiral said. He gave a rueful chuckle. "It''s largely ceremony that the rank and file dread and couldn''t care less about anyway."


    That got a round of chuckles from the Terrans at the table.


    I''ll be replaced as quietly as I was put in command, N''Skrek thought to himself. Part of him wanted to come up with arguments of why he should stay in command of the Gray Lady, and the idea of his first command being stripped from him filled him with shame.


    But he knew the truth.


    It was circumstances only.


    "The biggest issue, right now, from our point of view," the Vice Admiral said, waving at his staff. "Is experience."


    There it is. The perfectly valid reason to replace me.


    "The problem is..." the Vice Admiral looked uncomfortable for a moment and N''Skrek felt a small bit of satisfaction. "Well, to put it bluntly, the problem is... we don''t have any."


    N''Skrek was nodding before the last part of the statement and stopped, staring.


    "My staff and I, our experience is from forty thousand years ago. From different wars. Different doctrine. Different equipment," the Vice-Admiral said. "There are, undoubtedly, small and large changes to Space Force doctrine that we are completely unaware of. Changes that our actions or responses would be in complete opposition to modern Space Force warfare. Those changes can and will lead to mistakes."


    "Mistakes that cost lives," the Vice Admiral said. He heaved a breath. "I realize that it is unconventional. Captain N''Skrek, but you are the man on the ground, you''re the best hope we have. A trained and experienced Space Force Captain, knowledgeable in modern doctrine," he waved at his staff again. "Sure, we''ve got war fighting experience. But that experience is for a war that we all died before we could finish."


    More nods from his staff.


    "We have discussed it among ourselves, and we are perfectly willing to fill whatever slots in the TO&E that you feel we would be best suited to," the Vice Admiral said. He gave a tight lipped smile. "But before we do any of that, we feel that a change of command briefing should take place, so that we can inform you of what we knew and what we know."


    The Vice Admiral smiled wider.


    "With you at the helm, Captain N''Skrek, maybe we can show the Mar-gite that they can''t just take what they want."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 44

    "And so it came to pass that the First of the Apostles, Enraged Phillip, Orisis of the Warsteel Flame, the Walking Warcrime and a hundred other names besides was washed clean of his past. Reborn under the hand of the Detainee, rebuilt as he was ever meant to be, Daxin Freeborn, new born, gave up his titles and accolades, surrendered to the will of the universe... and received in turn all that he had truly wanted." - Fables of Terra, Telkan Publishing House, 21,540 TXE


    It was ''night'' according to the *Gray Lady''*s shipboard clock. The halls were dimly lit, well enough to navigate easily, but dim enough that the lights from the holograms on the walls lit the wall around them.


    Captain N''Skrek stopped outside the cabin door and rang the chime. After a moment the door whooshed open and he heard the Vice-Admiral say "Enter".


    Just the way the Vice-Admiral spoke made N''Skrek slightly jealous. Even calm conversational speech the Vice-Admiral''s voice was deep, rumbling, soothing, confident, projecting efficiency and dedication just by its mere existence.


    N''Skrek wished he was in possession of such a voice.


    He moved in, moving carefully due to his size.


    The Admiral was in his duty trousers, comfortable looking fuzzy slippers, his undershirt, relaxing on the couch across from where a Treana''ad chair was reconfiguring from its former love-seat configuration. On the table in front of the Vice-Admiral was a bottle of amber liquid, a single glass half full with four ice cubes in it, and a holo-emitter that had a wireframe of a spaceship suspended in the cone, with data-boxes scattered around it.


    "Ah, Captain," the Vice-Admiral said, standing up. "What brings you to my humble quarters this late at night?"


    N''Skrek moved over to the chair, straddling it and settling down. "Just a few personal questions, Vice-Admiral."


    "Always happy to share as long as it isn''t too personal," the Vice-Admiral smiled. He sat down, lifted up a glass of a pale amber liquid. "Whiskey?"


    "No, thank you," N''Skrek said. He looked around and was slightly startled at how lived-in the cabin looked. Holos and 2D snaps in frames, award letters here and there, books on the shelves, knicknacks sitting in magnetic base holders. There were even a few boxes, still taped up, next to the walls. The kitchen looked used but neat and tidy, the small 15x10 dining room had a feeling of meals eaten in companionship.


    Sheer bulk and size of some of the Confederacy''s members made it so that the size of personal quarters would seem lavish to smaller species.


    It had a feeling that the Vice-Admiral had lived in the cabin for decades, not been run off by a bio-printer only a few days prior.


    "Pardon the mess, I''m still moving in," the Vice-Admiral smiled. "Would you care for refreshment? I have a few cigars and a pack or two of cigarettes."


    "No, thank you, Admiral Breakheader," N''Skrek said.


    "Call me Raul, Captain, we''re in an informal setting," the Vice-Admiral chuckled.


    "May I ask what you''re looking at, Raul?" N''Skrek asked.


    The Vice-Admiral spun the hologram so that N''Skrek could see it clearly. It was a heavy cruiser in the Triumph class. Data on weaponry, shielding, drives, and personnel had been expanded into the boxes.


    "Slowly catching up on the differences in ship construction, firepower, and operational expectations," Raul Breakheader said. "While not that much different from what I commanded, there are signifigant changes. The weapons fire faster, the shield emitters and the weapons cool faster, the drives emit less signature, have more power and endurance, and manpower requirements have gone down thanks to improvements in automation that I have determined are more than likely from applying Lanaktallan and Mantid automation theories and protocols. The point defense is more accurate and faster firing, the sensor packages are different, more high resolution, with better range and faster result return."


    N''Skrek nodded.


    "This heavy cruiser has the firepower, endurance, and capacity to soak up the damage of a battleship while only having the manpower of a light cruiser from my era," Raul said. He shook his head and gave a rueful chuckle. "Three hundred years of experience flushed down the tubes by Father Time."


    "Is it really that bad?" N''Skrek asked.


    "It''s bad for me, good for the Confederacy, bad for the Mar-gite, good for the poor bastards we''re trying to save," Raul said. He took a drink off of his class. "My assumptions and instincts are all wrong," he waved his hand through the hologram, dismissing it. "I''ve run a few wargame simulations with my former staff. Our tactics and strategy skills are still applicable, but the new capabilities of the equipment is something we''re still burning into our brains and mental reflexes."


    N''Skrek realized he suddenly did want a drink and a smoke.


    "I''ll take that drink and a cigarette," N''Skrek said.


    Raul nodded, pouring a drink and getting up to get the pack of cigarettes and a lighter, setting the ashtray down first.


    N''Skrek sipped at the drink for a moment then lit a cigarette.


    "Does it bother you, being this out of data when it comes to information?" N''Skrek asked.


    Raul gave a laugh. "Believe it or not, it bothers me more than giving up command of the Gray Lady bothered me. I can''t be trusted to give advice, since weapon ranges are longer with more accuracy. I''d swan right into the enemy''s range thinking I was a good hundred thousand kilometers beyond maximum effective range. That gets good sailors killed."


    "I still want you in an advisory role," N''Skrek said.


    Raul nodded. "Outside of ship to ship combat, I''m your man."


    "That''s why I wanted to ask you a few personal questions."


    "Ask away."


    "I''ve been perusing your service record. You and the rest of the former command staff," N''Skrek said. "The tactics from the First Mar-gite War, there''s not much data."


    "It was what, forty-thousand years ago?" Raul took another drink off his glass. "The only ones that would keep that data would be the Mantid and Lank deep storage databases."


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    "There seems to be large gaps, even from I''ve been able to pull up. I can''t figure out why," N''Skrek admitted.


    "Because we cracked planets, novasparked suns, and went full scorched earth to stop them," Raul said. He closed his eyes and reached up to rub his temples with his middle and forefingers. "A complete shitshow. It brought about the end of the Confederate Senate. The Confederacy was doing pretty bad already, with the Confederate Congress getting lynched enmasse when everyone found out what the Mar-gite were doing."


    He sipped at his glass.


    "We cut off their reinforcements, surrounded them, pushed them tighter and tighter into a circle using Gen-Kiss-Can tactics. What we didn''t planet crack or novaspark, we eradicated from the ground," he sighed and sipped at his glass. "Any silicon based planet was cracked and gecko''d into a new carbon based planet."


    He set down the glass.


    "It was a pretty dark time, but it''s the only tactic that can work," he said. He tapped the table. "You had another Mar-gite war, but didn''t follow out tactics, which is why you had a resurgence less than three hundred years later. You missed their longsleep vessels," he tapped next to the holoemitter. "That''s OK. We missed those silver ships."


    "Those give off a pulse that disables electronics, shuts down computer systems, and causes reactors to go into emergency shutdown," N''Skrek said. "Zero point reactors aren''t affected, which is why right now the Fleet is strapping zero point reactors to the power rooms of the ships."


    It was Raul''s turn to nod silently.


    "Your vessels use sensor system bandwidth we didn''t even know existed back then. There''s a good chance that we missed those vessels and they ran home with the data then spent forty-thousand years coming up with a single trick to disable our vessels," Raul said. He gave a chuckle. "That tells me a lot about them right there."


    "What?" N''Skrek took a long drag of his cigarette, relaxing.


    "They''re a Precursor race. One trick ponies. They find one trick, at first just the Mar-gite, to overwhelm everyone else. They probably have their own ''there is only enough for one'' stupidity going on. When that didn''t work, they didn''t bother trying to find a multi-layered multi-prong counter to us, like Confederate battle doctrine states, but instead put all their effort to a single attack that would grant them victory," Raul said. He tapped the table with the edge of his glass. "Your people and mine are the only heavy hitters that never did that. Treana''ad tried multiple approaches and you know humans."


    "Not really," N''Skrek said. "You''ve been gone a long time."


    Raul nodded, tapping his glass on the tabletop. "Yeah. I forgot. My people throw rocks, spears, pile on the leopard with knives, spears, bare hands, and teeth. Your people and mine, we use the shotgun approach, everyone else used ''this works all the time against everyone'' on their foes."


    N''Skrek sipped at the glass, the taste going from burning to a warm soothing.


    "I looked up the Mithril Nebula Conflict, but data is sparse," he said.


    The Vice-Admiral poured himself another glass. "Elves that fell to Hellspace worship. Effective and tenacious fighters. Lasted over a hundred years. Again, planet crackers and glassing from orbit. Massive fleet engagements and ground fighting. Tens of millions of troops on thousands of planets, all tearing each other''s guts out."


    "Sounds bad," N''Skrek said.


    "It was," Raul said. He sipped at the glass. "Not as bad as Orion''s Shoulder or Tannhauser Gate, but still really bad."


    N''Skrek took another sip. "There''s another mention that has almost no data."


    Raul stiffened slightly, looking away.


    "The Clownface Nebula Conflict. I was interested in your..."


    Raul looked N''Skrek in the face and N''Skrek found himself drawing back.


    The human''s eyes were glowing a hot amber.


    "I don''t know you well enough," the human growled.


    N''Skrek had thought the tales, the historical records, had been mistaken about the way a human''s eyes glowed in response to their emotions.


    Not any more.


    Staring into those hot amber eyes, the cold blue still visible somehow behind the amber, he found himself swallowing thickly.


    "Oh."


    -----


    Specialist Grade Five Gulgulka was a Drimarian, a cold blooded reptillian/mammalian mix almost biologically incapable of excitement.


    He was the assigned Master Armorer for the Telkan Marine Division aboard the Gray Lady.


    He was also a dick.


    What mattered to him was all of the Arms Rooms passing inspection. All the weapons passing cleanliness inspections. All of the armors passing inspection.


    Nothing else mattered.


    He didn''t care about the feelings of the personnel turning in the weapons and armor. To him, there was no "I''ll do it tomorrow" because if a being could do it tomorrow, then they could come down and do a level three cleaning tomorrow after a level one cleaning today.


    It didn''t matter what time their CO said they would be released.


    Nobody left the Arms Rooms until their weapons and armor were cleaned to at least baseline Level Two standards.


    He didn''t care that troops were forced to rub the bluing off the weapons. He didn''t care that the ''cleaning'' scraped the parts over and over to remove even the most miniscule traces of carbon or silicon powder. He didn''t care that the power lead contacts were scrubbed over and over to make them shine.


    No, what mattered is that the Arms Rooms under his control could pass an inspection at any time.


    Every sixty to ninety days, all weapons and armor were pulled to be cleaned again.


    The second most important thing was dress right dress. In civilian terms it meant that everything was perfectly identical, that it all lined up neatly and exactly. All slogans, graffiti, modifications all had to be removed. All non-standard additions were to be removed before the armor or weapons were accepted.


    If the trooper had added an additional coolant line to the M318 or the M2D2E7, well, it had to come off and the changes undone.


    He didn''t care about troops whining about ''field efficiency'' or ''operational modifications'', what he cared about was dress right dress.


    Which meant the two dozen Helreginn, Mark II suits offended him.


    He was currently at one of the Telkan Marine Corps Arms Rooms, which, he had reminded the Armorer, fell underneath his jurisdiction as the Master Armorer.


    The majority of the armor was proper Telkan Marine Powered Combat Armor.


    Except those two dozen suits.


    Ten of them had graffiti on them. From "Can''t Touch This" to "Bring the Brrrt!" to cartoon starfish with "Sad Starfish Noises" above it. The weapons were all older models. Thousands of years out of date and dating back to the Second Mar-gite War.


    "I want those suits replaced with modern suits," Gulgulka said, his voice bubbly and hoarse, like all the males of his species. "Those suits are not listed upon the shipboard TO&E for the Telkan Marines."


    The Telkan stared at him for a moment. "I was ordered by Division Command to replace all of the standard modern suits with the Helreginn Mark II models."


    "Not according to the TO&E," Gulkgulka said. "I don''t care what''s claimed, but unless the TO&E has changed, the only authorized suits are the Telkan Powered Combat Armor series," he made a tossing motion to a nearby holoemitter. It came to life, displaying the power armor listing for the Kilo Company TO&E.


    "Those armors, in that exact number. No more, no less, no unauthorized markings or additions," Gulkgulka said. "Until then, this Arms Room is considered out of regulation and I expect it to conform to standards within two standard ship days."


    "But..." the Armorer started.


    "Two days," Gulkgulka said. He left, ignoring the Telkan''s protests.


    It was three days until the fleet came out of hyperspace to Point Iota of the Mar-gite Defensive Line.


    Gulkgulka intended on his armories passing inspection when the fleet arrived.


    -----


    Specialist Grade Five Armkept stepped exactly one pace from the front of Captain Nakwel''s desk. The Captain was dressed in his PT uniform, a water bottle in one hand that the Captain was drinking out of. Armkept waited until the Captain finished drinking before saluting. The Captain returned the salute.


    "At ease, Marine," Captain Nakwel said. He squinted slightly. "You looked pissed off."


    "That dick of a Master Armorer is visiting the armories today," Armkept said.


    "We pass?" Nakwel asked.


    Armkept shook his head. "No."


    "Something not servicable?" Nakwel asked.


    Armkept shook his head again. "No, sir. Everything is ready to go. He just wants everything stripped back down to frame, he wants the Helreginn suits replaced with the standard M9 Powered Combat Suits, and he wants everything cleaned again, sir."


    "Tell him to eat rocks," Nakwel said. He tapped the emitter, bringing up his email, and scanned it. When he found what he was looking for, he tapped the email and brought it up before waving a hand through it to toss it to Armkept. "There. That''s Corps wide. Straight from Telkan itself. Helreginn Mark II suits only."


    "He said if it isn''t on the TO&E, he doesn''t care, sir," Armkept said.


    "I''ll get with someone, tell that Space Force idiot to keep away from us," Captain Nakwel said. He sighed. "Great, now I have to go see the Battalion Commander."


    "Sorry to cause so much problem, sir," Armkept said.


    "Better this than having my ass hanging out while a couple million Mar-gite charge us," the Captain mumbled.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 30+15

    "There''s always some motherfucker trying to ice skate uphill." - The Daywalker, Second Vampire War, TerraSol, Age of Paranoia


    "Where there''s a whip, there''s a way!" - Unknown, Age of Myth & Legend, TerraSol


    "You die; she dies; everybody dies!" Warlord Ard, Age of Myth & Legend, TerraSol


    Specialist Grade Five Armkept had been having good morning. PT had been fun and engaging, breakfast had been delicious, his shower warm and steamy, and his uniform had been nicely creased but still soft and comfortable. A Lieutenant had complimented the shine of his boots as he had walked back from the mess hall to his quarters.


    He was whistling a recent pop-tune out of Rigel as the door opened into the Ready Room where troops did last minute element level gearing up for a mission.


    When he saw who was standing next to the door to his Arms Room, reading the plas sheets magtapped to the wall, the whistle dried up in his throat.


    The Drimarian Master Armorer, Specialist Grade Five Gulgulka, turned at the sound of the door. The Drimarian''s uniform was pressed and starched, everything exactly as it should be, and his boots and leather belt were polished to a high gloss.


    Armkept just knew it was with KiwiBlack, not something like Mopppenglow or other cheating methods.


    The Drimarian lifted up on his toes and back down, harrumphing deep in his throat.


    "Before I continue to address you, Telkan Marine doctrine and regulations are contradictory. <harrumph> Do I address you as Battalion Master Armorer Armkept, Armorer Armkept, Specialist Armkept, Specialist-Five Armkept, or <harrumph> Specialist Grade Five Armkept?" Gulgulka asked.


    "Specialist Armkept is fine," the Telkan Marine said, staring.


    "Excellent," Gulgulka motioned at the Arms Room door. "Your TO&E was upgraded at 2236 Hours last night. <harrumph> I am here to ensure that you have the necessary access and clearances in order to bring your Arms Room <harrumph> up to TO&E requirements and Telkan Marine Corps standards."


    Armkept felt a sinking sensation in his guts. He just knew that his whole day had been ruined.


    We drop out of hyperspace in 32 hours, maybe I''ll get lucky and the Mar-gite are already there and I''ll be deployed to the surface in a jockstrap and reflective belt, the Telkan thought. He nodded at the Drimarian. "All right," he turned his palm up as he moved toward the Arms Room door and checked his email accounts. "Huh, I don''t have the TO&E update."


    "I will remedy that," Gulgulka said, harrumphing. The Drimarian made a tossing motion and Armkept found a priority update from Corps. There were clearance and access codes and permissions attached. "You must be ready to pass inspection very soon."


    "Yeah," Armkept managed to avoid slumping in resignation as he opened the door with the physical keys for the mechanical locks. The Arms Room opened up and Armkept hit the lights.


    "Let us examine and inspect your Arms Room to see what defects there are that must be remedied," the Gulgulka said, moving in, his hands behind his back and clenched together.


    The next hour make Armkept want to scream. Every item had to be accounted for by lot number, Confederate Department of War Accountability Control Number, Telkan Department of War Accountability Control Number, Confederate Department of War Inventory Control Number, and Telkan Department of War Inventory Control Number. Each item had to be inspected closely, sometimes with a molecular scanner for the molecular circuitry unit.


    Gulgulka seemed to be able to sniff out the slightest defect or flaw, an almost uncanny sense that had Armkept ready to start screaming, go on a shooting spree, kill himself, or maybe all three at once.


    After another hour of absolute misery, Gulgulka stood in the middle of the Arms Room, going down his checklist.


    "Your Arms Room does not match your Table of Organization and Equipment, Specialist Armkept," the Drimarian said. It had gotten to the point that Armkept didn''t even notice the harrumphs any more.


    Armkept slumped. "What now?"


    "Your Armor Inventory Control Sheet shows that you should be in possession of one hundred eighteen Helreginn, Mark II, Anti-Mar-gite Full Contact Powered Combat Personal Protective Equipment Systems," Gulgulka said. He shook his head. "You do not have the update to the inventory. I will remedy that."


    Armkept blinked rapidly as Gulgulka opened up his palm mounted holoemitter and started tapping through boxes, data sheets appearing in Armkept''s vision.


    "The Helreginn suit was devised during the last Mar-gite War, not the Mar-gite Resurgence. The war ended with the Mark II Type IV suits in production. However, they were never deployed and update packages were never transmitted to the Mar-gite Containment Zone," the Drimarian harrumphed. "During the Resurgence, certain flaws and suboptimal system performance design flaws were corrected by the issuing of the Mark III, which slowly moved to the Mark VI."


    Armkept kept blinking away the sheets as fast as they were coming in.


    "Checking the Corps databases last night, I determined that the final upgrade was a mere two hundred sixteen years four months nineteen days ago. That resulted in the Helreginn Mark VI Type IX series, which is mission configurable and an upgrade of six hundred thirty eight point two nine five percent in survivability for the operator," Gulgulka said. He paused to harrumph a few times. He turned and moved toward the door. "Last night at sixteen thirty two hours shipboard, the Corps Level Master Armorer resigned and I was occupationally promoted to take his place although that position requires a Specialist Grade Eight and I am a Specialist Grade Five, meaning I lack training and experience under most circumstances. I filed a formal protest to my promotion to Specialist Grade Six with shipboard PERSCOM at seventeen seventeen hours shipboard time."


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    Armkept locked the door and pulled the barred door into position and locked it while the Drimarian monologued.


    "I find such a promotion to be dangerous. Promotions should only take place due to realities of a hazardous deployment zone or through the point and time in grade and service system," Gulgulka led Armkept down the corridors. "However, my protest was overridden, leaving the Division Master Armorer position vacant."


    He glanced back.


    "Pray to whomever or whatever you worship that you are not promoted in such an untidy manner," he said.


    Armkept just nodded.


    "My first posting was as an Armorer for a Confederate Space Force unit in the Lanaktallan Star Herd nation. A posting that set my habits, biases, and methods, something I do not apologize for," Gulgulka stated. "It was there I learned that graffiti was for the hazard zone, not the armory, and that operator modifications had to be removed to ensure that the war material can be properly PMCSd (Preventive Maintenance Checks & Services) to discover any defects."


    They were silent as they walked for nearly thirty minutes to reach one of the massive fabrication bays. Gulgulka consulted his palm emitter and followed the arrow until they found a HiKruth standing in front of three massive Class XXX Creation Engines. He had all four hands clasped behind his back and his four legs were stiff with anger.


    "You are Technical Sergeant First Class Numvattra Drossman?" Gulgulka asked.


    The HiKruth turned around. "Whose asking?" his voice was obviously irritated.


    If Gulgulka noticed, he didn''t seem to care.


    "I am the Corps Master Armorer, assigned position by Captain N''Skrek''s command staff," he pointed at the Telkan next to him. "This is Specialist Grade Five Armkept, Master Armorer for the 9th Telkan Power Armor Battalion."


    "So?" the HiKruth was obviously unhappy about being disturbed.


    "I have put in a requisition for one hundred eighteen Helreginn Mark VI Type IX Anti-Mar-gite Full Contact Powered Combat Personal Protective Equipment Systems eleven times in the last sixteen hours," Gulgulka stated. "Procurement Command granted me access to five Class XXX Creation Engine Systems, each capable of producing a full suit every fifty-two seconds of dry print, yet you have not responded to a single email or requisition and the creation engines allocated to the Corps Master Armorer appear to still be cold and dark. As warsteel is needed, I had expected that the creation engines would be heated and ready to go."


    Armkept was suddenly glad that the HiKruth were renown for their patience. He would have started screaming or lost focus about twenty words into that monologue.


    "They aren''t responding. They have not been responding since I was assigned to them," the HiKruth snarled.


    Armkept realized he was seeing a HiKruth that had run out of patience.


    "So, if your cold blooded ass can figure out how to get them to even talk to us, you''re more than welcome to try," Drossman snarled.


    Gulgulka just turned his palm up again, consulting his holoemitter. He consulted a few charts and what Armkept was sure was the TO&E for Fabrication Bay 19, then simply walked away.


    Drossman had turned back to the creation engines and while Armkept watched the HiKruth suddenly leaned forward, glaring at the creation engines.


    "WAKE UP!" the quadruped screamed.


    The creation engines just sat there.


    "You''d have to rip apart the ship to pull them and they have never worked," Drossman snarled, turning away from the massive orbs. "They have power. The computers will tell you they are on. Other than that, they just fucking ignore me."


    Armkept just shrugged.


    "Yeah, your fuzzy ass is a great help," Drossman grumbled. He moved forward and hit the side of one of the massive orbs, the iris large enough to allow a heavy main battle tank to move through it. "WAKE UP, DAMN YOU!"


    After a minute Gulgulka returned with a human following him.


    "This is Technical Sergeant Grade Nine Longarms (Deceased)," Gulgulka stated. "He was in charge of these very creation engines. He had informed me that he can get them working."


    "Sure, why not?" the HiKruth snarled, stalking away to stand about twenty meters away, fuming.


    The human moved up to the creation engine, rubbing the side. "Come on, sweetie. It''s wakeup time," he said gently, like he was talking to a child. "I know, I know, he keeps yelling at you."


    Armkept could swear he saw little tendrils of purple electricity arc between the edge of the human''s hand and the shell of the creation engine.


    "I need you and your sisters to wake up. I''m sorry I left. No, I won''t let him hit you any more. Come on, sweetie, wake up," the human said.


    Armkept noticed that Gulgulka was just standing there, watching, his face as expressionless as ever. The HiKruth was just fuming.


    He opened his mouth to ask how talking to it like it was a pouting podling was going to help when there was a sudden deep THRUUUUUM noise from the one the human was touching.


    The creation engines on either side repeated it, one after another.


    The lights came fully on in the fabrication unit. Gantries and lifters powered up. Holosigns flickered to life.


    The panel on the side of the creation engine opened up, revealing a mechanical keyboard and a flatscreen LCD monitor.


    "That''s a good girl. Let''s run a diagnostic, see how you are, then we''ll get to work," the human said. He looked at Gulgulka. "You''ll have your TO&E filled within the next two hours or I''ll send you a notification as to why."


    "Very well. I will need you to notarize a statement that it is being delayed," Gulgulka said, stepping forward and holding out a dataslate. The human scanned the document, nodded, and pressed his thumb to the box. It beeped and Gulgulka nodded. "Our required duty to one another has concluded at this time."


    "Until next time," the human said. He waved at the HiKruth. "Come here, we need to talk about SeeSee and her sisters."


    "There should be armors waiting for us at your armory, delivered by the shipboard automated transport system," Gulgulka said. He turned and began walking out. "We have much to do, Telkan. The fleet drops from hyperspace soon."


    He glanced at Armkept.


    "We must ensure we are ready."


    Armkept decided he was going to get drunk as soon as he was off duty.


    If he ever got off duty.


    -----


    "Did you see this bullshit?" Jaskel asked Corporal Plekrin, tapping the hologram he was projecting from his palm for emphasis.


    "The stupid armory shit?" Plekrin asked.


    "Yeah. Seriously, Armkept wants us to come in at eighteen hundred to resynch our suits? Seems like he could have had us come in and do it the last four days instead of hiding in the armory playing with his dick," Jaskel asked.


    Plekrin nodded. "No shit. Seriously, the only thing lazier than an armorer is an orderly room clerk."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 46

    "Fuck this, I''m movin'' to Sparta," Unknown, Age of Myth & Legend, TerraSol


    The parking lot was full of burning cars as lightning raked the tarmac and the vehicles, hurled down from low black clouds. The world was nothing but exploding cars, the shattering of thunder, and the screams of tourists who had been caught out in the open when the clouds had opened up to deliver fury upon the earth. Teenage Telkan ran for cover, dove to the ground, or crouched down holding tight to one another. Some screaming, some crying, some silent -unable to even scream as their brains overloaded-. The few adults tried to interpose their bodies between the sky and the children.


    From inside the Cathedral came explosions, grinding roars of masonry collapsing, as lightning struck the tops of the towers and wreathed them in electric fury.


    Two Telkani, Telkan males, who had come to take pictures of them groping the statues of female saints, were in the entry vestibule, one huddled down with his arms over his head.


    The back wall exploded inward and massive war machines pushed through the rubble that had been lavish and opulent decoration seconds before. They stood on tree-trunk legs, clawed feet digging deep into the tile and ceramacrete floor. Their arms were thick, heavily armored, one a dual barrel autocannon, the other with a powerful claw of sharp fingers designed to rip and tear apart anything it grasped. Its head was almost an afterthought, a mere auxiliary sensor pod. The huge, blocky body was engraved with runes whose meanings were forgotten to time, ancient prayer strips, so old that many had degraded to hanging threads, devoid even of the inks placed by the faithful, fluttered as the two dozen massive machines moved through the church.


    One Telkani stood, staring at the massive war machines. His face was awed, tears streamed down from his eyes. He had dropped the stolen datapad he had planned on recording video of him groping Saint Brenny the Dutiful as the war machines marched through the pews, sending splinters and fragments of wood showering across the room.


    None of it touched those praying, who were now looking at the sky as they prayed.


    The one covering his head lunged up, grabbed the one staring, and pulled him down behind a marble column.


    "Watch it, idiot," he snapped.


    The huge war machines started walking past, the ground shaking.


    The staring one didn''t even notice that one stepped on his stolen datapad, crushing it into the ceramacrete flooring.


    One by one they all went by, arranging themselves in the parking lot even as thunder roared and lightning hammered down, striking the ancient Warbound without any ill effect.


    When the Warbound raised their arms to the sky and roared in one voice, the crier was dragged away by the other.


    -----


    "The planned renovations of the Telkan Memorial Cathedral were scheduled months in advance," the stuffed suit was saying, leaning forward slightly to speak into the battery of microphones at the front of the podium. "Of course, those ancient war machines had to be moved into the parking lot during the renovations to their storage areas. Planetary weather control had not anticipated the ground charge differential caused by those war machines being active. There was nothing at all supernatural about the event at all."


    The Tri-Vee winked off, the remote thrown against a patched and battered couch with a snarl by a Telkani with white rings around his eyes.


    "Easy to say when you weren''t there," he snapped. He looked at the other Telkani sitting in the couch, then at the gathered group of eight around the dingy, cluttered, and dimly lit room. "That weren''t no renovation. The lightning started before them things came running out to dance around in it."


    "So, what, they''re covering it up?" one of the Telkani leaning against the cluttered counter asked. "Why? Who cares what some dusty old religion nobody even follows has happen?"


    "It''s all your fault, Naxen," the one that had thrown the remote said, pointing at the Telkani slumped in an overstuffed recliner that had several holes that the stuffing was protruding from. "You wanted to go see the stupid statues, viddy us groping them saints, now look what happened."


    Naxen shrugged. "What do you want me to say about it, Wrixet?"


    "Look at my damn face," Wrixet snapped, pointing at the rings around his eyes. "Every lawsec for a hundred miles will be able to ID me now, whether I''m running a jammer or not."


    "What do you want, an apology? Fine, I''m sorry," Naxen said.


    One of the ones leaning on the counter giggled and Wriket snarled at him before looking back at Naxen. "No, you aren''t. You got to see those stupid Warbound you''re always going on about. You''d pry my eyes out with a spoon to see them again."


    "I''d pry your eyes out with a spoon for fifty credits a pop," one of the ones at the counter snickered.


    "Screw you," Wrixet grabbed his jacket off the table, spilling mostly-empty narcobrew bottles and sending empty hotshot cones flying.


    "Aw, come on, Wrixet, don''t be mad," Naxen said, jumping up. He followed the other Telkani out the door, grabbing the back of his jacket. "We got to see those things wake up."


    "Big deal," Wrixet said, walking past the elevator. It didn''t work anyway. "My moms is already up my ass because I didn''t come home with any juice."


    "We had to dodge lawsec the whole way, didncha tell her that?"


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    "I did, she didn''t care. What about your pops?" Wrixet paused for a second, looking out the door at the night to make sure there wasn''t anyone from a rival gang lurking.


    "Eh, you know him. He just smacked me, called me a weakling and a fool, then went and got drunk down at Samshi''s Bar," Naxen said. He followed Wrixet out the door, hustling across the courtyard. On one of the lawns a smashed drone buzzed and sparked, but neither Telkan paid any attention to it as they walked out to the street.


    "Seen the news trying to claim we all didn''t hear that roar?" Naxen asked.


    "How do they think they''re going to convince everyone we didn''t hear that?" Wrixet asked.


    Naxen shrugged, popping up his collar to protect the back of his neck at the same time as Wrixet. "I don''t know. Keep telling everyone it didn''t happen till people forget?"


    They were silent walking to the bus stop, hands in their pockets. Naxen''s fingers were around the hilt of a vibro gravity knife, Wrixet''s were wrapped around a set of kinetic amplified brass knuckles.


    The bus was covered in graffiti, was battered and worn, and one of the hoverpads was snarling due to wear and tear. The duo got on, moved to the back next to the door, and sat down.


    "You think it''s true?" Naxen asked after a few blocks.


    "What?" Wrixet looked up from where he''d almost nodded off.


    "What the street preachers have been saying. About the War Father and the Prime Matron? About the Terrans? All of it?" Naxen asked.


    Wrixet shook his head. "Naw. A janitor becoming a legend? A house keeper becoming planetary director?" he waved his hands at the dark streets. "Look around you. This is reality. All of that is just stories they tell kids. Besides, it was like fifty thousand years ago, not even Lankys care about something that long ago."


    "I don''t know," Naxen said after a couple of blocks. "We always thought the Warbound were bullshit too, but you saw them."


    "Telk, I don''t know what I saw. Just big machines with guns and shit stomping out of the back of that old church. They could have been old ass construction bots for all we know, Telk," Wrixet said. He gave a bitter laugh. "Look, Telk, we grind to make it to the next score. That''s all it is," he looked out the window at the dark streets. "That''s all any of it is."


    The bus kept moving, both Telkan tensing during a ten block stretch and visibly relaxing when the graffiti no longer had a pair of crossed swords on the walls.


    The bus stopped and both gave a slight groan as three lawsec climbed on. They were all wearing heavy armor, their faces invisible behind the tinted visors, pistols and batons on their hips.


    "Donations for the Elderly Lawsec Beings Fund," the lead one said. He held out a datapad to the driver. The driver sighed and tapped it, tapping the 10 credit button. The lawsec looked at it, then looked at the driver. "Huh, might not be able to patrol your route, gentlebeing."


    The driver sighed again and added 10 credits on top of it.


    "Excellent," the lawsec said. He moved down the bus, holding out the datapad. Everyone tapped five or ten.


    The trio reached the two Telkan, who were trying to look asleep. The one with the datapad kicked their feet.


    "Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey," he said. He thrust out the datapad. "Donate to the I Want to Keep My Teeth Fund, boys."


    Both looked up, slowly pulling their hands from their pockets.


    All three lawsec jerked slightly.


    "Well well well, looks like it''s our lucky day, boys!" the lead one said, pulling his pistol as he spoke. "Get up, both of you."


    "What, we didn''t do nothing," Naxen said.


    Wrixet just stood up, turning around.


    "Got warrants on both you. Vandalism, destruction of public property, destruction of private property," the one with the datapad said as the other two cuffed Wrixet and Naxen. "Big enough warrant there''s a bounty out on you two."


    Both Telkan kept their mouths shut as they were dragged away.


    -----


    Wrixet looked up as the door to his solitary cell buzzed. There were four lawsec outside. Two with shields, one on either side of the door, banging on the shields with their batons. One stayed back, another came in.


    Wrixet followed the commands. Hands out. Stand up. Turn around. Left hand behind his back. Right hand behind his back. They cuffed him and pulled him out of the cell. Down the hallway five doors and the whole thing was repeated as Naxen was dragged out of his cell.


    They''d both been in the juv-cubes enough times to know to keep their mouths shut as they were guided through the hallways of solitary confinement and beyond.


    Finally, they were led to a conference room where they were seated, then their cuffs attached to the table.


    All but two of the lawsec left, one standing behind each of them.


    After a bit a Telkana came in, her fur brushed and shining, dust on her ears to make the edges glimmer and shine. She sat down and set two honest to Warfather paper file folders down on the table. She opened them, showing the top sheet was a single piece of smartpaper. The rest was all regular paper, even with the 2.5D holograms showing the pair at the Cathedral.


    "Morning, boys," she said, smiling. "As you know, with the Mar-gite invasion, the Confederacy is at war."


    Both just stared.


    "The Telkan people admire and appreciate your willingness to volunteer during these troubled times. Why, we''re so impressed, we even ensured your criminal records are clean so you don''t even need waivers to join," she smiled.


    Naxen looked up. "Wait a minute, I want a law..."


    The lawsec behind him slapped him across the back of the head hard enough his chest hit the table.


    "And I''m sure you''re happy to know that you''ve been accepted into the Telkan Marine Corps!" she said, her voice chipper. "Just put your palm here," she slid the smart papers in front of each of them.


    The lawsec grabbed their arms with one hand and their shoulders with the other, squeezing the nerves in the shoulder and painfully moving their arms till the lawsec could slap the duo''s palm pads onto the paper.


    "Oh, and before you think about just failing out or runniing?" the female said as the uniformed Telkans yanked them toward the door. She paused for a second then drew a pistol out from a concealed holster in her armpit. "I will personally shoot you, your parents, and any siblings you have."


    Neither said anything.


    They knew better. They knew a screw job when they saw it.


    "Excellent," she said. She stood up as the door behind her opened.


    "And congratulations on passing basic training and basic infantry school," she said. She tapped the smart paper and images appeared of the two Telkan in uniforms standing in front of the Telkan Star Nation''s flag. Words scrolled down. "Imagine, you two have the singular honor of going to serve on the Mar-gite Front within the next two months."


    Two big Telkan came in, both wearing uniforms. They moved around and grabbed the back of the duo''s necks while the lawsec unlocked the cuffs.


    "You should have known going AWOL wouldn''t work, boys," the woman said. She smiled, showing too many sharp teeth. "The Corps will find you."


    The two uniformed Telkan, with MP armbands, yanked both up from the chairs.


    Naxen and Wrixet both knew when to keep their mouths shut as they were dragged away.


    "Make us proud, boys," the woman laughed.


    -----


    "Psst," Naxen hissed.


    "What?" Wrixet asked, looking up from where he was cuffed next to the cryotube.


    "Why do you think they''re doing this to us, Telk?" Naxen asked.


    Wrixet let his head hang down. "Because we were stupid enough to be present when the Warbound woke up, Telk" he tilted his head toward the other silent Telkan, most of them with the odd slump of the heavily drugged. "Take a good look. That Telkana with the big tits is at the end of the row. They rounded us all up, Telk."


    "We''re going to die, you know that, right, Telk? They''re sending us out there, with no training, so we''ll get killed," Naxen said. "They''re sending us out to die so they don''t have to admit what happened. We''re going to die."


    Wrixet looked up, staring at his life long friend.


    "No. We''re not."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 47

    "Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty." - Plato


    He couldn''t breathe.


    That was the first thought that went through his head.


    Electrodes across his stomach went live, forcing his diaphragm into spasms. He coughed, thick liquid rushing up and into the face mask, where it was dutifully sucked away. The tubes up his nose injected a careful mixture of air even as he forced more of the fluid up.


    He opened his eyes, seeing the top of the cryostation, as he rolled on his side and kept coughing into the face mask.


    The lights were red.


    He clawed at the mask, pulling it off out of some instinct. The tubes in his nose were next and he pulled them free, uncaring at how the scraped the back of his throat and his sinuses.


    There was a steady buzzing sound, repeating every three seconds.


    He coughed more, his head clearing.


    My name... went through his brain as he kept hacking up the clear fluid. It was getting thinner, runnier, but he was still hacking it up. The liquid was splattering on metal plates with small x''s upraised on it.


    ...my name is...


    He managed to roll, twist, and sit up, his legs hanging off the side of the pod. He looked around.


    The rest of the pods were sealed.


    The buzzing kept sounding, the red lights stayed steady. He could faintly hear creaking.


    He looked at the medical equipment next to him. It was all red, all of the readouts. Looking around, he realized that every single light, every single LED, every single bit of text, picture, or hologram, was red.


    EMERGENCY RESSUS flashed on the monitors next to his screen.


    He didn''t know enough to understand that data. He knew that about himself.


    He didn''t know much more.


    He got to his feet, went down on his knees, and sat there, his head hanging down as he coughed out more of the clear fluid. He ran his fingers over the cloth of the legless and armless leotard he was was wearing, unable to find a catch to open it.


    A small robot appeared, wiping up the fluid even as he hacked it up on the floor.


    His chest hurt.


    Around his wrist was a data bracelet. The words were red.


    PRISONER W44C778E289


    He blinked.


    He couldn''t remember. He could remember anything about anything. Not who he was, not what he was doing here, not why he was a prisoner or who he was a prisoner of.


    He reached out and grabbed the cryopod next to him, pulling himself to his feet. He looked down. The whole pod was sheathed in red light. He looked up. There was only one other pod, sheathed in red, all the way at the end. He leaned forward until his head went through the hologram and he looked at the occupant.


    It was a furry being. Short nose with teeth underneath in a muzzle, two ears, brown and black and tan fur in swirls and lines. They had a mask on their face and tubes in their nose. They were wearing the same leotard he was.


    When he drew back, he realized he could read the words on the hologram covering the cryotube, words in red outlined with silver.


    PRISONER N44C778E28A


    The prisoner''s face was familiar. The scar across the side of the muzzle, the scar above the left eye.


    ...fifth street... wound through his fuzzy brain.


    He pushed off, looking around.


    The red light was almost a tangible thing. He could see the doors at either end of the long bay had red light over them.


    He looked at the cryopod for a long moment.


    He didn''t know why, but he was loathe to leave it behind.


    He looked it over until he found a small touchpad readout that stated "EMERGENCY RELEASE" on it. He tapped it, tapped yes, tapped he was sure, then tapped that he wanted emergency release, then tapped yes again.


    He sat on the floor, waiting, coughing now and then as the cryotube gurgled. Finally the lid lifted into sections that pulled into the top. The occupant started coughing and he shakily got to his feet. He helped the occupant sit up, took off their mask, and pounded on their back, helping them cough up the thick clear fluid. The other reached up with one hand and slowly pulled the long blood slicked tubes from their nose.


    "What... what is happening?" the other, N44, asked, his voice hoarse and shaking.


    "Don''t know. Emergency ressus for me. Released you," W44 said.


    "The others?" N44 asked.


    "Not sure," W44 said. He moved up and looked down.


    The being inside was perfectly intact. W44 looked at the computer.


    LIFE SIGNS TERMINATED - SHIELDING FAILURE


    He staggered from cryotube to cryotube.


    They were all the same.


    The last two had only "OCCUPANT STABLE" on the monitors. He leaned in, pushing his face through the hologram as he looked past the red.


    It was a female.


    ...the Telkana with the big tits is at the end... slithered through his numb and fuzzy brain.


    He checked the other one. Another female.


    "Well?" N44 asked.


    "Got two alive. Gonna release them," W44 said. He looked at the hologram.


    PRISONER D44C778E31C


    PRISONER V44C778E31B


    "What is happening? Where are we?" N44 asked.


    "Don''t know," W44 said. He tapped the emergency release icons, went through the bit that made sure, then sat down, breathing heavy.


    Both of them coughed as they waited.


    Finally the lid pulled back and they heard her coughing. W44 got up, N44 getting up with him. Together they helped the female sit up, pounding on her back, helping her cough up the thick clear fluid. They helped her out of the tube and they all sat in the corridor, backs against different tubes, coughing.


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    They helped the next one while D44 was still coughing up the clear slime, helping her sit down with her back against the cryotube.


    "What... what''s happening?" D44 asked.


    "Don''t know," W44 said. He looked around. "I''m going to look around."


    "Wait. Go with you," N44 said. He shook his head. "I don''t know how, but I know that the two of us, we don''t go anywhere alone."


    W44 nodded. It sounded right.


    "Me too. Don''t leave us alone," D44 said. V44 nodded, standing up.


    The two males helped them up.


    Together, they staggered to the door, tapping at it.


    It refused to open.


    They staggered to the other end and, to be honest, W44 was surprised when it opened at a single touch of the hologram.


    A body fell from where it had been leaning against the door. Its face was twisted in horror, its hands held outward.


    It was also fairly desiccated, still somewhat wet and gooey.


    V44 screamed when it landed, then laughed nervously.


    "That one''s dead. Let''s go," W44 said.


    "What killed him?" V44 asked.


    "Do you want to find out? Let''s go," N44 said.


    D44 just nodded.


    They moved around it, staring at the hallway.


    The red lights were on. The buzzer was still sounding.


    They explored carefully, scratching at the paint to indicate which direction they had taken. If they had already taken one direction at a crossroad, they made an extra scratch to show which one they had been down already.


    Their numbed brains couldn''t understand most of what they found. Strange, unknowable machinery, dead bodies everywhere with no sign of damage to them, smeared and ruptured holograms.


    Nothing else.


    Finally, they reached a corridor where the bodies were the thickest.


    "They all face the same way," D44 said softly.


    "They were running," N44 said.


    "But from what?" W44 asked.


    "I wish I could remember why I''m here. Why I''m a prisoner. Who I''m a prisoner of," V44 said as they carefully maneuvered around the bodies.


    W44 noted they all looked frightened.


    The color across the heavy door at the far end wasn''t red like the others. It was off pink, swirled and smeared, with two of the holoemitters buzzing and hissing.


    "That isn''t good," D44 said, her voice full of fear.


    "It wasn''t," W44 said. He moved up to the door and tapped on the hologram to get it to open.


    It took four tries.


    The room beyond was a half-circle, with concentric lines of consoles and a large throne-like chair closest to the door in the middle.


    Every console, workstation was occupied. There were collapsed armored vacuum suited figures lying between the curved rows.


    TELKAN STELLAR UNION LAW ENFORCMENT - CORRECTIONAL REHABILITION DIVISION was on the armored vacuum suits all of the dead were wearing.


    Most of them looked to the quartet like they had died without even realizing it. Some even had their hands on holographic keyboards or physical keyboards. Their bodies were desiccated, the clean-room atmosphere of the ship keeping even bacteria inside the body from decaying it.


    The screen at the far end was showing nothing but blackness.


    They poked around, looking at the various consoles.


    "We''re on a starship," N44 said, looking around.


    "Except everyone''s dead," D44 said.


    "Maybe we can go somewhere and get help?" V44 said.


    "Any of you know how to run a starship?" W44 asked. The others shook their heads. "Me neither."


    W44 sat down on the big throne, the only place to sit.


    The screen flickered and N44 and D44 turned to look at it.


    DOCKING INITIALIZED - T - 3.5 minutes


    "Where do you think we''re docking at?" D44 asked.


    W44 looked at his wrist.


    PRISONER


    "Wherever it is, it''s where they were delivering us to as prisoners," W44 said.


    "What did I do that they''d send me on a starship instead of just throwing me in prison?" D44 asked. She hugged herself. "I know, I don''t know how, but I know I didn''t do anything wrong."


    "I did," W44 asked. He laughed. "I just know I did."


    "I did," N44 added. "I feel like whatever I did, it was a long time coming."


    "I don''t think I did anything," V44 said. "I don''t remember anything, but it doesn''t sound right that I did something that would get law enforcement to take me away."


    D44 hugged herself tighter. "But I didn''t do anything," she said, her voice whining slightly.


    "DON''T WHINE!" W44 shouted, suddenly standing up. "NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR WHINING! NOBODY! WE GRIND TO MAKE IT TO THE NEXT SCORE, TELKA! THAT''S ALL IT IS! THAT''S ALL IT EVER IS!"


    D44 stared at him, her mouth hanging open.


    "There isn''t no broodcarries coming running to the rescue for people like us, Telka," W44 said, sitting down again. "We grind till we can''t grind no more."


    N44 nodded. "One scam, one score at a time."


    "Don''t yell at her," V44 said.


    "Why not? Do you think it matters? All the lawsec are dead. We''re on a ship docking who knows where. She needs to stop whining, Telka," N44 said.


    "We just keep on keeping on, Telka," W44 said.


    "OK," D44 nodded, her eyes full of tears. "I wanna go home."


    "Why? You got it better than here?" W44 asked. He looked at the time.


    Less than two minutes.


    "I think I did," she said softly.


    "Me too," V44 said.


    "Well, we''re here now. It is what is," N44 said. "I said what I said."


    "I did what I did," W44 finished. He didn''t know how that was the right thing to say, but he knew it was.


    "Why did you call me Telka? Is that my name?" D44 asked.


    W44 shook his head. "No. You''re a female. Telka. Short for Telkana," he pointed at N44. "He''s a Telk, short for Telkani."


    "We''re... we''re Telkan," V44 said.


    The other three nodded, the rightness of the statement filling them.


    "Ten seconds," W44 said, pointing at the screen.


    There was a slight bump. Another shifting.


    The lights flashed twice.


    "What now?" D44 asked.


    N44 shook his head. "No clue."


    "We wait," W44 said. "If we''re docking at a station, then someone should be along to help us any time."


    The minutes ticked by, growing longer and longer.


    The holotank in front of the throne came to life. Four figures flew into it. Three were screaming, atonal screeches of pure static. The fourth was grunting, fighting the other three. The screaming three had their fingers curled, their vestigial claws coming into play.


    The fourth was a large biped, wearing some kind of uniform, who was fighting the other three with a glowing knife that had a blade of pure bluish white. He stabbed one and it dissolved, even as another grabbed him around the waist. He stabbed it in the back repeatedly even as he looked up at the quartet all staring at him.


    "Run!" the fourth yelled. "Get on the station! I gotta blow the ship as soon as I offload your cargo!"


    "What? Why?'' V44 asked.


    "RUN! I''LL SHOW THE WAY!" the uniformed one yelled.


    The others were all Telkan in strips of rags, their eyes wild, their jaws foaming, as they threw themselves at the tall biped.


    A red line appeared in midair, leading back the way they had came.


    W44 didn''t need told three times. He jumped up, yelling at the other two to come on, and ran, following the line.


    Twice something hit the other side of the red holograms with a thump that made the holograms shiver. They turned corners by grabbing the edge, keeping their speed and momentum.


    "Wait! Please! Wait!" D44 called out as she slowed for another corner and the two males were about to round the next corner. "I can''t run as fast."


    "Wait for us," V44 called out.


    N44 started stepping forward but W44 grabbed the back of his leotard, tugging him back onto the other side of the red hologram square.


    "Hurry!" N44 called.


    "I don''t like this," W44 said. "I got a feeling..."


    Something came around the corner. It was a biped, like the one in the holotank, dressed in a vacuum suit.


    It was made of white lineart and screaming as it swept forward, its lower body nothing but twisting mist that left frost on the floor and walls as it passed.


    "RUN, TELKA! RUN!" N44 yelled.


    "DON''T LOOK BACK!" W44 shouted.


    D44 ran, not looking back, crying as she ran.


    V44 looked back and screamed, then started to run.


    D44 was reaching out for the hologram and N44 stuck his hand out, grabbing hers. V44 reached out.


    The line art touched her.


    N44 yanked D44 through the red.


    V44 collapsed, her fingertips grazing W44''s as the line art yanked something blue and sparkling out of V44''s body.


    It was V44, and she was screaming soundlessly as the white line art took a sudden bite from her.


    Out of the walls a good dozen exploded into the hallway, covering the walls with frost as they fell on the glittering blue Telkana, ripping chunks away and shoving them into their mouths.


    The trio backed up, turning around.


    The air lock closed and cycled.


    "When it opens, run. Don''t look back. Run through the red," a disembodied voice said. "This thing''s infested. Run for it."


    W44 and N44 nodded.


    "What''s happening?" D44 sobbed.


    "It doesn''t matter," W44 said. He squatted down, putting his hands on the floor. "Get ready, Telks."


    N44 squatted down next to him, leaning forward after he put his hands on the floor.


    D44 joined them.


    "Don''t look back. Don''t stop. No matter what happens," W44 said.


    Both nodded.


    The airlock door lifted.


    "GO!" the voice yelled.


    W44 exploded into motion, kicking off with bent knees, hocks, and ankles, using his arm to add extra speed. He didn''t know how he knew, he just knew he was faster than N44.


    Faster even than girls.


    The red walls tingled as he sprinted through them, holding his breath to maximize his speed.


    He flew through the last one, slamming against an airlock interior door hard enough to bruise his shoulder and arm.


    N44 hurtled through the red holographic wall.


    D44 came in next.


    The airlock door slammed shut.


    "They killed her," D44 sobbed.


    W44 opened his mouth to yell at her to stop sobbing.


    "Is it the first time you''ve seen someone die?" N44 asked gently.


    She nodded. "You?"


    N44 looked at W44.


    "Not for us."


    They sat for a long time, waiting.


    Finally the interior door cycled and lifted, showing an entrance bay beyond.


    A holoemitter flickered to life.


    The biped stood there. Long arms, long limbs, no forearm hocks or leg hocks. Flat face. Hair on top of the head.


    "You made it," it said. "Damn, you Telkans are a lucky bunch."


    "What happened?" W44 asked.


    "Your ship hit a patch of hyperspace shades, I think," the hologram said. It waved for them to follow as it turned around. "Well, Marines. Lets get you geared up."


    "For what?" W44 asked.


    "We have to take back the station," the hologram said. It turned and looked at them. "Last three ships before yours?"


    "Yeah?" N44 asked.


    "Infested."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 48

    The only abundance you shall find is our ordnance! - Lanaktallan High General Le''edrmo''o, Defense of Shar-Lamok-281, Mar-gite Resurgence, 14,832 Post-Confederacy Reconsolidation


    "You guys need to follow me," the holoemitter projection said. It was scratched, tears in its uniform. It still held a blade of shining whitish blue code in one hand. It was varying shades of deep red with silver lines.


    "Where are we?" W44 asked. He looked back at the closed door. "What did they pull out of her?"


    "You''re at Main Support Non-Orbital Station 741-94B, Confederate side of the Long Dark," the hologram said. "As for that, well, that was a shade and it yanked out her soul, although some would say it just pulled out her phasic self-impression."


    W44 looked down at his hand, the one he had held out to her, the one she had just missed grabbing. "I almost had her."


    The hologram nodded. "That''s pretty standard," he opened a window in midair and looked over the data. "Huh, weird."


    "What?" N44 asked.


    "Your files are all garbled," the hologram said. He shook his head. "I''m Emerald Horizon 4474, Terran Digital Sentience. I was supposed to not wake up until I got sent to the Telkan systems."


    The trio looked at one another and back at the hologram.


    "What woke you up?" W44 asked.


    "Not sure. I came too after the ship went through autodocking with the station. Cargo was offloaded, I was put in place for some reason and woke up," Horizon said. "I''m a digital sentience, we have to stay locked down in Fairy Day cages for hyperspace transit. When they let me out and woke me up, the dying had already happened to the crew that brought me in. I''ve been running, hiding, and fighting for nearly a week."


    "So..." W44 said slowly. "We''re all in trouble."


    "Yeah," Emerald "Call me Emry" said.


    "What was the cargo on our vessel that you had to unload?" D44 asked.


    "Not sure. Whatever it was, it was out of Telkan Prime, same as you guys," Emry said. "You four, well, three now, were the only ones alive," He looked at D44. "When did the Telkan Marines start accepting female Telkans?"


    "We''re Telkana," D44 said. She shook her head. "I don''t know. I don''t know anything."


    "Cryoshock. It happens," Emry said. He paused next to a door, touching the hologram. "OK, Ready Room 23 is clear. Armory is inside. We''ll need to get you guys armor and weapons," he sighed. "I haven''t been able to find any disaster frames for myself."


    W44 frowned. "What are you again?"


    Emry looked at W44. "A Terran Digital Sentience. You know, code brought to life? Not an AI, AI''s are artificial sentience, I''m a digital sentience, two different things."


    W44 frowned deeper, racking his empty mind. "You aren''t supposed to be here."


    "Well, yeah, but what do you mean?" Emry asked. "I''m hacking the passcodes. Pretty heavy duty encryption."


    "No, you''re a Terran. You aren''t supposed to be here," W44 said. He wiped the sweat from the fur on his forehead. "I don''t know why, I just know you aren''t supposed to be here."


    N44 nodded. "Yeah. I mean, I don''t know why, but I know you shouldn''t be here."


    "Well, I am," Emry said. There was a beep and the bars collapsed into themselves and pulled into the bulkhead. "OK, armory is open."


    The Ready Room was a large open space, with tables that came up to the Telkan''s shoulders but the DS''s lower chest. There were three barred doors, one reading "ARMOR LOCKER", one reading "ARMS LOCKER" and the last reading "ORDNANCE - DANGER" on it. There were signs saying "NO SMOKING" as well as reminders to clear all weapons.


    Emry''s hologram stuttered slightly when he moved into the Ready Room.


    "Oof. Computer systems are down," he shook his head. "I''d give my right digital testicle to have a disaster frame," he looked around. "Right now, I''m sitting on a pallet in Delivery Bay 119. If there hadn''t been a wireless port open, I''d be blind and deaf, just sitting there helpless."


    W44 nodded. "Do you know if there''s any more like you?"


    Emry shook his head, putting one hand on the armory door. "No. I don''t have access to a ton of stuff. I''ve got some emergency dataslicing tools, I always pack those, but the majority of the systems are either offline, trashed, or locked down."


    He looked at the armory door. "It''s going to take me forever to crack this thing. We''re talking, minutes."


    D44 looked around. "What are we supposed to do in here?"


    Emry tapped the sign next to him. "Get you in your power armor, or at least hardshell armor, get your weapons."


    W44 turned to D44. "I''m not sure either."


    Emry stopped, staring at W44. "Uh, you are Telkan Marines, right? Your records that I could access say you''re riflemen, and Telkan Marine rifleman wear power armor."


    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    N44 shrugged. "I don''t remember."


    "Turn around," Emry said.


    "OK," N44 said, turning around. D44 turned around too.


    "OK. That''s weird. You can turn back around now," Emry said.


    "What''s weird?" N44 asked.


    "You don''t have pilot jacks at the base of your skulls," he squinted. "Are those real eyes? Can I see your palms?"


    All three held out their hands.


    "No subdermal palm and fingertip smartgun links, no smartwires, no cybereyes, no retinal display links," Emry said. He frowned. "Are you sure you''re Marines?"


    W44 shrugged. "Yeah. I mean, I guess."


    Emry frowned. "You''re missing the basic hardware implants."


    D44 shrugged. "I don''t know. I don''t remember anything."


    Emry turned back to the door. "Three cases of severe cryoshock. Great."


    W44 sat down, going to pat his pockets out of habit before he realized that the leotard didn''t have pockets. He wondered for a moment what he was looking for. He looked at N44, who was sitting on the floor too, his legs stretched out, leaning back slightly in a slumped posture. D44 was sitting up, her legs crossed.


    "You don''t sit like Telkan Marines either," the DS said. "Not that I''ve met that many. There were a few on the ship, I remember that," he sighed and ran a hand through his hair, making the code brighten and ripple. "I know we''re supposed to go toe to toe with the Lanks and the PAWM."


    "Paw-em?" D44 asked.


    "Precursor Autonomous War Machines. Bad ass spaceships the size of a continent, tearing up the neo-sapient worlds and the Lanky worlds," Emry shook his head. "Even without a security VI, eVI, or DS, this encryption system is nasty."


    He stepped back. "I can''t get it open," he moved to another input port marked by hologram. He put his hand against it and rezzed a bit. "System is totally trashed."


    "What happened to the station?" D44 asked.


    "Not sure. Automatic systems are online in some places, completely shut down in others," Emry said. "There''s shades in the system, so I keep having to fight my way through sections," he made an odd sound. "There''s a lot of weird data corruption. I''ve never seen anything like it. It keeps modifying itself, growing and adapting, but I can''t find any virus tags or footprints."


    The three Telkan nodded like they understood what he was saying, glancing at each other and giving subtle shrugs.


    "Wait, we got a live nanoforge," Emry said. "Huh, weird, it''s on autonomous full unlock mode. Class V nanoforge, full unlock," he blinked. "Come on, where are you?"


    W44 slowly stood up.


    "OK, it''s not far. A half mile, maybe. I''ve got the notification emitters spinning up red blocks now in our path," Emry said. He stared at them. "Station''s shade protocols are pretty specific. PA system is down or I''d play a dogboi howl."


    "So, we run?" W44 asked.


    Emry nodded. "We run. Stop at each red block to make sure we don''t run face first into a shade, then run to the next block. I''ll use a red line to guide us."


    N44 moved next to the door. "Ready when you are, Emry."


    The DS nodded. He touched the door and it opened up to reveal a red lit corridor.


    The trio followed the red line, stopping at the edge of each red block to check the corridor between the red blocks. Run, stop. Run. Stop. Run. Stop.


    Once Emry held up his hand to have them stop, staring at the wall.


    "What could do that?" Emry asked.


    The black metal was slagged in a long jagged line in several places. There was pitted spot where something had melted a ragged hole partway through the plating.


    "Electrical arcs?" D44 asked.


    "Gunfire?" N44 asked.


    "No, that''s Gen-IV Warsteel. Anything that could do that kind of damage is a crew served weapon or better," Emry said. He tapped the side of his head. "I''m still running on my survival core power," he sighed. "I need to get you to the nanoforge soon."


    "Why?" N44 asked.


    "Running low on power. My survival core and Fairy Day cage are powered by a zero-point reactor set. They get warm when they provide a certain amount of power. The warmer they get, the less power they can put out, so the more draw they are put under, which makes them hotter," Emry said. He wiped glittering sweat off his forehead. "It won''t be long till they go offline and I go into sleep mode for virus checking and defrag."


    "Does it hurt?" D44 asked.


    "No. Just makes me feel hot and tired," Emry said. He moved to the next red block and the trio moved with him.


    There was a sudden grinding shudder and the lights flashed. The red blocks in the hallway blinked and vanished.


    The red emergency lights clacked on.


    "Shit! Run!" Emry said.


    W44 could faintly hear screaming. Not of fear, but of complete rage. He grabbed D44''s wrist and half-dragged her behind him as they followed Emry through the now-darkened corridors.


    They ducked into a room. There were tool benches, lathes, and other esoteric machinery. Emry got the door shut as the trio ran into a puddle of red light cast by an emergency light.


    "Nanoforge is right there," he said. He moved over to it, sweating glitter, the holoemitters flickering and flashing, making him appear to move as jerkily as the shades.


    He tapped it, bringing up the menus. "It''s fully unlocked."


    "What is it?" D44 asked, leaving the red light and moving next to him.


    "Class V nanoforge, used for part replacement in cases where it''s preferable to replace the parts rather than toss the whole thing into the grinder and print a new one," Emry said.


    "What does it do?" N44 asked.


    W44 just kept watching the door.


    "Prints out things. It''s a matter printer," Emry said. He moved through the menus. "Odd. There''s Lanaktallan armor loaded into this thing. Why would it have that? Lanky weapons too. Lanky medical kit? That''s weird."


    "Who are the Lanky?" D44 asked, watching the menus flicker by. She couldn''t read them. For reason, she thought that was odd. She knew she knew how to read, but none of the menus make sense.


    "Four armed cow headed centaurs. We''re at war with them after they biocracked the Harmonous Cluster," Emry said. "OK, got Telkan body armor. It''ll have to scan you. They''ve got unlocks for cold iron weapons. I''m going to try to print up speakers so we can use the doboi howls."


    W44 just nodded. After a minute Emry called him over to get scanned. The red laser played over him as he stood with his arms straight out to his side. N44 and D44 were putting on the armor with the help of Emry''s instructions.


    Afterwards, Emry ''printed up'' food and bottles of water, letting them all eat while he checked over their armor, sometimes tossing a piece in the ''grinder'' and printing up a new piece.


    Finally, all three Telkan were in full environmental body armor, the plates red and coated with a thin layer of iron ferrite. They all held blades in their hands, red coated shields in the other.


    "We need to go for the bay where I''m being stored," Emry said. He wiped his forehead of the glitter. "I''m getting really hot."


    He reached out and touched their shoulders.


    W44 saw "MAP WAYPOINTS LOADDED" appear in his visor.


    "I''ve gotta drop. Follow the waypoints. I''ll leave instructions on the datapad on the side of my case," Emry said. He stared at them for a long moment. "Good luck."


    "We''ll rescue you," W44 said. He looked around. "See you."


    "See you," Emry said.


    He vanished without a sound.


    "Lets get going," W44 said. "Remember, hard short chops. Lock our shields together, thrust through the gap."


    The others nodded.


    "I''ve got your back, brother," N44 said.


    "I''m with you," D44 said. She paused a second. "Brother."


    W44 smiled. "And I with you, brothers."


    They moved to the dark hallway, lit only in pools from the emergency lights.


    There was the loud grinding sound that made the hallway shudder.


    Off in the distance something screamed in rage. Something else answered.


    "Forward, brothers," D44 said, her voice tight but unafraid.


    Shoulder to shoulder, they moved down the corridor.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 49

    The corridors were dark and empty. Despite the fact they were scrubbed clean to the point that even the black metal shined in the dim red lights, it had the feeling of age and neglect to the trio. It felt as if there should be cobwebs in the ceiling corners and dust so thick it was more like dirt along the edges where the wall met the floor. The lights felt like they should be even dimmer, maybe flickering, lit by candles rather than the burning red of micro-LEDs.


    They moved carefully, peeking out of the holographic red walls or boxes to the next section of the corridor, all the while following the red arrow. Their HUDs were displayed only as shades of red with silver outlines, their comlinks only tuned to one another across old analogue bands.


    It gave even the armor the feeling of age and neglect, even through they had seen it printed from a fabricator that had ground and shuddered as it worked.


    Three times they stopped, waiting for a creature of line-art to move by. Twice, the creature blocking their way just drifted through the empty bay, making low moaning noises. It had no legs, just trailing pale whitish-gray mist below the waist, its face a blank mask except for the black eyes with the red pinpoints in the middle.


    They followed Emry''s advice. They sat down, two napping while one stood guard, eating the nutripaste or drinking.


    "This paste isn''t too bad," W44 said. He took another pull. "Tastes like berries and sweetener."


    N44 nodded. "Better than... better than..." he frowned. "I almost had it. Better than the nutripaste in the packages, on the table, other people there," his frown got deeper. "We''re laughing, drinking narcobrew," he looked up at W44. "You''re there."


    W44 just shrugged. "You''re familiar."


    D44 looked at the two males. "What about me? Am I familiar?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly.


    Both looked at each other then at her, then shook their heads. "No, sorry."


    "Kind of, but not really. I''ve seen you before. I just don''t know where," W44 said.


    They kept moving, twice nervously standing in elevators while the whole thing filled with red light, with red holograms on the walls, ceiling, and floor.


    They all nervously checked the bottom of their feet to make sure the red paint was still holding as the elevator went down.


    The way to where Emry''s "survival core" was located was winding, and the inertial and laser scanning map their armor built showed them heading outward from the elevators, where before they had been moving inward.


    They rested again, fatiguing easy. Twice the world shuddered and the grinding noise filled the world, even getting through the high volume filters on their armor. The lights dimmed at the beginning and got brighter, almost painfully bright at the peak of the grinding noise. They dimmed as the grinding sound faded.


    W44 groaned as memories suddenly welled up, a confusing welter of images and sounds, most of them disconnected.


    My name is Wrixet...


    He looked up and it clicked.


    His name is Naxen...


    ...we''re Fifth Streeters.


    He stared at the female.


    Nothing.


    "Naxen," he said carefully.


    The other Telkani made a groaning noise and put his hands against the visor of his helmet. After a moment he looked up, staring at Wrixet.


    "Fifth Street for life," he said. "You''re Wrixet."


    Wrixet nodded, looking at his arm that had the bracelet on it. "W, for Wrixet."


    Naxen held up his arm. "N for Naxen."


    The Telkani stayed silent for a moment. "What do you think D stands for?"


    The two males shrugged.


    They sat quietly, their legs, spine, and shoulders aching. After a while Wrixet stood up, stretching.


    "We need to get moving again."


    The others groaned but got to their feet, Naxen helping D44 to her feet.


    "I know I had parents, a mom, a dad, a broodcarrier," D44 said softly. "I know I was in advanced schooling for something, but I don''t know what or where."


    The two males nodded.


    They stopped and waited for two of those line-art things to move through the wall.


    It took a bit. It was gradual, subtle, but all too soon Wrixet held his arm out to stop the other two.


    "What?" Naxen asked.


    "Look at the passageway," Wrixet said.


    "What about it?" Naxen asked, looking around.


    "Ohhh," D44 said. She pointed up. "Uh, when did it start looking like that?"


    Naxen looked up and saw immediately what the Telkani was talking about.


    The passageway was four meters tall, three meters wide. The ceiling had supports for the last meter, strange flowing supports. The ceiling was rippled, wavy. Chains were attached to the supports, moving up to heavy bolts driven into the ceiling. Pipes that twisted in and out of the ceiling, many of them looking ancient and corroded.


    "We better get a move on," Wrexit said. "I don''t like the way that looks."


    "Why would they make it look like that?" Naxen said.


    Wrexit shrugged.


    "I don''t think they did," D44 said. She pointed at a hanging chain with barbs hanging from rings on each link. "That''s weird. There''s no reason for it. Emry said we''re on a space station, space stations don''t have things that aren''t needed."


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "All the reason to pick up the..." Wrexit started.


    One of the things lunged out of the wall, grabbing his shield. He could feel it tugging on it, a weird sensation, like a memory of having his arm tugged on.


    D44 turned and chopped twice at its back while Naxen pushed his shield against it.


    It screamed and suddenly fell into clear gel onto the floor.


    Wrexit shivered. "I''m never going to get used to that."


    "They look like Emry, only made of white lines," D44 said, looking around. "They move through solid objects except for red and iron," she shivered slightly. "And wherever they touch gets colder."


    "Maybe they''re like Emry, only bad?" Wrexit guessed.


    "Maybe," Naxen said.


    They started moving through. According to their HUD they only had a little under fourteen hundred meters to go.


    Still, the trip was winding.


    At one intersection they stopped so Wrexit could pan his shoulder mounted light up and down the hallways.


    They were showing more and more signs of strangeness. The holograms were red, strange runes full of points and eye watering swirls. Thick gray mist had started lifting up from the floor, swirling around their feet. When the line-art creatures crossed it, their lower bodies lost cohesion, melding with the mist.


    "How far?" D44 asked, shivering. "Mine started saying "ERROR" a few minutes ago."


    Naxen swallowed. "Mine says ''you will die here'' since two corners ago."


    "Mine says two hundred meters but that we''ll never make it," Wrexit said. He shook his head. "I don''t care. We''ll keep following it."


    They moved slightly closer to one another, moving in the middle of the wide passage.


    "Why do you think the passageways are so large?" Naxen asked.


    Wrexit just shrugged.


    "So something big can move through. Maybe someone bigger than us, like Emry is bigger than us?" D44 asked.


    Two more turns and the corridor stopped at a heavy blast door.


    Wrexit saw the number for the doorpad appear on his HUD. The numbers didn''t match the runes on the keypad, but his HUD was highlighting a number. He carefully punched it in. Another number was highlighted.


    He started working through the number string.


    Halfway through there was a shriek from behind them.


    More shrieks echoed through the hallways.


    "We''ve got company," Naxen said.


    "Hurrying. It''s twenty-six digits," Wrexit said.


    The keypad suddenly buzzed.


    "And I fumblefingered it," he griped.


    He could hear the other two grunting, hear the screeching behind him, but he concentrated on pressing the buttons in the order they were highlighting.


    The whole world shuddered as the loud grinding wound up, peaked, then faded.


    The numbers and runes didn''t match. The readout didn''t match was he was putting in, the crimson runes burning balefully on the LEDs.


    "I got you!" Naxen suddenly yelled.


    Four more.


    "Get him, get him," D44 shouted.


    He felt something strike his back, cold with the memory of being hit hard enough to break bones.


    Two more.


    "More coming!" D44 yelled.


    The door suddenly lifted up and receded into the corners at 45 degree angles, with an interior door pulling to each side and a door beyond lifting up and receding into the floor.


    They rushed through.


    Wrexit hit the "emergency close" as D44 threw their last mist grenade into the hallway.


    Two of the creatures hit the mist spewed by the grenade. Their lines flashed into burning embers and they screamed as they dissolved.


    "Made it," D44 said.


    "Not until we''ve spent the money on narcobrew and joygrils and lawsec has something better to do," Wrexit said.


    D44 frowned. "That''s a weird thing to say."


    Naxen shrugged. "Sounds right to me."


    The room was huge, cavernous. The ceiling vanished into the darkness. Cranes, gantries, lifts, all hung from heavy beams. Chains hung from the ceiling and the walls. Silent machinery lined the walls, were sitting in the middle of the floor, and was hidden by the dim red lights.


    "This way," Wrexit said, leading the other two through the winding path between huge crates. Many of them looked like they had started to rust at the corners and the bottom edges.


    By one wall was a stack of heavy looking cubes, all of them nearly as tall as the trio, sitting on a metal pallet.


    One cube had a flashing light and a lit datapad on the side.


    They moved up and looked at it.


    "HEY GUYS" the top line read.


    It was instructions on what to do to get Emry free, where to take him, and what to do then.


    "I''m not going down that hallway on the map," D44 said. "My armor map says the whole thing was covered in chains hanging from the ceiling."


    "We''ll have to find somewhere else," Wrexit said. He moved over and grabbed the grav-dolly. It took twice to turn it on. When it powered up, hidden runes flared to life, burning with orange, purple, and red fire.


    They carefully moved Emry''s "Fairy Day Disaster Survival Core" case to the grav-dolly. Even through the gloves of the armor one side of the case was uncomfortably hot, with flashing red lights and runes on a small data strip. Once they got it on the grav-dolly, the datapad loaded information to their armor.


    "We''ll have to figure out another path," Wrexit said. "He needs a power lead, a data tap, and a nanoforge to create the safety cables."


    "What about that big eating area?" Naxen asked. "It''s a little ways, but it''s outside of the chains and weird stuff."


    There was the grinding shudder again. The lights brightened, runes appeared, flickered, disappeared. The lights dimmed as the grinding wound down.


    "We''ll go for it," Wrexit said. He pushed the grav-dolly a little ways. "It''s heavy. We''ll switch off."


    D44 just nodded.


    The red lights kept flickering, or were too dim to do much more than just suggest the boundaries of the passageways. More than a few of the holoemitters that had formed impenetrable walls to the creatures were now gone. Some had been replaced by strange patterns of interlinked runes.


    "It feels greasy when we go through those," D44 said, shuddering, after they passed through an interlinked wall of runes. She paused, stopping to pant and let her armor''s circulation cool her off. "I''m spent."


    "Stops those things though," Wrexit said. "I''ll push."


    He switched to the dolly, while Naxen moved up to the lead and D44 grabbed the towing strap and pulled on it.


    The corridors slowly returned to normal. The holograms springing from the walls either pale white or red bracketed by white. Normal, clean red, not the greasy feeling red of the runes or the warped holograms.


    They steered the heavy grav-dolly through the passages, twice taking breaks.


    One of the times Naxen held his head as more disconnected memories lanced through it. D44 had a minor seizure, the only outward clue was the way she banged the back of her helmet against the wall she was leaning against. Wrexit found himself on his side, D44''s hands keeping him steady. The inside of his helmet stunk of vomit, but his faceshield was clear.


    "Remember anything new?" D44 asked.


    Wrexit just shook his head. "Nothing connected," he gave a chuckle. "More than a few memories of sitting in a lawsec cell with him."


    "I snag your narcobrews when you aren''t looking," Naxen chuckled. He looked at D44. "You?"


    She shook her head. "No. Just memories of cuddling with a broodcarrier."


    The two males sighed enviously and started pushing the grav-dolly.


    The door to the eating area was marked "COMMUNCAL MILITARY DINING HALL 57553" on the holograms that were springing from it. The door opened as soon as D44 waved her fingertips near the hologram.


    Together, they pushed the grav-dolly over to where there was a series of sockets labeled "datatap - secure/unsecure", where there were power leads.


    While Naxen and D44 rested, Wrexit went over to one of the devices on the wall. He''d seen them before, he knew. Not personally. In vids of rich people. Well, maybe once, but it had been putting out unflavored nutripaste and he was wearing an orange baggy jumpsuit.


    He followed the directions carefully, quickly navigating away from food and drink and into hidden menus. He printed up "HIGH THREAT SECURE DATACORD" and "HIGH THREAT SECURE UNIDIRECTIONAL POWER CABLE - HIGH VOLTAGE/AMP/WATT" and waited while the machinery spooled out two long heavy cables.


    D44 and Naxen helped him drag it over to the box, then carefully plug it in. First to the wall, then to the box.


    After the power conduit was connected a holoemitter on the case spun up.


    "Hey, we made it," Emry said. He looked around. "Chow hall. Why not the emergency locker I had on the map?"


    "The corridors were weird," Naxen said.


    "They felt dangerous," D44 said.


    "Let me see. Put your palms on the flat induction pads," Emry said.


    All three took turns.


    "Let me look," Emry said. "OK, standard, standards, that hallway''s... oh. Oh. Oh no."


    "What?" D44 asked.


    "I know why the computer coding and the data corruption keeps growing," Emry said. "Oh, no. Oh, no no no."


    "What?" Naxen asked.


    "Pull the plug! Pull it!" Emry shouted, pointing at the data cable.


    Naxen reached out and yanked it free.


    Emry sat down on top of the box.


    "We''re in trouble," he said.


    "You keep saying that. Why?" Naxen asked.


    "We''ve got ongoing Hellspace corruption."

 Nova Wars Chapter 25+25

    I proved Hellspace exists, so it reached back to prove I exist by touching me. - Digital Prairie Harry, Age of Extinction, 2 years Pre-TXE


    "What''s Hellspace?" D44 asked.


    Emry stared at her for a second. "The burnt hyperatomic plane? You''ve never heard of it?"


    D44 shrugged. "If I did, I don''t remember."


    Emry turned and looked at Naxen and Wrexit. "You two?"


    Both shrugged.


    "Hell," D44 said, drawing the word out. She nodded. "Sounds bad."


    "None of you have heard of Hellspace? OK, it''s a burnt hyperatomic plane that is constantly on fire. Has strange things living in it? Corrupts n-space -our reality- when it comes into contact?" Emry tried.


    "Nope, never heard of it," Naxen said. He shrugged. "I get the feeling that I haven''t heard of much."


    Emry gave a long suffering sigh. "Just contact with Hellspace, just a brush, can cause computer code corruption, alteration of the physical world, alteration of how a being thinks, acts, and looks."


    "Sounds bad," D44 said.


    Emry just stared at her. "Yeah. You could say that."


    Wrexit looked around. Everything looked fine to him. "So, what? Do we get a mop or something?"


    Emry sighed again. "No," he seemed to firm up. "We go to the engineering section and see if we can get the Hellspace shields up and running."


    Wrexit frowned. "Sounds dangerous."


    "More dangerous not to. Pretty soon things will start coming through that make the shades look like friendly pets," Emry said. He looked at the wall mounted fabricator they pulled the cables from. "I''m going to need a disaster frame and I''ll walk you through putting me in it."


    Naxen grinned. "That, we can handle."


    It took a while. Several time the grinding sound started, making the room shudder, the lights going dim and coming back up overly bright at the height of the grinding and shuddering, then slowly dimming back to normal as the sound and vibration wound down.


    "That''s not good," Emry said at one point.


    "What is it?" Wrexit asked.


    "I think, and I hope I''m wrong, I think it''s the primary reactor trying to start up and failing," Emry said.


    "Can we fix it?" D44 asked.


    "Not unless we get to it. Until then, I don''t know," Emry said.


    "If it doesn''t start, does it matter?" Naxen asked.


    "Maybe, maybe not," Emry said. "Depends on whether or not the Hellspace shielding has its own local power source. If it does, then no, it doesn''t matter right away, if not, then it matters a lot."


    "So, nothing we can do right now," Naxen said.


    "Right," Emry nodded as D44 and Wrexit attached the left leg to the lower torso section of the ''disaster frame'', which was a robot chassis with space in the chest for Emry''s ''survival core'' to be loaded in.


    Wrexit just shrugged. "Then I''m not going to worry about it," he said. He pulled the rubbery internal lining of the outer shell over the hip joint, then moved to the shoulder while D44 went and got the left arm.


    "So, what is exactly is this place?" Naxen asked.


    Emry looked up from where he was typing in commands on the fabricator. "A Confederate Joint Armed Services Main Support Logistics Base. It''s used pretty far behind friendly lines to refit and rearm spaceships, ground forces, all of that," he saw the slight confused looks. "A military space base."


    "Then where is everyone?" D44 asked, kneeling down to attach the fingers to the hand. She activated the small backup power cell in the hand, the fingers just slotted in, the hand doing all the work once she put the round knob into the socket. She stood up, grabbed the forearm, and attached the hand to it.


    "I don''t know, that''s the problem. Time/date stamps are all corrupted. For some reason the system thinks over forty-thousand years have passed," Emry said.


    "It''s been like fifty thousand years since the Second Precursor War," D44 said. She winced slightly. "I learned that in school."


    Emry sighed. "Fifty thousand years locked down in a Fairy-Day Cage, sleeping while the universe moved on," he paused for a moment. "Nifty Thrint Field saved me, I guess."


    "Probably nothing''s changed," Wrexit said. "If something changes, it''s usually for the worse."


    Emry looked at him. "Why do you say that?"


    Wrexit shrugged. "Dunno. Just how it seems like it is."


    "Remembering more?" Naxen asked.


    Wrexit shook his head, accepting the arm from D44. "Not really. Just bits and pieces," he laughed. "I know you used to run in front of cars and act like they hit you."


    Naxen laughed. "That sounds funny."


    Wrexit leaned back as the arm locked into the socket and started going through self-tests as the socket covers slid into place. "Know you were the best at it."


    Emry was looking at both of the Telkana. "Huh."


    "What?" Naxen asked.


    "Nothing," Emry looked away.


    "I can remember riding in the car with my parents," D44 said. "I look out the window a lot."


    Emry made a weird look. "Check the wiring harness on that one," he said, pointing. "Finger pressure feedback sensors aren''t reporting."


    D44 checked it, unplugged it, plugged it back in. The pinprick telltales went green.


    Finally, it was done. They waited for Emry to put the instructions on a datapad, then opened up his case.


    The case was the size of a washing machine, but the ''survival core'' was just a touch over a third of a meter per side in a cube. There was a handle on the top, with press-buttons and an LED panel. The LED panel showed a green smiley face as they pulled the handle and D44 and Wrexit carried it over to the disaster frame. They put it carefully in place, then tapped the buttons before closing the chest.


    Nothing happened.


    "Think we killed him?" Naxen asked, setting down his fizzystim bottle.


    "Naw, he''s just waking up. Probably knocked him out," Wrexit said.


    "He has to do function checks and stuff," D44 said.


    The grinding noise started, the vibration light. It got stronger, the lights brightening to almost painful levels, then dimmed back down as the grinding noise wound down.


    Wrexit laid on the bench, staring at the ceiling. Naxen did the same on the table next to him. D44 sat for a minute, then laid down.


    All three slept through the grinding as it came and went.


    -----


    He was all by himself but he wasn''t alone. He was swinging a set of knuckle dusters on one hand, the grav arc on the leading edge burning white. With the other hand he had a cloth around his forearm that he used to slap aside fists, knives, broken bottles. Blood was spraying, people were screaming.


    He was laughing.


    "Wake up," the tapping on the hardshell plate of his chest woke him up.


    The disaster frame was leaning over him. The face looked like Emry.


    "I''m awake," Wrexit said, sitting up.


    Emry moved to D44 and then Naxen, waking them up.


    The three ate while Emry paced back and forth, obvious impatient to get moving.


    "We need better weapons," Naxen said.


    D44 hefted her sword. "I like this."


    "Got brass knuckles with a graviton boost?" Wrexit asked, remembering his dream.


    The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    "Lemme check," Emry said, tapping through the holographic controls. He looked up. "Yeah. Let me set the color to red."


    "How about a knife? Not like a sword, but a long bladed knife?" Naxen asked.


    Emry checked. "Got one designed for fighting shades. Mark II Close Combat Cutting Bar, Telkan, huh, it has a salt block that the chain rubs on to cover the chain," Emry said. He tapped the keyboard.


    They sat and watched as the fabricator worked, lifting the lid so Wrexit could get both glove covers. He put them on slowly and carefully, feeling the weight, as Naxen checked over his knives.


    It felt good.


    "What does the salt do?" D44 asked.


    "Disrupts the shades," Emry said.


    D44 hefted her shield and sword. "Maybe you should coat them with salt crystals," she glanced at the blade Naxen was holding. "I''ll take one of those too. Bigger though"


    Emry just nodded.


    "Can you do my forearm?" Wrexit asked, holding out his left arm. "And my knees and thighs?"


    "Sure, why not?" Emry asked.


    He worked through each request, until the trio of Telkan stood there, salt crystals and iron powder gleaming in the light.


    "Ready?" Emry asked.


    "Ready," they each said.


    Emry moved over to the door.


    "We''ll go this way. It''s not the shortest route, but it''ll keep us clear of everything I''m getting corrupted data from."


    They nodded.


    Emry opened the door, revealing a red cube area ahead. He headed toward it. Naxen and Wrexit looked at each other, then at D44, who nodded.


    "I''m with you, brothers," she said softly.


    Nodding, they started following Emry on a long, twisting route through the corridors, moving through red boxes in the middle of the corridors.


    "Hey, how did you talk to us on the spaceship?" D44 asked.


    "The computer secondary systems woke me up, had me guide in the ships that were coming in. The first ship was full of nothing but the dead and a bunch of shades, all out of some Lanaktallan world. I knew things were sideways," Emry said. "The computer wouldn''t load me into the main digital sentience array, said there was hardware failures," he paused before looking outside of the red box. "Clear," he said. "Anyway, I had access to the station to ship communication''s hardware, but it was bringing up my heat levels pretty fast."


    He paused. "You were the first living I''ve seen in at least two weeks," he said. "There was some garbled messages that I got after I checked the deployed ansible. The hypercom wave is weird, like it''s stagnant, or something''s wrong with it."


    They paused again. D44 checked, waved them forward, and they jogged to the next red box.


    Emry tapped his red forearm. "Had some stuff about the shades. Partial message, header unknown. Gave some instructions, repeated several times to stay alive, that I wasn''t alone, that other people were linking up. Dogboi howls, iron, salt, the color red. Warned me to disable all monitors, disable all picture in picture, use only red and silver for displays."


    "Huh," Naxen said.


    "Think it''s happening everywhere?" D44 asked. She hugged herself. "I hope my broodmommy is OK."


    "We''ll get the Hellspace shields up, then check the ansible. Might be able to see what is going on," Emry said. "I''ll be honest, the way those garbled messages looked, it seemed like the entire spur was infected with shades, something called Atrekna, and everyone who wasn''t dead was fighting for their lives."


    D44 looked away, still hugging herself.


    "Looks clear," Emry said.


    They got three steps when a dozen shades erupted from the walls, screaming.


    The grav-fists came to life with a sharp crack as Wrexit extended out his fists. The first one caught the shade in the mid-section, exploding out clear ectoplasm. He blocked another one with the iron and salt laden crystals on his forearm. The shade drew back with a screech, its hands dissolving. He saw one lunging for D44''s back and swung hard, catching it through the back, his hand passing through the lineart, the salt and iron crystals coating his arm smoking as the white lines twisted and bent.


    Clear ectoplasm splattered D44''s back as she hacked one down, following it as it held out its hands and tried to move backwards, her sword chopping like she was cutting down a tree.


    Naxen moved fast, ducking under swipes, nimbly moving out of the way, stabbing just above the waist at the back, halfway up the side of the torso, or into the back of the thighs on the shades, the fact they were larger than him making it easy for him to target.


    Emry had a half dozen pulling at him, smashing him against the wall as they tried to pull him through it.


    D44 hacked at the hands, making the limbs explode into black smoke or shatter into ectoplasm. Naxen kept working on the ones still flooding at them, stabbing as fast as he could.


    Wrexit stepped up next to him, swinging his fists, blocking the shade''s attempts with his forearms. He had his feet planted, putting his hips into each swing, his arms lifted in front of him, elbows bent, arm hocks and wrists stiff as he waded in more than danced around.


    It felt right the way he was throwing punches. Fast, brutal, rarely bringing his arms out to full extension.


    He found he had to pull his punches so he wasn''t thrown off balance, but for some reason his body knew what to do even if his brain didn''t.


    The last one he punched in the chest, it fell back screeching, black mist spreading where there had once been lineart. He threw a second punch and it splattered.


    He stood there, winded, staring at the splattered clear goo.


    "Clear?" Naxen asked.


    "Crystal," Wrexit said, lifting up his hand and staring at it. The grav-arc was snarling, sparks popping off it to dissolve within less than a centimeter. He touched his pinky to his thumb and it winked out.


    "Clear," D44 said.


    "Clear, for now," Emry said. He headed for the next cube. "We need to keep moving."


    They moved through the hallways, attacked twice on the way. Both times, it was when the grinding started and the holographic red areas cut out. Once they were still fighting when the holograms came back on and the shades were slammed away from them, screeching.


    Naxen grabbed Wrexit''s shoulder pad to keep him from following and throwing punches.


    "Main Engineering," Emry said at the blast door. "Not sure what we''ll find, but from there we will either be able to activate the Hellspace shielding or at least find out what''s wrong with it," the grinding started then wound back down before the lights did much more than flicker. "And I can run a diagnostic on the primary power systems."


    D44 hefted her blade, which was still smoking from the ectoplasm interacting with the salt and iron crystals. The Mark 2 Cutting Bar was slung across her back, still unused. "Let''s get on with it."


    Emry nodded, touching the door controls. "Locked down, give me a minute. My slicers can cut this."


    After a minute the blast doors receded. The one facing them pulling back into the corners, the one behind it moving into the floor and ceiling, the one past that pulling in to the left and right, and the last one pulling back into the corners.


    The interior of the Main Engineering was full of shades that screamed and rushed them.


    Wrexit found himself laughing as he waded in, the grav-fist snarling. He''d step into their swings, lifting his arm to take the blow on his biceps or middle forearm -between the elbow and wrist hock- or knocking their blow to the side. At the same time he''d punch, twisting at the waist, putting his hips into it.


    D44 smashed them back with her shield, chopping at them with her blade, which was smoking heavily. When her sword passed through harmlessly she threw it to the side, reached behind her, and pulled the cutting bar free.


    The motor roared as she triggered it and drove the blade into the chest of the shade that was coming at her again, one arm smoking from where her blade had nearly damaged it. The shade shrieked as the roaring chain plunged through its chest, showering ectoplasm.


    Naxen kept tight to Emry, stabbing at any shade that got too close with his ''ripper'', the Mark 2 Close Combat Cutting Bar snarling as he slashed at the shades.


    Emry ran for the master console, running up and slapping his hand on the induction port.


    "Brother, help me," D44 suddenly called out.


    Wrexit turned to see that she had a whole swarm swirling around her. He charged forward, leading with his red painted shoulder that gleamed with salt crystals.


    "ON YOUR RIGHT, SISTER!" he bellowed out.


    D44 shifted slightly so she was chopping away from him with the roaring chainsword.


    He crashed through the shades, feeling like he was hitting thin pieces of paper. They splattered, some reforming, others turning into black mist that puffed away. He stepped back, getting back to back with her, punching at the shades, the red colored grav-arc snarling and popping.


    "Whatever you''re doing, do it fast," Naxen shouted, cutting two in half. One puffed into black dust, reforming not far away.


    "Hurrying," Emry said. He sounded like his teeth were chattering. "System''s a wreck. Corruption everywhere. Hellspace, age, uncollected garbage."


    Wrexit took a blow on his shoulder from one that drove icy spikes into his muscle, his return punch splattered it across the bulkhead. He knew he was smiling, felt almost giddy as he kept punching.


    "NO LAWSEC TO SAVE YOU HERE, TELK!" he shouted, punching a shade twice in the face, the second blow hitting before it could explode into mist or protoplasm. It shattered, the goop falling to the floor.


    "Almost... almost..." Emry said.


    Naxen spun out of the way, kicked out with one foot, and slammed the red painted iron coated sole of his boot into the leg. The shade didn''t go down, but it did swivel, turning in place like momentum didn''t exist.


    He shoved the blade through its face, ectoplasm spraying his face shield.


    The lights kicked on.


    Red.


    The shades screamed and fled.


    "Clear?" Naxen called out.


    "Clear," D44 said. She slumped slightly, letting the cutting bar''s engine idle.


    "Crystal," Wrexit said. He grinned. "Nice fight. They aren''t 32nd Streeters though."


    Naxen laughed. "I have no idea what that means."


    "Hellshields coming online," Emry said. "Main power systems are at less than 3% fuel," he looked up. "Fuel rods are depleted. I''m fabbing up new ones and having the automated systems reload it," he looked down. "Emergency systems are activated."


    "OK," D44 said, still panting. She moved up and sat down at one of the chairs in front of a console. "What does that do?"


    "I''ll run a star comparison, find the navigation stars, figure out how long this station has been drifting, find out where we are, see why we''re getting Hellspace corruption," Emry said.


    "Sounds boring," Naxen said. He moved over and sat down, cracking open his face shield.


    Wrexit moved over to the ''nanoforge'', following the remembered instructions, and got three fizzystims. He carried them over, handing one to D44, one to Naxen, keeping the last. He opened his face shield, cracked the can, and took a drink.


    It tasted amazing.


    The best thing he''d ever tasted.


    "Old running shoes and lawn clippings," D44 read. She cracked the can, grinning at the ''you''ll be sorry'' it squeaked, and took a long drink. She smiled. "That''s some damn good grass and shoes."


    Naxen laughed. "I''ve got black coffee grounds and two day old spaghetti," he took another drink, "Tastes great."


    They sat there, catching their breath, drinking the fizzystims, feeling the strength return.


    "Oh, this isn''t good," Emry said.


    "What?" D44 asked. "What now?"


    "Well, the date stamps are right. Just over forty-thousand years, give or take a couple of centuries," Emry said. "That isn''t the problem."


    "What is?" Naxen asked.


    Emry tossed up a smattering of pinpoints of light.


    "This is a map of this area of the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Arm Spur," Emry said.


    "What''s that?" Naxen asked.


    "Where we live," D44 said. She winced. "Ouch," she looked up. "Apparently I like pale grass green."


    "Girly color," Naxen snickered.


    D44 just laughed.


    "Anyway," Emry said, mentally revising all three of their ages down from mid-20''s. He motioned and a bunch of the pinpoints suddenly had green circles around them. "This is the Confederate side of the Long Dark," he motioned again. This time a bunch of pinpoints had red circles. "From the station''s sensors, all of these systems have been Hellspiked."


    "What''s that?" Wrexit asked.


    "I''ll explain later. Short answer, hellspace nova bombs on the stars," Emry said. "Weird thing is, from each hellspiked star there''s a beam of hellspace energy crossing lightyears, sometimes twenty or thirty, to reach the next hellspiked star. Each star connects to between four and sixteen stars."


    "Wow," D44 said. "Oh, that''s a lot of dead people if those places were occupied."


    "That''s not all," Emry said. The lines suddenly appeared, connecting the stars. "Between the lines Hellspace energy is spreading, about a half light year thick, filling in the gaps between the lines."


    He tapped one spot. "That''s us."


    Dead in the middle of a slowly reddening spot in between five different lines.


    "It looks like a wall," D44 said.


    "A wall made of Hellspace," Emry said.


    Wrexit stared at it. He finished off the can and set it on the console as everyone stared at the star map.


    "And we''re in the middle," Emry said.


    "What do we do?" D44 asked.


    Wrexit stood up and turned to look at the other three. He extended out one hand in a snapping motion and the grav-fist snarled to life.


    "We survive."

 Nova Wars Chapter 51

    Captain N''Skrek stared at the holotank, then at the viewscreens against the far bulkhead, then the screen arranged around his Captain''s Chair. From one, to the other, then the last, then back to the first.


    No matter how long he silently stared, the data didn''t change.


    There were hundreds of Space Force vessels in the system. The shipyards around the gas giant had hundreds in orbit waiting for their turn in the docks.


    There hundreds of ships damaged and needing repair.


    Some were being cleared of Mar-gite on the hull, he could see the tiny flashes of weaponry being used. The com-channels had dedicated channels to shipboard clearing operations.


    We''re losing, went through his head for the hundredth time as he stared at the ships.


    One, at the edge of the system, silently exploded. It had been listed as "All Hands Lost" and on automatic systems.


    Rather than board the ship, they''d chosen to destroy it.


    He already had his orders. Bring the Gray Lady in, attend briefings to fill in the Admiralty on the situation he had retreated from, then wait for his orders.


    Captain N''Skrek knew he could sum up the briefing in three words.


    "We. Are. Losing."


    Another ship exploded on the holotank.


    He turned away, heading for his Ready Room.


    He had holoconference calls to attend.


    -----


    Captain N''Skrek had chosen to attend the briefing in person, rather than via hologram. While normally it was only for Task Force Command Staffs, the Grey Lady''s class made it so he received and invitation to the briefing. Personally, N''Skrek believed that it was entirely automated and accidental, but he wanted to be there in person.


    He sat in the back, Vice-Admiral Breakheader next to him, making sure that the briefing was being transmitted back to back to the Grey Lady so that both Captain N''Skrek and Vice-Admiral Breakheader''s staffs could watch in realtime as well as record it for later discussion.


    The first thing N''Skrek noticed was that there were a lot of Terrans present.


    True, even two was a lot the last forty-thousand years, but over half of the beings present were Terrans, all waiting patiently. He could smell the anticipation rolling off of the Terrans, just as it did from the Vice-Admiral, and lit a cigarette to help banish the pheromones.


    All too soon Four Star Admiral Kwarskwak took the stage, a clicker in one hand.


    The room fell silent.


    N''Skrek watched as the Admiral brought up the star systems that were part of the "Mar-gite Defensive Line" and detailed them.


    We lost those six systems ago, N''Skrek thought to himself. He watched as she went through the ships that had been stationed there, tallying up the ones he knew were lost.


    Almost all of them.


    Then came the next defensive line.


    And the next.


    And the next.


    Each time, it was detailed how the Mar-gite had transferred ''in force'' into the system, engaging Space Force elements, landing on the planet, as well as just absorbing solar energy and ''warping'' back out. The briefing even detailed how roughly 20% of the Mar-gite clusters ''went dark'' and coasted out of the system at a leisurely .25-.65C.


    All of them heading for another star system. Reinforcements that would arrive years or decades after the ones making warp for those systems.


    Three times the group took a break before just detailing the situation as it stood came to an end.


    Then a break for the night.


    The next day, more briefings. Ship types available, what the newest ''line in the sand'' consisted of.


    Two hundred sixteen stellar systems.


    The lead Mar-gite elements were expected to warp into the systems at roughly the same time.


    Ninety-six hours.


    The briefing paused on that.


    Captain N''Skrek found himself pacing in his quarters, walking around the hologram, staring at it, trying desperately to figure out a way to fight back, to stop them dead.


    Something.


    Anything.


    His door chimed and he just waved one bladearm at it, staring at the holotank.


    He still couldn''t find anything that could help.


    "Captain," Vice-Admiral Breakheader''s voice was a rumble that projected power, authority, and competence.


    "Admiral," N''Skrek said. He tapped the star that was the beginning of it.


    According to fast message torpedo, there were still Petraconstructs coming in, nearly a dozen a day, all of them warping out to systems the Mar-gite had already overrun.


    The Admiral moved up next to him, putting his hands behind his back and clasping them.


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    "Hell of a thing, isn''t it?" the Admiral said.


    "I keep thinking, where did they all come from?" N''Skrek said.


    "The rest of that galactic arm," Breakheader said. "The Gray Ships were fighting there, trying to hold them back, but I have a feeling that the infection is far worse than we think it is."


    N''Skrek turned and frowned. "How so?"


    "May I?" Breakheader motioned at the holotank.


    "Of course," N''Skrek moved back.


    Breakheader expanded the view to show the entire Milky Way galaxy. He tapped the two antispinward arms.


    "What if this one," he tapped the one beyond the nearest, "Is where they are coming from? We know that the Grey Fleet and TerraSol took the fight to them in this one," he tapped the nearest anti-spinward. "But what if, after the Terran Xenocide Event, the Grey Fleet was only able to put up a holding action?"


    N''Skrek nodded. It made sense.


    "But," the Admiral said. He made a slight sound of frustration. "What I''ve been trying to get Command to understand, is a simple thing."


    He tapped three spots between the galactic arms. The only three dots between the Cygnus-Orion Spur and the Sagittarius Arm. "These were supposed to be heavily defended."


    "I was here," N''Skrek tapped the one closest to the Cygnus Orion Arm. "We had no warning. They came through by the scores. Giga and Petra Class Clusters."


    "So what happened here and here?" the Admiral asked. He drew a slight crescent. "More importantly, what happened to the Mar-gite Defensive Line?"


    "The what?" N''Skrek asked.


    The Admiral reached toward the room controls. "May I?"


    N''Skrek nodded.


    The Admiral typed in commands then stepped back. "We''ll need to use a SCIF. It''s still classified data."


    N''Skrek checked. There was a sensitive compartmented information facility only a short walk away. He reserved it and the Admiral requested data be moved to it by only document numbers.


    The whole way, N''Skrek was thinking.


    Why hadn''t there been any warning? Was it those liquid looking chrome teardrop ships? Did the defensive forces get shut down before they could even launch a disaster torpedo?


    Once in the SCIF, N''Skrek and the Admiral moved up to the holotank. The Admiral brought the holotank online and they both waited for the data to decrypt.


    N''Skrek just stared as the Admiral went over it.


    Facilities that created a small artificial star inside, then directed the entire energy output in a faster than light coherent energy beam, normally used to novaspike stars.


    There should have been almost fifty of them.


    "Those could put a hurting on the Petra and Giga and Tera Clusters," the Admiral said. "So why weren''t they used?"


    "Because forty-thousand years went by, it was a classified Terran project, and things got confused somewhere?" N''Skrek guessed.


    The Admiral nodded. "That was my thought too."


    N''Skrek lit a cigarette, staring at the tank. He tapped the icons for the three ''gateway'' stellar systems.


    "Something has been bothering me," he said.


    "What?" the Admiral set down the can of fizzystim he was drinking.


    "The angle of approach that the Mar-gite came in here," N''Skrek said, tapping the closest star. He loaded up the sensor packages and set the eVI to work. "They all came in on the same vector."


    "All right, you have my attention," the Admiral said.


    "Damn, most of the data was lost with those ships," N''Skrek said.


    "Another thing," the Admiral said. "Why we wait for the VI to run records check and do the analysis, there is something we have to ask."


    "Which is?"


    "Why didn''t the autodestruct charges go off on the gateways? As soon as the Mar-gite took the systems, as soon as certain mechanisms stopped broadcasting, the stars should have been novaspiked from charges laid down a long time ago," the Admiral said.


    N''Skrek frowned. "Really?"


    The Admiral nodded. "Really."


    "I''ll be right back," N''Skrek said. He moved across the hallway and rang a com-number.


    "Temporal Ranging Section," was the answer, followed by the person''s rank and name, ending with "How can I help you, sir or ma''am, both or neither?"


    "I need a scan of two stellar systems. Status of the stellar mass within the last two weeks," he said. He gave the designation numbers of the two gateway stars. "Send it to SCIF 89-034A23."


    "On it. Give us thirty minutes," the voice said. "It won''t be detailed, just status of the stellar mass."


    "Thank you," N''Skrek said. He terminated the call and walked back.


    The Admiral was looking at data in one of the secondary holotanks.


    They stood there silently for nearly ten minutes till the holotank beeped that the VI had finished its analysis.


    N''Skrek brought up the data. The stellar mass, the direction of the next gateway star, then the vector the Mar-gite had come in on.


    "You were right," the Admiral said.


    The Mar-gite had been warping in the system at nearly sixteen degrees orbital plane, nineteen degrees polar plane off from the vector they would have entered on if they had left the middle gateway star.


    "They didn''t come from Gateway-Two," N''Skrek said. He shook his head. "How did this get missed?"


    "Things are confused," Breakheader said. He tapped a few keys. "Put your authorization on it, that way you''re credited in case someone wants to look over your data or has questions."


    N''Skrek did so.


    "There''s nothing out there," N''Skrek said, staring at the gulf between the stars. What had been there had been wiped away over forty-thousand years ago, during the First Mar-gite War.


    "That we can see," Breakheader said. He put his hands behind his back. "We know that the Mar-gite use solar radiation to ''charge up'' so to speak, in order to make a warp jump. We don''t know how its done, or the exact mechanics behind it, but we know that they are limited in range and that larger ones can''t go further," Breakheader moved over and got his fizzystim, taking a drink off of it. "What if they can''t just as far? What if they are slower? What if their maximum range is shorter than two hundred light years."


    "What if there''s something out there the Mar-gite are using to charge that isn''t a stellar mass?" N''Skrek asked.


    "It''ll be small. Low mass, hard to detect via gravity disturbances. Nothing near it that would ''wobble'', so to speak. Galactic luminosity speaking, it''ll be dark comparitively, and too small to occlude stars," Breakheader said. "That''s why the Grey Fleet broke contact and retreated."


    "They were being cut off," N''Skrek mused. "Probably already being pushed back, but they found out they were being cut off. Maybe the Death Blossom has a maximum range? We don''t know anything about that mode of travel either."


    Breakheader nodded. "We know the max distance of a standard cluster or Mega-Cluster. If the size of logarithmic, then perhaps the range drops the same?"


    "Or, and bear with me, what if they have a longer range because they start out even bigger and consume the excess Mar-gite to make the jump?" N''Skrek said. "Maybe they can make the same speed and distance as a Cluster because they can devour what they need to?"


    "A logical assumption, but let''s not get wedded to it," the Admiral said.


    "It might be nothing more than sour ice cream and poor smokes," N''Skrek agreed. "Still, it''ll give us a base to work with. Maybe we can convince Confederate Space Force to send a scouting mission in that direction."


    Breakheader nodded. "We''ll put it through channels."


    -----


    N''Skrek stared at the holotank in the middle of the bridge. The bridge crew was largely Terran, the formerly empty consoles all manned. There was an air of determination, quite competence, and an almost eagerness to get on with it.


    "The problem with coming up with an idea is it''s often taken as volunteering," Admiral Breakheader said from where he was standing next to N''Skrek.


    "We''re a Super-Colossus Stellar System Siege Rampart Unit, a defensive unit," N''Skrek protested, for the millionth time.


    Vice-Admiral Breakheader just chucked. "My people have a saying about the best defense."


    "Yes?" N''Skrek held up his hand. "Just a moment."


    "Ready to engage light speed," the navigator said.


    "Engage," N''Skrek said.


    The ship seemed to ripple slightly as it jumped to hyperspace. There was a thrumming, like vast engines getting up to speed, then a change in frequency and pitch as if great gears were shifting. He knew it was the massive ship moving up in the hyperspace bands further than a ship of its size had any right reaching.


    "Max speed, Captain," the navigator said. "Integrity fields are holding."


    "Understood. Set to General Quarters," N''Skrek said. He then issued the commands to ensure that the ship prepared to face whatever they found when they exited hyperspace in four days.


    Afterwards, he turned to the Vice-Admiral.


    "You were saying about a saying?" he asked.


    The Vice-Admiral smiled. "Terran have a saying about the best defense."


    "Which is?" N''Skrek said.


    The smile got wider.


    "A good offense."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 52

    No inspection ready unit is fit for combat. No unit fit for combat is inspection ready. - Unknown, Age of Paranoia, TerraSol


    Specialist Grade Five Gulgulka was a Drimarian, a cold blooded being of the type that fills the ranks of secret police and bureaucracies the galaxy over. Pleas, begging, cries of mercy, none of it mattered to a being like Gulgulka. He was unmoved by requests for pity just as he was unmoved by personal hardship. He was almost biologically incapable of excitement or extremes of emotion.


    Which was why Specialist Grade Five Armkept, the 625th Telkan Marine Brigade Master Armorer, was staring at him wide eyed and thinking about sidling over to the door and making a break for it.


    "I have, I believe, mentioned that my first duty station was with the Lanaktallan Star Herd," Gulgulka was saying. His eyes were wide, he kept licking his lips, and his hands were clasped together tightly.


    Armkept just nodded, wondering if the Senior Divisional Master Armorer had cracked under the pressure.


    "As such, I was exposed to Lanaktallan historical documentaries," Gulgulka stated. He moved over to the hologram projector in Armkept''s armory.


    Armkept had seen Gulgulka walk calmly across an ammunition locker where the 4.2 inch mortar rounds were screaming at the 155mm artillery shells to smack them both back into line, ignoring the smoke and heat.


    The Drimarian practically scurried over to the holotank.


    "Lanaktallan documentaries are an acquired taste," Gulgulka stated. "The section detailing how it was theorized the Sentience Upload Disaster System worked was a 12 hour section of the documentary, going deep into Terran biological idiosyncrasies as well as their unique cerebral biology."


    Armkept just nodded, shifting a little closer to the door.


    Gulgulka was a little too close to the loaded M19 Magnetic Accelerator Sidearm than Armkept was comfortable with.


    "With the return of the Terrans, due to the return of TerraSol to n-space, I began rewatching the documentary series covering the ancient Council-Confederacy Conflict that led to the Terran Extinction Event, commonly called the TXE at that time frame," Gulgulka said. He began punching holokeys on the holotank.


    Armkept moved a little closer to the door.


    "Yes, yes, it was vital I look over the documentary again. Not only to attempt to understand the Terrans, but there was something there. I knew there was something there. Something I had seen before and since," Gulgulka said. "But it was not one documentary, no, there are three key points to what I discovered."


    Gulgulka looked at Armkept and Armkept felt the fur just behind and between his ears raise up.


    The Drimarian looked crazed.


    "It was not the Second Precursor War as a whole that was creating invoked memory stimulus in my mind," Gulgulka said. He turned back to the holocontrols. "I initially began looking up a forty-thousand year documentary, which only exists in Lanaktallan recreational cold storage databases, to understand the Terrans that have joined our forces just as I examined the Lanaktallan and the Telkan when I was stationed with them."


    "All right," Armkept said. He figured maybe speaking might calm the Drimarian down. "Why do you need me?"


    Gulgulka turned and stared at Armkept for a long moment.


    "You were not afraid to tell me that I had misinterpreted doctrine regarding arms room maintenance," Gulgulka stated. "You, correctly, realized that I have no interest in personal glory or aggrandizement."


    Armkept just nodded.


    "You will not be afraid to tell me if my suppositions are in error, while also questioning any weak points in my hypothesis," Gulgulka said. "Others may agree with me outwardly while not believing me, others might disregard my hypothesis without examining the evidence, believing that ancient history has no bearing upon our current situation."


    "Very well," Armkept felt better now that he was three steps from the door.


    The Drimarian fast forwarded through the documentary. Even jumping by twenty chapters at a time, it still took nearly five minutes for the Drimarian to stop on the first one. He then moved to the second one.


    Material and Logistics Challenges was the beginning of the documentary, but Armkept missed what the rest of it said as Gulgulka began to fast forward by a dozen chapters at a time.


    "Shades. Shades were the key to proper memory invocation," Gulgulka said.


    "Phasic impressions of Terrans killed while enraged in a high phasic environment," Armkept said. "What does..."


    "Shades ended the Second Precursor War. Propagating through the superluminal communication arrays, infesting the upper bands of jumpspace and the lower bands of hyperspace. For several centuries those bands were referred to as "ghostspace" and "shadespace" respectively," Gulgulka said.


    "Ships still hit pockets now and then," Armkept said. "It''s why we use counter-shade methods whenever we travel."


    "Yes! Counter-shade!" Gulgulka stated.


    The third one was a fleet engagement. Armkept could tell by the timestamps and the humungous Mar-gite constructs on the screen.


    Gulgulka fast forwarded it, rewound it, then stopped it.


    He opened another window and loaded up some files.


    "BEHOLD!" Gulgulka said, harrumphing several times and pointing at the four windows.


    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    "What is it?" Armkept said.


    "No, no, cannot tell you," Gulgulka said. "You must look at evidence and come to your own conclusion," he looked at the time on his datalink. "You have six hours before we are to report to Corps Military Intelligence and Analysis Section," he looked around slyly. "I once helped their senior analyst pass an arms room inspection by working for three days straight. His commander, at the time, was secretly angry that the arms room passed even his high level inspection," Gulgulka clenched his hands with glee. "I took great satisfaction in the commanding officer''s anger."


    Armkept moved over to the holotank and looked at the windows.


    "That one first," Gulgulka said.


    It was a map of the galaxy. Armkept hit play.


    The screen suddenly covered with white. It faded, and the documentary narrator went in to how the "Great Flash" AKA "The Galactic Phasic Flashbang" completely covered entire light decades in split seconds, all generated from stars. There were graphs and charts showing energy breakdown, propagation rates, all kinds of data that made no sense to Armkept.


    Gulgulka paused it on the charts.


    "Now this one," Gulgulka said. He pointed at the fleet engagement.


    He played it and the playback ended with a white flash. Afterwards, there were energy readings and estimations, including propagation rates and radius of effect.


    Gulgulka paused it.


    Armkept looked back and forth.


    The data was very close to matching.


    "This one," Gulgulka said.


    Armkept tapped the icon and it began playing.


    It was an examination of the molecular circuitry used in reactors during the Great Flash. A technical breakdown of the degredation of the molecular circuitry, including estimations for the reasons. There was a series of graphs showing the cascading resonance failures as well as the energy vibrational cascade affecting even heavily shielded military grade reactors past a certain threshhold.


    Gulgulka paused it.


    "This one," Gulgulka said.


    Armkept hit play and watched. It was his own examinations of the armor of several of the Telkan Marines that had been exposed to the white flash that had disabled nearly all of the Confederate Space Force vessels, the powers armor, the armored vehicles, and universally crashed out the civilian electronics.


    Then it was Gulgulka doing the same examination on armor.


    Gulgulka paused it.


    Armkept looked back and forth between the windows.


    "How was the Great Flash initiated?" Armkept asked.


    "It was never discovered. It emanated from tens of thousands of stellar masses. It was assumed to be some kind of Terran doomsday weapon targeting phasic species," Gulgulka stated. "It only happened a single time and was determined, according to the documentaries I have doublechecked, to be a method of eliminating the Terran Phasic Shade infestation of the galactic spur."


    Armkept just nodded, taking a look at the molecular circuitry examples.


    The damage was nearly identical.


    "Do you know a signals technician? Someone who works with molecular circuitry?" Armkept asked.


    "Yes, yes, I know one. A Lanaktallan. Very detail oriented," Gulgulka said.


    "Have him come here, I want to ask him questions but I don''t want him to think I''m a crazy person," Armkept said.


    "So, you believe there is something to what I have examined," Gulgulka said. "Although correlation does not equal causation, correlation can lead to the discovery of causation."


    "You''re definitely on to something," Armkept said. "Let''s go over the flash and its immediate after effects, say, the next forty-eight hours."


    Gulgulka nodded, still looking excited. "You will like this part, Telkan."


    "Why?" Armkept asked as Gulgulka bookmarked the timestamp then fast forwarded the documentary.


    "Because, there are images and sound recordings of one of the most famous Telkan to exist. One the features prominently in Lanaktallan historical documents," Gulgulka said. He paused it.


    The Telkan staring out of the screen had cybernetic eyes, white streaks in his facial fur, two obvious cybernetic ears.


    His eyes glowed red.


    "LIEUTENANT COLONEL (TELKAN MARINES) VUXTEN" was on the chyron.


    -----


    Captain N''Skrek looked at his staff, then at the data in the middle of the conference table.


    It had been collated less then three hours prior and immediately forwarded to him.


    "We''ll have to drop out of hyperspace and deploy the needlecaster," N''Skrek said.


    "Energy profiles are a match," Vice Admiral Breakheader said. He shook his head. "The fact they hid signals in the pulse to affect the molecular circuitry in order to induce resonance signals to hotload a virus shows that this had significant planning."


    "Is there any way to overcome it?" N''Skrek asked his Chief of Engineering.


    The Chief nodded. "We use Terran thinking wires."


    "What''s the difference, aside from the fact they''re from over forty-thousand years ago," N''Skrek asked.


    "They''re Terran. They don''t like other people touching them," the Chief of Engineering chuckled. "This thing was built on Mars. The Mars."


    N''Skrek just chuckled and shook his head.


    "All right. Signal the rest of the fleet. We''ll drop and deploy the needlecaster," he ordered.


    -----


    The ship sat in the gulf between galaxies where there wasn''t even space dust to accumulate on the hull after tens of thousands of years.


    The ship was massive, measuring in the hundreds of miles long and tens of miles thick. The great bell housings for the engines were larger than most capital ships. There were massive bubbles on the sides, containing complete ecologies fed by esoteric means.


    Ecologies that had gone wild from the radiation of deep space where the only light was from galaxies rather than individual stars.


    The name on the hull was almost obliterated by time.


    W - - DEN


    There was a marking near the engines of the manufacturer.


    TR--S-PLU-----IPYAR


    The hieroglyphics were lost to time, warfare, and entropy.


    The bridge was on the rear of the ship, in a tall castle-esque structure. Heavily armored, protected.


    The bridge was a dead place. Full of dust, ironically enough from particle shed of the ceramic filters that kept the air sterile.


    The bridge was manned by vac-suit clad skeletons still sitting at their posts. The monitors were unreadable, time and dust wiping away the messages that once burned with intensity.


    In the captain''s char the skeleton sat staring out the six foot thick crysteel window at the emptiness beyond.


    A single light blinked under the Captain''s vac-suited hand.


    A slow pulse. One blink every month, down to the picosecond.


    Something changed.


    The blinking suddenly went rapid, two blinks a second.


    Deep within the ship automated systems creaked to life. Computer cores, loaded with WORM and EPROM data, were put in place as the ancient and dead computer cores were removed. Automation took over.


    The vac-suits stiffened and jerked in a strange parody of life as thick pinkish gel began filling the vac-suits of the crew members still sitting at their posts to the point of their skeletons being little more than dust held together by memory.


    Deep in the ship, in a section wrapped in hundreds of meters of armor, totally inaccessible by physical means, a single monitor was live.


    There were words burned into the screen.


    NO SIGNAL DETECTED


    Those words were dim, unlit now, as the cathode ray tube system shifted.


    SIGNAL DETECTED had replaced it.


    Commands went out to the massive drives.


    Quantum drives powerful enough to each individually move a moon slowly came to life as age degraded parts failed and were replaced. Reactionless drives and grav-drives first stopped the tumbling of the ship then oriented it on its target.


    A small energetic galaxy.


    The drives, all repaired, began to glow sullenly.


    Space rippled as the ship got underway, scrunching up space in front of it, riding the bumpy folds, and letting it smooth out behind them.


    The radiation cascade that had killed the initial crew had long ago been solved, and instead was used as energy to emit in order to speed the forward progress of the ship.


    On the bridge, the suits were twitching, shivering.


    The gel drained away.


    Inside each suit was a Terran, eyes closed.


    An electric shock through the chest, at the brainstem, made them all jerk.


    The Captain opened his eyes, looking around.


    I Live. I Die. I Live Again.


    The Warden headed home.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 53

    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    So, now you''re all caught up.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    So, while I was gone everything went to hell.


    Great.


    ////////


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Well, it''s good to have you back too.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Sorry, that came out accusatory.


    No, we came out ready to fight a war that has been over for forty-thousand years, against a species that has been a staunch ally since before the war that took us out even ended.


    Our territory has largely been absorbed by other star nations to the point where our borders are less than six hours via upper hyperspace bands from TerraSol.


    On the warfare front we have:


    <ul>


    <li>


    The Mar-gite are back.


    </li>


    <li>


    You have some psychos hellsparking suns to create a big fence.


    </li>


    <li>


    You have someone smashing the Ornislap Empire into the dirt.


    </li>


    <li>


    The Mar-gite apparently brought friends.


    </li>


    </ul>


    Then, on the domestic front, you have:


    <ul>


    <li>


    Technological stagnation. BAD stagnation.


    </li>


    <li>


    Low popuations


    </li>


    <li>


    War weariness already


    </li>


    <li>


    Nihilism


    </li>


    <li>


    Lack of basic nutriforges and creation engines


    </li>


    <li>


    Lack of starships


    </li>


    <li>


    Lack of advanced resources like warsteel


    </li>


    <li>


    Struggling economies


    </li>


    <li>


    Bickering between Confederacy member states


    </li>


    <li>


    On the near border, you have:


    </li>


    <li>


    The three newcomers fighting each other and trying to drag everyone else into it.


    </li>


    <li>


    The Gray Ships were routed for the first time in history and you don''t know why.


    </li>


    <li>


    New races that are isolationist


    </li>


    </ul>


    I''d say that you''ve got some serious problems.


    And they''re about to get worse.


    ////////


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Oh, joy!


    Let''s hear it!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    There''s tens, hundreds of billions of Terrans just waiting to... well... respawn for lack of a better word.


    We spent the time in The Bag, all fifty years, crash programming war fighting technology.


    Your little ''artificial singularity shadow" as a C+ Cannon counter?


    /////////


    RIGEL


    What about it?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    We figured out how to use that shadow as a targeting solution in less than 4 hours.


    It''s worse than useless. It actually makes it easier to blow a ship clean out of space.


    ////////


    RIGEL


    There''s the TerraSol we all know and love.


    "Nice [Object], be a shame if something happened to it."


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Well, um, this is awkward, by the way.


    For everyone but especially for me.


    /////////


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    What?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD


    Why does there appear to be a sudden chill in the air?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    I''m suddenly nervous.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    So, the SUDS, right?


    You''ve heard of it, right?


    ////////


    ALKTAK SOARING WORLDS


    Isn''t that how you come back from the dead?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    One way, yeah.


    So, you know, we made constant upgrades to it.


    A LOT of upgrades, before it was taken offline by the Mantid attack on Earth.


    ////////


    TUKNA''RN DOCTRINE SPACE


    Yes.


    We never figured out how you did it.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    There might have been a teensy weensy little part of the system you weren''t aware of.


    ////////


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    We''d heard that there were Treana''ad in there from the Glassing when the records from the War in Heaven were unsealed.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Oh, that''s nothing.


    Um, here, one of you give me the Confederate Citizen System Identification Number for someone who died in an accident in the last 72 hours.


    ////////


    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    OK.


    Here.


    Why?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Don''t panic.


    CHANSERV> TERRASOL+1


    NICKSERV> TERRASOL+1 RENAMED TO TELKAN-SUPRISE


    OK. Go ahead. You can talk.


    ////////


    TELKAN-SURPRISE


    Wow. This is kind of neat.


    Hi, everyone.


    I''m Nartu''uvil.


    Traumatic Cessation Recovery helped me process and accept that I got killed when someone threw a weight off the top of a skyraker and I happened to be walking down on the street.


    I feel pretty good.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    ...


    ...


    ...


    TERRASOL


    Ready, sweetie?


    /////////


    TELKAN-SURPRISE


    Ready!


    Nice to meet you all!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    CHANSERV> TELKAN_SURPRISE HAS LEFT THE CHAT


    ...


    ...


    ...


    TERRASOL


    Check her CCSIN.


    /////////


    ...


    ...


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    WHAT?


    HOW?


    SHE''S SITTING IN THE HOSPITAL CLONING WAITING ROOM!


    HOW?


    SHE WAS DEAD!


    THIS IS THE REALLY REAL WORLD! THERE''S NO COMING BACK!


    HOW?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    ...


    There is a Treana''ad Worker who was killed in an industrial accident 5.4 hours ago.


    Sitting outside the hospital.


    Smoking a cigarette.


    Waiting for a cab.


    HOW?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    They solved the problems.


    There''s some that are insurmountable.


    Mainly, the amount of respawns.


    Mantid is the lowest with only 1-3, depending on the person.


    Lanaktallan are the highest, second only to Terrans, with 5-7 depending on the person.


    After each death it takes more and more traumatic cessation counseling to return someone to life.


    But, they do get to continue in the Afterlife System even if they can''t be respawned.


    ////////


    ...


    ...


    ...


    RIGEL


    And ducks?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Rigellian females run at about 3-5 respawns.


    Ducks sit at 3 to six.


    They also require less counseling and assistance.


    But, they largely prefer... well... heaven.


    /////////


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Won''t this be a disaster for population metrics?


    We''re talking people never die.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    No, they die.


    Old age, accident, violence, natural disasters.


    They can just respawn now.


    We did it.


    /////////


    ...


    ...


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    Why do I feel like on of the Old Gods just came down and said "Hey, we''re rewriting the rules. Hang tight!"


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    How long?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    For the older members?


    Well, turned out we solved most of it before the Glassing.


    For you newer people?


    We solved it while we were in The Bag.


    /////////


    AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS


    Even us?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Yeah.


    Even you.


    All of you.


    /////////


    LANKY LANKY YOUR NAME IS FRANKY


    Can you opt out?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    There''s that chat name again.


    Did anyone catch the name-change?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Don''t change the subject.


    Can you? Can you opt out?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Of course.


    /////////


    HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL


    Do we have to get that SUDS device implanted on our neck?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Uh, this is kind of embarassing.


    You know the standard Confederate Citizen Datalink?


    That pretty much everyone uses.


    The one we designed before The Glassing?


    The one you haven''t really improved on?


    /////////


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    What about it?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    That''s actually what does the SUDS recording.


    The brainstem/spine implant is military only. At least, that''s how it was originally designed. It''s designed to provide uploads during high threat and it can also do a hot upload in less than eight nanoseconds if it detects sudden brain death.


    But it''s the datalink that does the work.


    And the system is turned back on.


    Well, it''s always been receiving.


    There''s a LOT of people who went into the SUDS, were given the option to respawn in Afterlife and took it.


    They lived their entire lives in Afterlife, then, upon their death, were processed and went into the other Afterlife.


    Those, according to the system, aren''t allowed to respawn here.


    //////////


    TUKNA''RN DOCTRINE SPACE


    Where, exactly, are they respawning?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Afterlife.


    I said that.


    ////////


    TUKNA''RN DOCTRINE SPACE


    Yet, you said after they live their lives in Afterlife, they are then moved to Afterlife.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Sorry, translator error.


    They live in Narkara, the land of the living.


    After they die, they are transferred to Krelganta, the land of the spirits.


    Once you''re in Krelganta, you usually don''t come back.


    Unless there''s something major that goes down.


    Like the Detainee pulling you out.


    Of course, with the exception of humans, for the most part there is a hardcoded limit on the amount of time that can go by before you can no longer return to, well, the mortal world.


    /////////


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    How long?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Standard is less than a decade. Unless you didn''t get uploaded until a few centuries after your death due to hardware interrupts.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    So...


    Was Vuxten and Brentili''ik real people?


    Are they in there?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    They were real.


    They''re in here.


    And no, the Afterlife system won''t release them.


    They lived their lives. Full lives.


    Afterlife won''t release them.


    /////////


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    But they could help us!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Help yourself.


    //////////


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    You don''t remember, Telkan, but TerraSol isn''t going to hand you a magic wand to fix everything or do it for you.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Something that has no cost has no value.


    Both of them did their parts.


    I''m not going to pull them from their Afterlife, separate them in a way you cannot understand, to return them to the mortal world so they can solve problems that mortals should be solving for themselves.


    Do it yourself.


    ////////


    AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS


    Why do you get to make that decision?


    Shouldn''t it be Telkans?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL


    It should be our right to decide who we want to bring back.


    As a people.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS


    Shouldn''t we be the ones to decide?


    They are our people.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    They died. After long lives. Tens of thousands of years have gone by here.


    It''s not your choice.


    /////////


    AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS


    What gives you the right to be the one who decides for all of us?


    It should be our right.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TUKNA''RN DOCTRINE SPACE


    We will need to ponder this.


    The idea of returning the dead to life is a profound one.


    We must deliberate with our people until we understand it.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANAKTALLAN FREE THOUGHT RANGE


    I believe there are rules that we do not understand.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    We could really use the people, if nothing else.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    To do what?


    Throw them in the grinder?


    Take them from the Afterlife, basically KILL THEM in the Afterlife, and give them back so you can throw them into the meat grinder?


    No.


    They have the right of consent.


    Informed consent.


    And there are rules.


    ////////


    HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL


    Who decided these rules for our people?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS


    What gives you the right to make a unilateral decision about our people?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    What gives me the right?


    What gives me the RIGHT?


    It''s a responsibility! I''m safeguarding trillions, tens of trillions of immortal souls! They are MY responsibilty! Their health, their safety, their lives in the Afterlife, their eternal existence that you can barely imagine!


    What gives me the right?


    I''ll tell you what gives me the fucking right.


    Come and take them.


    Fortress Sol awaits you.


    <TERRASOL HAS LOGGED OUT: THERE IS ROOM IN THIS GRAVE FOR YOU>


    ...


    ...


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    If you doubted that it was TerraSol, what just happened should put those doubts to rest.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGEL


    Well, that was exciting.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    ALKTAK SOARING WORLDS


    They can''t be serious.


    Do they really think we''d try to force them through force of arms?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Huh. I''m blocked.


    All my PMs are getting is: "YOU ARE BLOCKED FROM CONTACTING THIS USER. PLEASE ENGAGE IN DIRECT LEVEL ZERO DIPLOMATIC PROTOCOLS TO CONTACT THIS USER IN REALSPACE."


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    I''m getting the same thing.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANAKTALLAN GALLOPING FIELD OF FREE THOUGHT


    Same here.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS


    Wait, they just blocked us?


    They can do that?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    You realize that all of this, us, is running on Terran tech, right?


    They made this system.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS


    Surely we moved past what they made.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    We don''t even know HOW they did it. We don''t even know HOW this thing works.


    Great, we''re going to have to dispatch a diplomatic team to Terra now.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS


    I don''t know why they''re being so belligerent.


    They know they''re only a single stellar system, right?


    We''re the Confederacy.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD


    <laughs>


    Ask us how that ''single stellar system'' worked out for us.


    I get it, you''ve been feeling muscular since the Mar-gite Resurgence.


    But, trust me on this, that isn''t just any system.


    That''s Fortress Sol.


    If we couldn''t take it, you couldn''t get near it.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS


    We should still get some say.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    <blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    GENERATING SECURE CHAT ROOM


    </blockquote>


    </blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    HAT JOINED THE CHAT


    </blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    RIGEL JOINED THE CHAT


    </blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    TREA JOINED THE CHAT


    </blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    FRANKY JOINED THE CHAT


    </blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    SAURIAN HAS JOINED THE CHAT


    </blockquote>


    <ISSUING SINGLE USE ENCRYPTION KEYS>


    <GENERATING SECURITY OVERLAY>


    <FINISHED>


    <RELEASING CHAT ROOM CONTROLS>


    <HAVE A NICE DAY>


    HAT


    Well, that doesn''t bode well.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    You think?


    The kids just pissed of TerraSol more than I''ve ever seen them.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGEL


    That isn''t Terran Descent Humanity.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    FRANKY


    What was it? An inflitrator? An enemy? Wait, was it a Mar-gite?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    We wish.


    No, it''s worse.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    SAURIAN


    That was definitely Earthlings.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    Well, the good thing is, they aren''t recalling their military forces deployed against the Mar-gite.


    The Dead Gods know we need them.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT


    They''ve spent 50 years full of rage and anger.


    Then they saw what we let happen to the Confederacy.


    To its people.


    They''re mad.


    Real mad.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGEL


    They have reason to be.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    FRANKY


    For us longer lived or older races, 40K years is nothing.


    We still have our records of them in Warm Direct Access Storage.


    For the rest, the Terrans are a myth that entropy and age have nibbled away the information about them.


    For us older races, it''s the Terrans clawing their way out of the grave with a cutting bar between their teeth.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT


    We''ll send diplomats.


    See if we can fix this.


    See why they got so angry.


    I have a feeling there''s more going on than we know.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    <CHAT ROOM HAS CLOSED>


    <DELETING RECORDS>


    well


    how interesting


    what do you think


    i think it was a good thing


    they want light and a fire to warm them


    but they asked the crazy person with a flame thrower to keep them warm


    then got mad when they were told no


    i guess we will see


    by the way


    i see you

 Nova Wars - Chapter 54

    "A human is born in pain. They live in pain. They die in pain.


    "And they''re willing to inflict that pain thrice upon anyone who they determine to be the enemy.


    "Because the enemy exists only to be destroyed." - Former Grand Most High Sma''akamo''o, from his autobiogrpahy entitled: I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff, New Telkan Press, Post Second Precursor War


    Mantids were often known for poetic names, and he was no exception. With the name Violet Flowers Line Paths to Peace, and he had recently brokered a peace deal between several long time warring faction of Telkan in the Telkan Systems. He had brought an end to a six hundred year on again off again war that had consumed millions but had never outright moved to total war. All parties had been satisfied and felt that the deal was more than fair and all factions had come away better off than they had been.


    Part of the senior diplomatic negotiators for the Confederacy of Aligned Systems Diplomatic Corps, Violet had dealt with some of the most dangerous beings and organization in the galactic spur and managed to bring about peace between all of the factions.


    Even more impressive, people of all species genuinely liked him.


    The flotilla that carried him and his diplomatic team had been in hyperspace when everyone had heard it.


    LET THE UNIVERSE SHAKE IN THE WRATH OF TERRASOL


    The flotilla had immediately dropped from hyperspace and then made a least-time journey to the nearest friendly system with a needlecaster. It had been a trip of less than 40 hours. He had immediately communicated to Diplomatic Services that he was standing by and that he would make a least-time hyperspace multi-leg route toward the TerraSol Restricted Zone.


    Sixty hours ago he had been in an older system, at the edge of old TerraSol Restricted Space. His diplomatic flotilla around the outer gas giant, taking on mass, when he had received an urgent communique.


    TERMINATE ALL CURRENT AND FUTURE EFFORTS AND ASSIGNEMENTS


    STAND BY FOR NEW ASSIGNMENT


    He had to admit, he had been somewhat apprehensive.


    Worrying, Violet had returned to his quarters to watch H''Relp the Moo Moo Tender Power Hour and eat popcorn, trying not to worry about what this next assignment would be.


    When the orders were brought to him, he raised an antenna and knew that he was about to face the most challenging assignment of his career.


    Of any diplomat''s career.


    He was to proceed immediately to TerraSol. He would engage in diplomatic negotiations after an international incident, as well as the current geopolitical landscape, had led to TerraSol withdrawing from the Gestalt system as well as closing the gates on what few embassies that they had already staffed.


    The first thing Violet did was request from "We Live Here Now and Enjoy This Place as a Bastion of Goodness" home-system all data from the last decade of Confederate/Terran interactions.


    Records were nearly eighteen hours returning, via priority needlecast.


    True, the station resented that his diplomatic authority gave him near total exclusive access to the needlecaster, but a few overtures and concessions in authority ensured that the station personnel felt as if it was to their benefit that his diplomatic team was using their needlecaster.


    The big one was he ordered his flotilla to upgrade and perform maintenance on the needlecaster so that it could serve his needs, taking it from the Diplomatic Corps'' budget rather than the system''s budget.


    Once he had the relative data, transmitted from the venerable Free Mantid States "Hive Home", he began to peruse it even as the flotilla got underway again.


    The most pertinent data was from a Gold Caste mantid from Diplomatic Services, during the opening phases of the Confederacy/Council Conflict over forty-thousand years prior.


    He watched Dreams of Something More''s personal logs, paying close attention to her details on TerraSol and Terran Descent Humans. He admired her abdominal wrap, the robe she wore on her thorax, her love of interesting looking hats, and her attitude.


    She had toured TerraSol before her deployment to the Lanaktallan Council territory.


    He paid personal attention to the data on Terrans.


    They were a primate species. Extremely aggressive in all areas, including scientific and technological advancement. They alternated between hyperviolence and overwhelming pacifist attitudes.


    He took note of Dreams''s observation that polling 10,000 Terrans would give you 11,001 opinions.


    It became obvious that he would have to be careful. The Terrans had been xenocided during a war for survival against the Lost Precursor Species. The survivors scattered across the galaxy and now lost. Their homeworld, home system, had been turned into a prison.


    They had been trapped for just over fifty years while nearly 40,000 years had gone by for the rest of the universe.


    That meant that Mantid diplomatic envoys present in the TerraSol system would be trained and experienced.


    Those were his best resource, if he could convince them to work with him and if they had not gone native.


    However, examining *Dreams of Something More''*s biography and writings, ''going native'' appeared to be unaviodable when dealing with Terran Descent Humans.


    He made note of that, also.


    The flotilla dropped from hyperspace only eight light-days from the Solarian System. It received instructions, to be followed to the letter, for the hyperspace microjumps they were to make to approach TerraSol.


    Violet nodded. The Terrans would be wary, still on wartime footing for a war that had only been a few decades behind them and they could not be sure was not still raging when they came out.


    He instructed the diplomatic team to be as passive as possible.


    His guards were told to keep their weapons in storage mode and unloaded, with the breaches open to show that there were no rounds in the chamber.


    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    He examined the images of the planets as his ship made the sixty hour trip to TerraSol.


    The ninth planet appeared to be wrapped in huge chains, with large canyons with lava burning in the depths. It was named after a Terran religious figure who ruled the underworld as well as a strange looking canine owned by an anthropomorphic mouse.


    The gas giants were blurry to his ship''s sensors, evidence of heavy masking. He stood in an observation blister and stared at the nearest one. It glimmered and gleamed.


    Either extraction yards or shipyards.


    He was willing to bet both.


    The satellite of Terra was massive, named Luna. Lights glimmered on the surface, whole cities on the surface, uncaring of the vacuum.


    Terra itself was lit up. The population metrics were odd, with over a billion Lanaktallan in residence as full citizens.


    When he saw that one was a politician, he looked up footage.


    It was a Hamburger Kingdom Senate session, debating on whether or not Terra should involve itself in the current war against the Mar-gite. A Senator was claiming that it would be centuries before the Mar-gite could threaten Earth (Another name for Terra, it seemed to have nearly 30 names, some quite poetic) so there was no reason to engage in the conflict.


    The Lanaktallan signaled that he wished to speak and was granted five minutes.


    The Lanaktallan, one Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd, stood up and stated: "Allow me to present my constituents'' rebuttal" as the other Senator smirked.


    The Lanaktallan drew a pistol from the holster at his waist and began shooting at the other Senator, who dove behind a table.


    After eight shots, the Lanaktallan sat down.


    "I cede my time and further ammunition to the next speaker," he stated.


    That required hours of examination.


    Violet was somewhat shocked to see that duels with swords, bladearms, knives, bare hands, pistols, even high speed vehicle races, were common methods of resolving disagreements all over TerraSol.


    Still, he was glad when the flotilla was given permission to land.


    He made sure he was wearing a Charlie the Moo Moo abdominal wrap, a jacket from "Jak the Telkan" series clothing line, nifty boots with curled toes that had bells on the curls, as well as a Moo Moo Tender hat.


    He informed his staff to dress comfortably but professionally as the ship''s captain sounded the all-clear.


    True, the Captain had had misgivings at the amount of firepower surrounding the ship, but Violet was sure it was just precautionary, born of having been imprisoned during the war tens of thousands of years ago.


    The ramp lowered and Violet motioned his subordinates forward.


    "Show no aggression, even if you are subjected to primate threat displays," Violet said. "There has been a grave diplomatic mistake and international incident. Let us not compound problems."


    His guards nodded.


    The black mantids rushed down the ramp, taking up positions. They didn''t like that they were only allowed their bladearms free, their weapons locked down behind their backs. Still, they gathered up in the traditional formation to protect the ship.


    Large Terran warborgs moved up to face the black mantids.


    Violet nodded. Just like the historical documentaries and Dreams of Something More''s writings. He had to admit, they were more fearsome appearing in person than on video.


    He adjusted the psychic shielding headband under his hat to ensure he was properly protected. All of the documentation had warned of Terran psychic power, both the strength and the unpredictability of it.


    The golds moved down next. They moved up and the Terran Descent Human diplomatic team moved forward.


    Violet listened as the greetings were exchanged.


    The Terrans were glad to see the golds.


    The golds were glad to see the Terrans.


    The Terrans hoped the current difficulties could be dealt with in a professional and civilized manner.


    The golds agreed and hoped their efforts would enable such a resolution.


    The Terrans asked if the golds were ready to go someplace more conducive to diplomatic negotiations.


    The golds deferred, instead making an introduction.


    "Presenting, the lead diplomatic, Senior Diplomatic Attach¨¦ and Plenipotentiary, Violet Flowers Line the Path to Peace," the head of the Gold delegation stated, making a sweeping gesture with her bladearms.


    Violet motioned for his guards to flank and follow him and moved down the ramp.


    The effect of his appearance was immediate.


    The warborgs all went to live weapons. Half of them went down on one knee, deploying heavy weapons. Sensors, lasers, and ranging devices painted over Violet and his guards.


    "SPEAKER!" the lead Terran delegate bellowed out, grabbing for the pistol on his hip.


    "WARRIORS!" someone else yelled.


    "What?" Violet asked, turning around. "What?"


    Stingwings were taking off, weapons were deploying to aim at the ship. Warborgs were changing position, taking up obvious offensive and defensive positions. The entire Terran Descent Human delegation had drawn weapons or were getting behind warborgs which were moving forward.


    Violet shrunk back, confusion and fear filling him.


    "I don''t udnerstand, what did I do?" he asked, his antenna and legs trembling.


    "DON''T FUCKING MOVE, BUG!" the lead Terran diplomat shouted, leveling a pistol at him. "I''LL FUCKING SPLATTER YOU, I SWEAR ON DAXIN''S WARSTEEL BALLS!"


    "What did I do?" Violet asked. He waved at the warriors. "Please, my bladearms and hands up, there has been some misunderstanding."


    Violet felt fear and dismay, his gut churning, as dismay filled him. His very appearance was causing the Terrans to react violently.


    "Please, I have done nothing, there''s no need for violence," Violet said, holding his bladearms and hands up.


    For a long moment the only sound was the hum of grav-lifters and the sounds of birds.


    "You''re a fucking speaker," the lead Terran Diplomat said, his voice harsh and full of barely restrained violence. "Surrounded by Menhit cursed Warriors. On Terra."


    "Yes," Violet said. "I am a fully accredited diplomat, originally hailing from the We Live Here Now and Enjoy This Place as a Bastion of Goodness systems before entering the Confederate Diplomatic Corps and being assigned to Diplomatic Services. I bring the greeting of the Confederacy of Aligned Systems, which you knew as the Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems."


    "Do you have any idea what happened here?" the lead diplomat said, his voice sounding like he was speaking with grinding plates.


    "The Terran Xenocide Event and the events of the Second Precursor War sealed you in here after sustaining a full frontal attack by the Lanaktallan Unified Council''s martial forces," Violet said. "May my guards and I lower our hands and bladearms?"


    "We aren''t worried about your hands or bladearms," the diplomat said. "We remember what Speakers can do."


    "I am capable of listening to the other castes and collate their concerns, desires, and wishes to the Overqueens. I act as both the voice of the Queens and the voice of the common Mantid," Violet said. He combed his antenna. "My abilities are honed well enough I can listen to an immature green mantid worker caste tell me that the school is stealing the good turkey gravy for themselves and billing his parents."


    The diplomat blinked slowly. "That''s not how we saw you last."


    Violet nodded, suddenly understanding. "Oh, you refer to the Human-Mantid War. The First and Second intergalactic conflicts between your two nations."


    The human nodded.


    Violet combed his antenna. "Such a terrible thing," he said softly. "To be led astray by your own queen, who you have entrusted with your very soul. To have queens and speakers feed upon your misery, that they inflict, rather than share in your joy and bliss of living a life full of wonder and safety."


    He shook his head. "We too, my people, labored under such a terrible Omniqueen. A fearsome and terrible being, who enslaved our queens, who devoured our people, who literally feasted upon the flesh of the species that were our friends."


    Two of the warriors nodded.


    "We had moved past such vileness, when the Omniqueen arrived and enslaved us," Violet said softly. "Only, unlike the Mantid of Mantid Prime, we had no Terrans to liberate us through force of arms," he made sure to flash symbols of sorrow and embarrassment between his antenna and with his body language. "My ancestors fought, bitterly, against the tyranny of the Omniqueen and only stellar geometry saved us. Not just the Mantid, but our friends too."


    The guns were lowering.


    "If my presence is disturbing to your people, I can withdraw," he pointed at the lead gold mantid. "Finds Peace in the Maelstrom is perfectly capable of acting as an intermediary between our people."


    The diplomat stood for a long moment. Finally he inhaled slowly and let the breath out all in a rush.


    Violet knew that what the Terran had done signified he had made a difficult decision that he might regret later and felt anxiety that the decision might be a critical error.


    "Things have changed outside The Bag," he said slowly. He motioned and the warborgs stepped back. The scanning and targeting systems switched off. "Your name is Violet then?"


    Violet nodded. "Yes, and I greet you."


    "I greet you too."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 55

    "Any other species having been all but wiped out would eventually die. Even if they had the numbers for a genetically stable population, depression and ennui would carry them away.


    "The Mad Lemurs of Terra though, they looked it as just one more thing to scream and rave against.


    "None of us should have been surprised they returned."- Former Grand Most High Sma''akamo''o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff


    Sitting on the armored limousine, Violet Flowers Line Paths to Peace watched as the vehicle left the spaceport. He was looking around at everything, taking in what people were wearing, what they were doing. Vehicles, air traffic, everything.


    Any other planet that Violet had been too, the Empire of Kitira would be seen as hyper-aggressive, prone to violence, and a powder keg waiting to happen. The fact that the majority of citizens were armed. There were air defense positions everywhere around the star port, with, from what Violet''s limited military knowledge told him, extensive sensor systems and targeting systems.


    The road showed waving fields of grain and vegetables. He was surprised to see that the fields were being worked by actual people, in brightly colored clothing, rather than robots.


    When he saw the sign, which his contact lens translated for him, it suddenly made sense.


    "NAKASERO TRADITIONAL FRESH PRODUCE!" as well as "WHY EAT NUTRIFORGE WHEN YOU CAN EAT TRADITIONAL FOODS?" was hand painted on a wooden sign. There were women in bright clothing carrying baskets of woven fiber filled with vegetables. They would move to very modern vehicles before placing the baskets in the back seat.


    They do not have to live such lives, they choose to, he thought.


    He had studied the nutriforge, creation engine, and matter forge. It was a Terran invention, from even before they managed to achieve superluminal flight They had managed to crack the riddle of energy to mass, mass to energy, with minimal loss during the transfer. As near as he could tell they managed to achieve matter transmission at roughly the same time.


    He nodded as he saw another produce area go by. This time it was healthy trees heavily laden with fruit, with living people tending to it, all in the same types of outfits.


    The nutriforge freed billions from the work to eat cycle, yet they have people out working to create food, he thought.


    More heavily armed citizens.


    None of them seemed too curious about the stingwings flying low and slow, the grav strikers, or the armored convoy. Sure, a few people stared for a moment or two, but the majority seemed to just glance then go back to what they were doing.


    The vehicles got on a highway.


    Armored convoys appeared to be standard. He saw more than a few go by, all of them with heavy security. Some were labeled, personal, political, or corporate. Others were blank, or just had security services on them.


    Even individual vehicles seemed heavily armored and armed.


    He remembered the sign from the starport.


    "BEYOND THIS POINT, YOU HAVE CONSENTED TO BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY"


    He had checked.


    Earth, Terra, whatever name (He was fond of Tellus), was not a single unified nation that encompassed the planet.


    Instead, it was nation states, some of which still competing along esoteric definitions. Some of them were actively at war to the point that there were no less than eleven ongoing conflicts involving military forces.


    He had looked. During the fifty years that Terra had been in the Bag, Terra had gone from 123 nation states to 85 back up to 90, down to 87, up to 113, down to 92, and was now at 126 nation states.


    Civil wars, absorbing other nations through armed conflict, balkanization, and other means of splitting and combining.


    It seemed to be a fairly frequent occurrence on Tallus, for nations to divide, combine, even return from history. There were more than a few nations that were destroyed through warfare or absorbed by their neighbors that then returned.


    Violet was glad that he had examined Dreams memoir on her time on Tellus, as well as observations of other leaders


    Terrans were adept at conflict, to other observers and their writing it appeared to be a Terran''s natural state.


    Violet had looked over Tellus history books as his craft had moved in, understanding their history meant everything.


    He realized his mistake now.


    For the rest of the universe, it was over thirty thousand years, over forty thousand years, since the brutal war between Tellus and a variant Hive of Mantid. He had noted to himself to read up on that conflict as well as communicate with Hive Home diplomatic services to find out exactly what had happened.


    Not the official story, but the reality.


    He knew how it was easier to let records fade away that contained embarassing facts.


    It was never easy to admit that your entire species had been wrong, had been terrible, had been evil.


    He knew the shame.


    His own people had a dark time, when the original Omniqueen had taken them over after they had found the way to enlightment. How the Omniqueen and her servants had devoured so many of his people''s friends. How only a carefully orchestrated rebellion and stellar geometry had allowed them to break free of the Omniqueen.


    He carried a slight bit of shame.


    Speakers, in antiquity, were powerful psychics, flush with phasic energy. They could control entire planets through their mastery of psychic energy and psychic domination.


    That was then.


    Over the millions of years his people had changed.


    This is now.


    No longer could he reach out. No longer could he exert his will over others.


    He was truly a Speaker. He spoke for even the smallest of the castes, spoke for the voiceless, spoke in the voice of the Overqueen.


    But he could not put his thoughts into the minds of others.


    For tens of millions of years, his kind could hear others.


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    But they used their voice to speak.


    It was an honor to be a Speaker. To use his voice to speak for those who used psychic powers to speak. To be able to arbitrate between peoples who could not hear one another due to psychic wavelengths without invading their mind.


    The silence and privacy of one''s own mind was paramount.


    Eloquence was a gift from the universe to the Speakers of his people.


    He turned from his musing, watching the fertile land sweep by as the ship approached the city of Captain Alex''s Rest. The skyrakers were lit up, lights twinkling. It looked almost like a fairy tale city. Holograms flickered and danced, making it look like the city was sparkling.


    He nodded to himself.


    He had dealt with primates before. They could be touchy, but usually they were placid, slow to move, slow to anger. The ones that were not usually never got beyond hunter-gatherer or destroyed themselves, at the latest, in an orgy of atomic hellfire.


    Not the Terrans.


    He looked down at his datapad, checking the updated information. The files from Smokey Cone and Hivehome had arrived during the ride.


    Petabytes of data.


    He sighed and looked back out of the window.


    There would be complaints lodged by his staff toward Diplomatic Services once he arrived at his lodging. It was an unacceptable oversight that Diplomatic Services had sent him completely unprepared beyond a scant few biographies and documentaries. While others may point at the tens of thousands of years that had gone by, Mantid and Lanaktallan and Treana''ad databases handled millions, tens of millions of years of data without losing it due to file degredation.


    True, the Lanaktallan databases had issues with file indexing due to the sheer amount of data they kept, but it should have been easy to get the data Violet had needed.


    The city was busy, with a dizzying array of colorful or drab clothing. He saw beings of many different species on the streets.


    He idly wondered if skin, hair, or eye color denoted castes to the Terrans.


    A quick check showed that in antiquity it had.


    Ah, yes, the ''The Other Syndrome'', many species suffered under it, he thought, reading some it.


    Again, he noted how Terran history was full of impossibilities.


    He had been made aware of Terran temporal warfare countermeasures. He had been aware of the fact that the Terrans did not care that it might not be their true history, it was true to them and that was all that mattered.


    This is going to be difficult, he thought to himself.


    His datapad beeped and Violet looked down at it.


    The Diplomatic Corps had decided that his datapad was secure and his security clearances were high enough for a file marked immediate priority to be sent to him.


    He read it.


    He read it again.


    And again.


    The file detailed what the actual problem was.


    He had been sent due to the fact that the Terrans had been in The Bag for over thirty thousand years local for the rest of the galaxy, but only fifty local for them. That when they had vanished into The Bag, the enemy had been the Lanaktallan and the Atrekna (now extinct), as well as the Unified Council and the Precursor Autonomous War Machines.


    Now the enemy was the Mar-gite, whoever was facillitating them, two unknown groups, and a handful of smaller, newer, aggressive and energetic species on the fringes of Confederate Space, usually in the Long Dark.


    The real reason for the diplomatic urgency was, well, to put it in layman''s terms...


    mind blowing.


    He had read about the Terran rebirth system, largely considered to be a legend or a myth by most beings. That a dead human could be resurrected via a neural mapping copy within minutes or hours.


    Recently, upon leaving The Bag, the TerraSol Gestalt had let it slip that the system to perform neural mapping and impressing for Terrans had been applied to all the other races. That trillions of non-Terran beings were in what was being listed as "AFTERLIFE (SUDS)" and "AFTERLIFE (ACTIVE)", dwelling in some kind of user specific paradise with full interaction.


    Several Gestalts, and soon afterwards, governments demanded access to the dead. Many wanted them to solve problems, to give interviews to curious academics, to answer for crimes (real or imagined), to solve manpower shortages.


    The TerraSol Gestalt, and the Solarian government refused.


    Violet nodded. He agreed with the assessment that what was desired was nothing more than slavery.


    He agreed with the meme that showed someone living miserably, dying, and a government worker pulling them out of the grave and putting them back to work in misery. Many of the memes ended with "Not even death is a respite. What do you have to lose?"


    He nodded. That was understandable. In some nation-states, the government had become malevolent. The idea that you could not escape, even in death, from state enforced bondage, was horrifying. The ethical implications were staggering.


    Violet understood their anger. Not personally, not based on personal experience, but intellectually and through observation.


    A being could be brought back again and again to serve ''the needs of the People/State'' and their work would never be finished.


    It was eternal slavery.


    The datacomp beeped and he checked it. His arrival and his image had appeared on social media sites despite the attempt at a blackout. Many Terrans were upset that he was present on Tellus. A few of the memes and postings referred to fighting in the Human-Mantid War. Many of those were aggressive toward his person.


    Violet thought about it as the car entered the city itself.


    From what he had read on the Sentience Uninterrupted Disaster System, those beings may have been killed during the Human-Mantid War and just recently rebirthed.


    Their memories of a war over forty-thousand years ago for him were only years old.


    Violet made an annotation on his datapad to give a speech that would state that his Hive had never encountered Terrans before. Terran Descent Primates, yes.


    His homeworld and worlds of his nation had millions of Terran Uplifted Primates as citizens. He had grown up knowing, respecting, and having affectionate relations with many of the Primates of the Overqueens.


    It would complicate things that the Human-Mantid War was within living memory for millions of the Terrans.


    Still, Violet enjoyed a challenge. It was merely a challenge to his overarching goal.


    Finding common ground for the returning Solarian Military Directorate and the rest of the Confederacy.


    Violet found the outrage that Terrans felt at the idea of the consent of the deceased being revoked for ''Needs'' to be perfectly understandable, logical, and a sign of empathy.


    The threats of violence were not because they did not see the others as equals.


    It was because those equals were attempting to strip away one of the driving motives of the Terrans.


    Consent.


    Looking through the historical timeline on his dataslate, Violet looked over the times that advanced nations had revoked consent through various machinations.


    It always ended in bloodshed.


    Well, not entirely. Sometimes it ended at the voting box.


    He found it interesting that in the Hamburger Kingdom, a being''s consent could be revoked if they were nominated for public office, which was treated more like a punishment than anything else. In The Celestial Kingdom lands consent was guarded by the Emperor, who ensured the rapacious and scheming Lesser Divines could not strip away the consent of the Beloved Ones, which was the name for the common person.


    The vehicle slowed, moving through heavily armed checkpoints.


    There were already protestors waving signs telling him to leave or die.


    That was all right. He had experienced that before.


    "We will ensure your security is at high alert at all times," The leader of his personal guard said.


    Violet just nodded as the limo moved onto the secure estate grounds. It came to a stop and a Terran military warborg opened the door carefully.


    "We have arrive, sir," the warborg stated.


    "Indeed," Violet said, climbing out of the limo.


    He breathed deep, slowly, as he headed for the diplomatic residence.


    He had a lot of work to do.


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Oops.


    --- NOTHING FOLLOWS ---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Oops? What''s oops?


    Define "oops", sis.


    --- NOTHING FOLLOWS ---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Nothing. It''s fine. It''ll be fine.


    ...


    ...


    Probably.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD


    Not precisely an explanation that inspires confidence. The last ''oops'' we had, an entire stellar system exploded.


    Define ''oops'', if you would.


    --- NOTHING FOLLOWS ---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    It''s fine. It''s all fine. We''re not at war. All good.


    We''re all good here. We have a-a oops here, uh, now. Give us a few minutes to lock it down. Uh, little oops, not very dangerous.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGEL


    We''re at war on several fronts, what do you mean we-


    Wait. Is this about TerraSol? I thought you were sending diplomats to talk to them.


    WHAT DID YOU DO?!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    I did send diplomats! One of our best! You''ve all met him. He''s perfect for the job.


    He''s one of the best, highly skilled.


    It''s just... I might have forgotten that he''s a Speaker...


    --- NOTHING FOLLOWS ---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    You sent. A speaker. To TerraSol.


    A speaker.


    To a TerraSol that is already jumpier than a hatchling after six cones.


    To a TerraSol that is manifestly angry.


    To a TerraSol that has probably invalidated most of our war fighting tech and techniques in the last five decades while they''ve been in The Bag and we''ve had a thirty thousand and some odd year head start?


    The same ones who wrote "AVENGE US DOT DOC"?


    You sent a speaker there?


    --- NOTHING FOLLOWS ----


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Yes. Look, it''s fine. He''s still alive. We haven''t had a second incident. Just... close, is all.


    The Terrans calmed down.


    So, you know...


    Oops.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS ---


    RIGEL


    Oops indeed.


    At least a couple hundred systems aren''t burning.


    --- NOTHING FOLLOWS---

 Nova Wars - Chapter 55

    Despite any number of arguments to the contrary, the do exist some true successors to the Builders scattered across the Arm.


    Between Telkan¡¯s immutable bravery, Leebaw¡¯s undying resistance, Hesstla¡¯s boundless resourcefulness, and Tukna¡¯rn¡¯s unyielding resolve, it is easy to forget that these particular qualities of the older additions to the Confederacy were largely unrealized or otherwise genetically suppressed before the brief intervention of the Builders in their defense against the Atrekna incursion across known space. The same holds in various degrees for the Mantids, Treana¡¯ad, Pubvians, Lanaktallan, Wemtarrans, Converted Atrekna, Logical AWM, and every other race, construct, or group that ever came into contact with the Builders over their brief ten millennia among the stars.


    In this way, even though the Builders themselves may have departed the cosmos after spending such a startlingly short time within it, their legacy lives on in the friends they found, the bonds they forged, and the remnants of the vast fleets of warsteel and wrath they commanded in the righteous crusades of the Confederacy of Allied Systems against those forces that would endeavor to defile and strip and maim the Malevolent Universe of its beauty against its wishes.


    It is as if every instance of intelligent life in this Malevolent Universe carries deep within themselves some of the same qualities that made the Builders so uniquely perfectly suited to thrive within it, and yet the Builders somehow held the sole key to unlocking that final potential. One might even argue that this development was no accident, that the Malevolent Universe as a living organism had some hand in guaranteeing its own survival with the Builders functioning as some sort of self-propagating fire-and-forget antibody, designed solely to counter and repel the venom of the first Atrekna incursion in the First Precursor War. That is conjecture at best, and falls entirely beyond the scope of this discussion.


    All we may know for sure is that our continued existence within the Arm, and indeed the Malevolent Universe as a whole, is that much safer for it. - Builder Scholar tannenbanannen</a> in his foundational work The Builders Effect Upon Surviving Races, New Telkan Press, 22,893 PC3


    "Come to me now in my time of need, Saint Jenkins, patron of the berserk charge. Guide my hands this day, make my aim straight and true, that I may gank these mobs and partake of thy blessing of the fried chicken of victory. In the name of the DPS, and the Tank, and the Healer. Buffs plz!" - Unknown, Third Phasic War, end of the Second Precursor War (est)


    "My people believe that, so long as a name is spoken, the named is never truly gone. Whatever you are, wherever you are... if a J''tar''ka of questionably sound mind may ask a boon of you... please speak my name sometimes, that I may continue to be long after I am gone. Speak it wherever and whenever you are, so that, wherever or whenever I am, I will receive the strength to ensure your future.


    "My name is Wuugndra Ax''mnev, and I love you." --Combat telemetry voice recording, discovered in rubble during reconstruction following the final TPS Breakout Event in System RH-8162. Dated to the last fifth of the Third Phasic War (confidence: 85%) Fate of either speaker has not been determined. (As transcribed by u/daviskendall</a>)


    MANDATORY VIEWING MESSAGE


    "As Planetary Director For Life, it is my solemn duty to care for all of you within my sphere of authority. Are you or someone you know a Terran in distress? Help is available 30 hours a day, 8 days a week, at any time! The New Tnvaru Psychiatric Services can provide grief counseling in addition to many other services. Call or text at any time for an automated, digital sentience, or live being crisis counselor call, a counseling appointment at a clinic or other comfortable location or even a home visit! Let us help you as you have helped us. Call 800-273-8255, operators are standing by!" - Planetary Director For Life Namtotum speaking for the Terran Assistance Program, Post Terran Xenocide Event


    END MANDATORY VIEWING MESSAGE


    It isn''t fair, I didn''t do anything to deserve this!


    My dog didn''t deserve to get eaten by a bunch of Okies but here we are. - From "Conversations in Hell", author Bhro''oms''mo''o the Mad, Lanaktallan Great Galloping Press, 28,978 Post 2PW


    Naxen sat, tapping the cutting bar against his armored leg, staring at Emry as the Digital Sentience highlighted the path through the massive space station.


    "It''s a stupid plan," Wrixet grumped, polishing the grav emitters on his grav-fist. He had the safety cover taken off so he could get at the emitters with the soft cloth.


    "What''s stupid about it?" D44 asked.


    The Telkana still had not remembered her own name or anything about her life, while Naxen and Wrixet had remembered bits and pieces.


    "We have to bring the main computer core online," Emry said. "This isn''t a space ship, it''s a non-orbital forward operations base."


    "For a war that''s been over for forty-thousand years," Naxen said. He ejected the salt block and shoved a new one in place, slapping it twice to seat it.


    "Look, we get to the main computer arrays, we get them online, that will let us run the shade defenses according to the messages," Emry said. He shook his head. "And we have to blow the ansible. That''s where the Shades are coming from."


    Wrixet just picked up the high impact polyalloy cover for the front of the grav fist, buffing it on his pants leg.


    "Once this hazard frame passes the tests, I''ll be able to go with you," Emry said. He gave a smile. "I''ll be robotic, so I''ll have the advantage of strength and speed on my side."


    "If you say so," Wrixet said. He snapped the poly-alloy cover back onto the grav fist, then snapped the maintenance plate back into place.


    "Look, we get to the primary computer core, we fire the whole thing up," Emry said. "There should be copies of the dogboi howl in the computer, we can use that to get rid of the shades."


    Wrixet just nodded. Naxen thumbed the trigger to check the telltales on the cutting bar, nodding along.


    D44 looked doubtful, but nodded along.


    "It''s almost thirty kilometers to the computer core array section," Wrixet said without looking up. "Are we running the whole way?"


    "It''s a kilometer to the tram," Emry said. "We get on the tram, we ride ten kilometers, then we head through the passages for a kilometer."


    "This sounds great," Naxen grumbled.


    "It''ll be fine," Emry said. "We''ve already got the red lights on, we''ve got salt and iron oxide doped H2O mist in the hallways. Nothing can go wrong."


    "Great, now we''re all going to die," Naxen grumped.


    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    "It''ll be fine. Trust me," Emry said.


    Wrixet just grunted.


    -----


    "See, no Shades. The red is keeping them back," Emry said as the doors opened to reveal the tram-station pad.


    Wrixet looked around the cavernous chamber. There were four monorail mag-rail tracks at this level, two more levels up, one level down. Each had a platform as well as an encased waiting room. Holograms winked and danced and flickered, the lights were dim and red.


    There were no trams.


    "No red," Naxen said.


    Emry nodded. "That''s why we''re wearing armor," he said, his voice more confident than it had been.


    A tram went by, the speed making the air shudder and thunder.


    For a moment, Wrixet thought he saw... Wrathbound? Warbound?


    Big blocky war machines all bound in chains inside the six cars that raced by.


    "We''ll go over to the covered waiting area, call a tram, then head to the core arrays," Emry said.


    Wrixet just nodded, tapping the grav-fist against his thigh pauldron.


    He kept looking around, looking at the dark areas, checking out the gaps between the red lights.


    He could see things shifting, shadows warping and twisting.


    While Emry and D44 went inside, Wrixet grabbed Naxen''s arm, holding him at the entrance.


    "See that?" Wrixet asked, nodding at the upper levels, where the walls of red hologram were tinged by something that made the red become streaked with wide strips of blue.


    "Yeah," Naxen said. He thumbed the activation rocker switch on the Mark II Cutting Bar and the engine growled.


    "Emry''s forgetting, you can change the color of light with a different color light," Wrixet said.


    "Same way we used to spoof the... the..." Naxen reached up and rubbed his face shield between his eyes. "Color. We''d spoof something with color and it would pop out... pop out..."


    "Fizzystimes and narcobrews," Wrixet said. He looked at the Telkani he knew, just knew deep inside, was his lifelong friend. "I don''t think we were Marines, Telk."


    Naxen shook his head. "I don''t think so either. I mean, I remembered some stuff about some fancy rifle, a grenade launcher, but beyond that, I don''t remember any training or anything like that."


    "Memories of military hardware feel more like school hypnotapes, you know?" Wrixet said.


    Naxen nodded. "Yeah, yeah, you''re right. Has that weird slick feeling to the memories."


    "So... how did we end up here?" Wrixet asked.


    There was a low humming noise as one of the tram-lines went live.


    "Don''t know, but whatever it was, someone hated our asses," Wrixet said. He chinned the button and started chewing the piece of stimgum. It felt like someone else''s reflex that had been pushed into his brain.


    "Tram Delta-Seventeen arriving on Track Nine-Alpha," a female voice said.


    "Doesn''t matter," Wrixet said. "All that matters is right now."


    Naxen nodded. "Yeah," he looked back slyly and then at Wrixet. "D44 got some big milkers, don''t she?"


    Wrixet chuckled. "Yeah, yeah she does."


    "Maybe after all this is over I can convince her to show them to me," Naxen said, smiling. Wrixet could hear the smile in his voice, even though the other Telkan was staring up into the darkness.


    Emry and D44 rushed up, stopping next to them.


    "Tram is five minutes out. Battery has to fast-charge and the power station has to load emergency reactors in it," Emry said. He smiled. "See, told you, no problem."


    "Stop saying that," Wrixet snapped.


    Emry frowned but went quiet.


    "There''s another ship docking," Emry said suddenly. He shook his head. "No transponder," he frowned. "Hellspace distortion is really making it hard to get any data," he shrugged. "Well, he have the Hellspace shields up now, so that''ll help."


    Nobody answered. D44 shifted over to stand closer to Wrixet and Naxen.


    "Drali''imna," she said softly. "My name is Drali''imna. My friends call me Imna."


    Both males nodded.


    "Nice to meet you, Imna," Wrixet said.


    The tram pulled in.


    "Hold open the door, I''m going to attach a pair of emitters to the tram," Emry said.


    Imna boarded, with Naxen, and Wrixet held the door open. Emry moved up to the front, slapping one low and one high, turning them on so they projected a hologram of a wall of crimson. He moved to the tram.


    "Hold open the door, Wrixet," he looked inside. "D44, hold open the door for me on the other side."


    Imna nodded, moving to the door and opening it, then leaning on the sensor.


    Emry repeated it, ensuring that the front of the tram was covered by a red wall. He got on and motioned. "Get onboard."


    Wrixet nodded, moving over and standing by the wall.


    The tram pulled out, gaining speed rapidly. Wrixet kept one eye on the front of the tram, where he could see the red wall in front of the windows of the automated tram.


    Naxen and Imna had their face shields together, using vibration conduction to talk to each other. Wrixet could tell Imna kept laughing. Emry kept staring at the map, tracking the blinking dot of the tram as it moved through the tunnels.


    He wasn''t sure what warned him. Maybe a slight color shift, maybe things had been going too well.


    He reached out and grabbed Naxen and Imna, yanking them both back so they slammed into the wall next to him. Imna let out a squawk.


    Naxen thumbed the cutting bar to life, looking around.


    There was a wide blue streak through the middle of the red hologram.


    Shades whipped through the middle of the car, screaming, scrabbling, trying to grab the quartet as the tram swept through them. Wrixet felt the outer muscle of his thigh erupt in pain, like someone had stuck a frozen knitting needle into the muscle.


    Then the shades were gone.


    "Must have been a cyan hologram emitter," Emry said. He lifted up one arm, an access panel open, and began tapping the keys. "Dammit, the tram uses a laser that''s acting like cyan."


    "Fix it!" Wrixet yelled as another group of shades swept through.


    "I''m trying!" Emry yelled back.


    The tram suddenly slid to a stop. The blue streak vanished.


    Wrixet looked.


    There were still some shades at the back of the far car. They were milling around, but Wrixet knew it would only be a few minutes before they spotted the quartet.


    "Get off the tram!" Wrixet yelled as the doors snapped open.


    Imna didn''t even flinch, throwing herself out the door. Naxen grabbed Emry, pulling the heavy robot behind him.


    "Door Charlie-Three!" Emry yelled, pulling loose of Naxen and running for the door.


    Wrixet dropped a smoke grenade behind him as he ran, hearing it hiss as it put out reddish smoke laced with sodium and ferrous powder.


    The run to the core computing array left him gasping, trying to breathe, the armor seeming to squeeze his chest.


    Still, they reached it in less than ten minutes.


    Emry hurried over to the main control panel that sat in front of a macroplas window, the computer server arrays behind it dark and silent.


    Naxen was bent over, hacking and coughing. Imna had one hand against the wall, gasping, her other hand pressed against her belly. Wrixet was down on one knee, one fist pressed against the floor, head lifted, grav fist tight by his waist, as he struggled to control his breathing.


    "Come on, come on," Emry said, hitting the buttons and switches. A screen flickered to life and the lights came on, dim, but still on. "Yes!" Emry put his hand against an induction port.


    Data started streaming down the solitary active screen. More screen started powering up. The computer arrays started spooling up, the vast server farm warming up and coming online.


    Emry turned to the trio of Telkan.


    "I need the three of you to go down to Airlock Nineteen-Sigma," Emry said. "A ship''s docking."


    "How far is it?" Wrixet asked.


    "Two kilometers," Emry made a tossing motion and Wrixet''s helmet beeped. A map of crimson and silver appeared with a dotted line moving through the twisting labyrinth. "There, you''ll be able to get there."


    "What do you want us to do?" Naxen asked, slowly straightening up.


    "Find out who it is. Let them know what''s going on. Get them up to speed," Emry said. He smiled. "Be nice to have some more help."


    "Yeah," Wrixet said.


    It''s never that easy, Telk, went through his mind. Not for people like us.


    "We better get moving," Naxen said.


    "Hurry," Emry said.


    The trio moved out, Naxen still breathing hard. Imna was fine, recovering quickly.


    Telkana were faster and recovered quicker from running than Telkani.


    "Easy for him to tell us to hurry, he doesn''t have to breathe," Imna griped.


    Naxen just nodded, lifting his arms up over his head.


    Wrixet just grunted.


    They moved quickly, keeping an eye out for any shades.


    "Airlock is cycling. Probably a Confederate Space Force vessel," Emry said in their headsets right as they reached the door for the interlock zone that was between the interior airlock door and a corridor.


    "Right," Naxen said. He looked at Wrixet. "Be good to have some other people."


    "It will," Imna said.


    "Yeah," Wrixet felt cynicism well up. Not something new, but something that felt old and comfortable.


    "Opening the door," Emry said.


    "Wait, can you see..." Naxen started.


    The door opened.


    Inside the interlock zone were creatures.


    Bipeds.


    Spikes on the shoulders, on the forearms, down the back.


    Fang toothed maws.


    Black skin or shell, cracked all over with dark crimson burning sullenly deep in the cracks.


    Red, malevolent eyes.


    All staring at the trio.


    "Inside?" Naxen finished.


    The creatures inside all shrieked at the same time.


    The grav fist snarled as Wrixet extended his arm out at a 45 degree angle to his body and activated the melee weapon even as he yelled.


    "FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE, TELK!"

 Nova Wars - Chapter 55

    Why were the Bag Lanaktallan so different from the Great Herd that remained on the outside? That¡¯s an easy question to answer¡­


    TerraSol.


    You see, Earth isn¡¯t the way it is because it is the Cradle of the Mad Lemurs¡­the Lemurs are Mad because of Earth: there¡¯s no other place even remotely like it, because the Malevolent Universe isn¡¯t Stupid or Sadistic enough to make a second one.


    Humanity twists and changes everything that it touches, but Humanity isn¡¯t the culprit¡­only the catalyst for Mother TerraSol¡¯s Will (a fact to which every Confederacy Race will attest) in execution of the Malevolent Universe¡¯s Grand Plan¡­


    ¡­or perhaps not.


    Regardless, the Lanaktallan, Tunvaru, Telkan, and other races that were on Earth changed more in their fifty-two years of confinement than the same races on the outside did in forty-thousand.


    They went Native, and though they may not be Humans, they were Terrans all the same¡­and that became everyone else¡¯s problem. ¨C Lanaktallan Philosopher Moo¡¯rto¡¯kno, Confederacy Cultural Anthropologist, ¡°Re-Engineered: The Culture Bomb of the Repatriating Terran Diaspora and the SUDS Flood.¡± Lanaktallan Great Galloping Press, 49231 (Confederacy Reckoning)


    Wrixet was all by himself but he wasn''t alone.


    The lead creature, mouth full of fangs, drooling red glowing liquid, snarled and jumped forward from where it was crouched down on all fours.


    "FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE, TELK!" he bellowed you, stepping into the leap, swinging from the hips. The grav-fist hit the charcoal skin and the creature''s head and shoulders exploded into burning chunks of charcoal that reminded Wrixet of BBQ briquettes.


    The body of the creature flew back, shattered from the increased kinetic force amplified by the grav-fist, briquettes raining down into the mass of creatures in the interlock zone transition chamber.


    The others all screeched and charged. Some leaping, some jumping onto the walls, digging in their claws to scamper forward, others jumping to the ceiling and bounding along it.


    They swarmed out.


    Wrixet parried claws with his forearm and upper left arm and answered with punches, open hand smacks, backhands, elbows, and forearms. When he had to, he kicked out, his boots shattering the charcoal. Each wound brought forth a gout of red energy that tore at his nerves, made him feel like he was being shockprodded by...


    by...


    ...by Lawsec in their armor and uniforms, laughing at him as they shockprodded him again, on the ground, trying to crawl away from the boots and the prod.


    The rage welled up inside of him and he roared back into their faces as he answered their screeching with punches and kicks. He slammed the grav-fist into bodies, shattering them, into faces, destroying their skulls, into their arms or legs, ripping them free.


    The red energy ripped at his nerves and he bellowed his rage back.


    They still got by him. The airlock was built for the big insects to be able to use.


    One Telkan brawler couldn''t hold it.


    He hit with everything he had, repeatedly, knocking them back and forth. A punch to the face or the lower midsection shattered them into briquettes. The spikes weren''t just for looks, when a punch or a grab and twist ripped them away thanks to the grav-fist, reddish energy poured out and they screamed, trying to reach the base of the now missing spike.


    He could hear the roaring of the cutting bars behind him and knew that D44 and Naxen would handle any that by him as he stepped all the way into the doorway. It was a short passage, doors on each side, an additional airlock to protect the ship in the interlock zone was compromised.


    They could only come at him a few at a time. Screaming and screeching, clawing at him.


    His armor was scored, slashed, gouged, but he kept swinging, kept fighting.


    "Wrix, we gotta run, Telk," Naxen yelled out as Wrixet backhanded the face off of one and it crumpled to ash.


    "GET OUT!" Wrixet yelled. "Run!"


    "Not without you!" D44, Imna called out.


    "GET OUT!" Wrixet turned and threw a hard punch, driving the thing against the black metal of the airlock wall. It shattered, coals and red energy that lashed at him.


    "We''ll be at the computing core!" Naxen shouted.


    Wrixet didn''t answer, ducking under a sword blade and coming up to shatter the creature''s chest with a punch.


    Bob, weave, strike, bob, strike strike strike, weave, bob, strike.


    He was kicking burning coals out of the way with every step. Every punch sent coals showering through the airlock to bounce off the walls, the ceiling, the floor.


    The HUD in his visor was showing his upper left arm pauldron as yellow, his shoulder gardbrace was yellow, his rerebrace bright amber. His chest plate was still green, edged out of blue, but the grav-fist was blue and the power level was stable.


    The air in his armor hissed and he could suddenly breathe easier, the HUD displaying "O2 INJECTION UNDERWAY" in the upper right. He was still sweating, his whole body feeling like it was slicked with sweat.


    None of that mattered as he kept swinging, kept holding the hallway.


    They were still getting by him, but in less numbers.


    He planted his feet, part of his mind imagining that his feet were tree trunks, that he had roots sinking deep into the ground as he kept swinging.


    One breathed fire at him and he got his arms up, crossed in an X, protecting his visor. When it stopped he reached forward, slapping its jaw shut with a hard open handed slap. The creature''s head broke free and it collapsed into chunks of smoldering coals.


    "I''m going to close the door!" Emry''s voice was far away, tinny, barely heard.


    Wrixet just backed up, steadily, still swinging. His shoulders were starting to ache, the nerves across his chest, his abdomen, the front of his thighs were burning like he''d been splashed with molten metal.


    He pushed it away.


    He could hear the Lawsec patrolmen laughing at him as they kicked him, his school satchel spilled open, books having fallen out.


    One tried to leap over him and he punched upwards, jumping slightly.


    The grav-fist shattered its body.


    "Telk thinks he''s gonna be something with them books," one of the Lawsec laughed, kicking his math book into the gutter.


    Another tried to go by, low and fast, but a kick to the side slammed in against the wall and he drove the grav-fist against the back of its head even as he shifted and lifted his left arm to take the hits from the other two, which were getting in each other''s way, against his upper arm''s armor.


    "Gonna be special, Telk?" another laughed, putting a toe on the screen of his school dataslate and leaning on it. The cheap macroplas cracked and broke.


    He took two steps back and more flooded toward him. A kick disabused the leader of any notion he was giving up, the boot shattering its skull.


    They all laughed at him as one began urinating on the ground, the liquid splashing his swollen and bruised face.


    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    He was out of the entryway, still swinging.


    "Lick that up, Telk," one of the Lawsec laughed.


    He started to step back in, screaming against the visor. Lift the shoulder, take the hit on the pauldron, line drive into the face, feel them crumble. Backhand, tear the face and front of the head off, feel them crumble, drive the forearm forward, bent at the elbow, shatter the torso, kick the coals away.


    "DROPPING THE BLAST DOOR!" Emry yelled out.


    The door thudded down and Wrixet hit it with the grav-fist, the punch suddenly intersected by the door instead of impacting the screeching face.


    "Run, Wrixet," Emry said. "We have four more ships locking into the docking rings."


    He turned at the waist, smashing aside a screeching creature that had been raking at his back. A step forward and kicking one into chunks of charcoal. Smash down with the elbow, ignore the beeping and HUD warning as it goes red, shatter the body.


    The hallway was clear and he looked around.


    Wrixet suddenly realized he didn''t know which way to go.


    "I''m lost," Wrixet said.


    "Go straight," Emry said.


    Wrixet took off running, following directions.


    At one point he heard screeches in the reddish darkness.


    More screeches came back.


    The burning feeling was setting into his bones, having chewed through the muscle. It was in his abdomen, filling his guts full of gnawing and chewing fireants. It was in his brain, bringing up every single time he had been beaten, spit on, knocked around, robbed.


    A creature reared up, swiping at him. He bobbed underneath and came up inside of its reach. The smashing blow from the grav-fist shattered its head.


    The energy washed over him as he killed two more in rapid succession.


    He was six again. Coming home from school on the public tram. His school uniform was old, a handmedown his mother had bought at a used clothing store, but it was clean, repaired, and lovingly pressed.


    Two more jumped him. The first he shattered with a single blow.


    The second he pinned against the wall, his hand open, the grav-fist snarling as he pressed its spiked head against the wall.


    He started driving his fist into its midsection, answering its screeches with bellows of his own.


    The Lawsec got on. They moved down, making people put their hands on the scanner. They reached one. One laughed, knocking his school cap off. Another grabbed at his satchel. He tried to hold on, crying out, confused.


    He ran forward and slammed a shoulder against four of them, crushing them against the bulkhead, roaring at them, punching punching punching


    Lawsec were supposed to be his friend. That''s what they said in school. He didn''t understand. What did he do wrong? He was a good Telkani. He got good grades. The teacher said he was smart and worked hard. His mom said he was a good Telkani.


    One tried to run and he followed it, his boots thudding against the deckplate as he gave a howling cry back. A shade swept out of the wall and he shattered it with a negligent swing of his arm, the protoplasm coating his armor and steaming as the icy cold gel hit the hot plates of his armor.


    They rooted through his satchel. One took the dataslate, showed it to the other. They were all laughing.


    It screeched and he bellowed back, catching up to it. He was faster than even a Telkana at short distances.


    The other Telkan looked away. Why wouldn''t they help? Why were the Lawsec mad at him? What did he do wrong?


    He tackled the running one, taking it to the ground, bouncing through a cluster of them that were exiting an interlock zone airlock. He was kicking, punching, smacking, beating his face against theirs as he screamed back into their faces.


    The Lawsec bent his datapad like teacher said not to, all of them laughing harder. He could see the quiz he took with the "GOOD JOB! A+! DOING GOOD!" on the screen.


    He grabbed spikes on the back of a big one, pulling himself to his feet, ignoring the pain, and slammed two hammerblows with the grav-fist into its back. It screamed and he bellowed back.


    There was an older Telkana next to the window across from him. Old like momma. He looked at her, staring to cry, wondering why she wasn''t helping him. Isn''t that what mamma''s did?


    He turned and punched another out of the way, grabbing the second one by the horns and pounding his face against its face, screaming back.


    The old Telkana looked away, out the window.


    One raked talons across his chest. He slammed the grav-fist into the elbow and the arm turned to smoldering chunks.


    Why wouldn''t she help him?


    He stepped forward again, punching, slapping, kicking. He was in a warped hallway, the black metal of the hallway curved and ribbed strangely, with burning runes everywhere and chains hanging from the ceiling. Two ran at him and he charged them, both flinching back at his sudden bellowing charge.


    One of the Lawsec grabbed his ear and twisted. He started crying harder, pawing at the arm of the hand twisting his ear.


    He grabbed a chain and used the grav-fist to yank it free. Three more creatures were staring at him as he wrapped it around his forearm, the HUD showing it bright amber with strobing lines outlining it.


    The dataslate broke with a loud snap, blue smoke wafting up, chunks of macroplas flying free.


    He roared and charged.


    One ran.


    He slammed into the other two, kicking one apart, grabbing the other and slamming it face first into the wall, punching the back of its head.


    It crumbled.


    The Lawsec laughed.


    He turned and kicked on out of the way, grabbing the other by the horns with both hands. He screamed back at it as he wrenched the horns apart.


    Its skull split in two and it fell into burning chunks.


    One of the Telkani across from him, that he knew from homeroom, jumped up and pushed at the Lawsec. "Stop, your hurting him. Hurting is wrong!"


    A group rushed by behind him and he spun and followed them. He grabbed the slowest by the ankle, yanking it back, punching it where the legs met the body, throwing the crumbling chunks aside. The grav-fist was snarling, sparking, the leading edge of energy burning red.


    One of the Lawsec laughed, grabbing the other Telkani, holding him while another slapped him.


    Two turned to face him. He slapped one into charcoal and shoulder blocked the other, driving it against the wall. He slammed the grav-fist twice against its head before it was nothing more than crumbled coals.


    "Stop hitting! Hitting is wrong!" he sobbed/yelled.


    One tried to get away and he held it, punching at it, even as it scrabbled to get away. He didn''t care.


    The Lawsec pulled them off the tram, into the rainy street, laughing as they slapped and punched him and the other Telkani.


    He blocked a set of jaws with the chain wrapped around his arm and slammed it agianst the wall. The jaw broke off and it crumbled to coals.


    The tram drove away.


    They ran through the interlock, into the ship. He followed, killing the ones that turned to face him.


    They kicked and laughed in the rain, their heavy boots slamming into the two little Telkani''s bodies.


    They piled into another group.


    He charged in, swinging, cursing, bellowing, screaming. He could taste blood, taste copper, feel something inside of him screaming to get out.


    The Lawsec left the two boys crumpled on the sidewalk.


    More piled in but he didn''t care. He could feel their claws raking at the armor. The armor was howling that the kinetic gel was running low, he was going to have armor breaches, integrity was dropping, power was dropping.


    He didn''t care.


    A Telkana came up. Older, like his sister, with glitter on her face. He held his arms out to her, sobs pleading with her to help him. She knelt down next to him, between him and the other Telkani.


    He slammed one repeatedly against the wall until it crumbled, then looked around for more.


    She patted them down. Took his school-link. Took the other one''s. Put them in her pocket.


    He heard their screeching further in and roared back, charging toward the screaming. The ants, the pain, the burning licking acid pain, had sunk into his bone marrow, had sunk into his brain. It pumped through his veins with his blood.


    She stood up and walked away.


    Some were scrabbling at a door, ripping a hole larger while singular ones twisted and writhed through it.


    The two Telkani lay on the pavement sobbing in the rain. He got up, wiping away his tears angrily. He held his hand out to the other one. "Get up." The other one reached up and he pulled the other Telkani to his feet.


    He hit at a charge, crushing one into coals, the others scattering. He slapped and kicked and punched. One was halfway through the gap and he drove the grav-fist down in a hammerblow into its back. The edge of the gap cut it in half and it fell into coals.


    "Naxen. Sunny Meadows Hab, level 68," the other boy said.


    He snapped the spike off of one''s back and drove it through the head of another.


    "Wrixet. Level 52."


    The door slowly opened. There were dozens of them inside, all screaming, all lunging forward, all attacking the small group in the corner of the room. The servers beyond the clear macroplas were all lit up, all blinking.


    The two boys put their arms around each other''s shoulders and staggered into the rainy overcast afternoon.


    He could see Imna swinging her cutting bar with both hands, desperately trying to keep the things back.


    He screamed at them, charging.


    They scattered like pins, tumbling and falling. He kicked and stomped, throwing a fist or a forearm into any that got up. He got next to Imna, clenching his hands together, lifting them over his head, and slamming his clenched fists onto any that close.


    The grav-fist sputtered.


    His armor retracted the faceplate and was suddenly heavy on his limbs.


    He didn''t care.


    One broke free and tried to run as Imna hacked on the other remaining one.


    Wrixet chased it as it bounded toward the far door.


    Dozens more poured through another door.


    Wrixet backed up, smacking the nearest ones.


    Flames enveloped the one that had bounded through the far doorway. It collapsed in a burning heap, pink and white flames consuming it.


    Emry was against the wall, his eyes wide.


    Wrixet was shoulder to shoulder with Imna, who had lost her shield and was hacking with both hands.


    Something looped over the creatures, that were crawling on top of one another in their eagerness to reach the two Telkan.


    It bounced twice.


    "GRENADE!" Emry yelled.


    It beeped, magnetic systems oriented it so it stood on one pointed end. It flashed pink.


    A hexagonal barrier appeared.


    Flames covered the other side of the barrier.


    Wrixet sagged slightly and looked at Imna.


    "Where''s Naxen?" he asked.


    Imna''s faceplate opened.


    Her face was streaked with tears.


    She pointed down, behind them, between them and Emry.


    Wrixet turned and looked.


    Naxen was on the floor. His guts were spread out. One leg was at least a meter away.


    Wrixet went down on his knees, pulling his friend into his lap. He pulled open Naxen''s faceshield.


    Naxen was staring into eternity, panting, breathing fast, the Bliss carrying him off.


    "No, no, no," Wrixet said. "No, don''t leave me. Don''t leave me, Telk."


    Naxen was breathing faster and shallower.


    "No, no, no," Wrixet sobbed, tears falling on Naxen''s face. "No, please don''t leave me."


    Imna knelt next to him, putting her hands on his shoulder and resting her helmeted foreheard against his scarred and gouged shoulder pauldron.


    Naxen''s breath was hitching. Shallow, fast, hitching. His pupils were dilated. His tongue flicked out and wetted his cracked and bleeding lips.


    "No, please, don''t go. Don''t leave me," Wrixet sobbed.


    Naxen stopped breathing.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 55

    I was nobody when it started. Just your average college age Telkana. On a college fieldtrip for my ancient history class.


    That simple field trip led to a chain of events that destroyed my old life.


    And left me with what you see now. - Meditations on the Barrier War, Lancer First Class Imna, Free Telkan Press, 25 Post-Terran Emergence


    Wrixet bent over Nexan, whose eyes stared at eternity, his whole body wracked with sobs. His armor was rent and torn, pinkish kinetic gel dribbling from the jagged gouges with the half-melted edges. His body sagged over his friend as he sobbed.


    Imna wrapped her arms around Wrixet, hugging him tightly.


    "I''m sorry, I''m so sorry," she sobbed. "I tried. I really tried. There was too many of them."


    Wrixet didn''t answer, just kept sobbing.


    There was an explosion that made the deckplate tremble outside the field of interlocked pink hexagons, the edges where they met glowing with white energy.


    "I got them off of him, but it was too late," she said.


    Wrixet just held Naxen closer.


    "Don''t leave me. Please, don''t leave me," Wrixet sobbed.


    "He''s gone, Wrixet, I''m sorry," Emry said, stepping forward. "He''s gone."


    "SHUT UP!" Wrixet screamed, looking up. He''d opened his faceplate and Imna could see cauterized gouges in the flesh of his face, across his muzzle, across one eye, somehow the eye intact. "YOU SHUT UP!"


    Emry stepped back, his face looking fearful.


    Wrixet bent back over Naxen, sobbing.


    There was a hollow knocking sound from the barrier.


    Wrixet just kept sobbing.


    Imna turned and looked as the knocking sounded again.


    The field suddenly dropped.


    Huge suits of powered armor stood in the room. The two closest were daubed pink and white in random blobs and splotches. Fierce looking snarling cat-heads were done in black paint, with red eyes and blood tipped fangs. The armor was thick, heavy, looking almost archaic. The helmets were round cat-heads with large glowing grins, wide eyes, and ears, the fuzzy covering scorched and ripped.


    "Doki?" the lead one asked.


    The ones behind were red, black, gray, all different colors. Five of them, all of them with different color schemes, with brass and bronze decorations, gold/warsteel alloys, and strange burning symbols.


    "Doki," the lead one said, moving forward with the hiss-thump of heavy power armor. It knelt down next to Wrixet, putting one massive gauntlet on his back. "Doki. o(¨i©n¨i)o Doki."


    Wrixet just nodded, sobbing, repeating over and over "please please please don''t leave me"


    "¡¾?¡¿_¡¾?¡¿eki ?Òæ? foo-ket-soo-nah" the cat headed one still standing ordered.


    To Imna it sounded female.


    The other armored figures gave a salute by slamming their fist against their chests. They then took hold of their weapons and moved out.


    One, shorter than the others, moved up. It knelt down with Wrixet. Its faceplate opened to reveal a Hamaroosan with red streaks in its facial fur.


    "Our brother has gone to the arms of the Digital Omnimessiah," the Hamaroosan said, its voice deep and rumbling, unlike what Imna had heard on the Tri-vee.


    Wrixet nodded, still sobbing, still cradling Naxen close.


    "He dwells with Enraged Phillip, welcomed by Chromium Saint Peter, and feasts with Kalki and Menhit," the Hamaroosan said.


    Wrixet just nodded.


    Imna curled over the pain in her stomach, starting to sob.


    I should have shown him my tits when I had the chance, the crazy thought went through her brain and she lifted her head up, sobbing and laughing at the same time.


    The big pink and white one stepped forward, cupping the back of Imna''s head with one hand.


    All she could do was laugh and sob at the same time, the words my tits circling over and over in her brain as she tried to hold onto her sanity with her bare claws.


    One armored finger came down, surprisingly gentle, to wipe her tears away.


    "(¨i¨i)" the voice said.


    "He was my brother," Imna sobbed. "He was part of me. I barely knew him but he was my brother."


    The huge armored figure cradled her head with one hand while brushing at her cheeks and the sides of her muzzle with the backs of armored fingers.


    "(¨s_¨t) ??''?''\????\=(??¡ñ)=/????/''?? ? ? ?" the voice asked.


    Imna gulped and nodded.


    The hands moved as the figure knelt down and picked up the cutting bar that Imna had dropped. With the other hand, the massive pink armored figure helped Imna to her feet, then pushed the cutting bar into her hands.


    "(¥Î?Òæ?)¥Îáê©ß©¥©ß" it said.


    Imna nodded.


    Behind the pink and white armored figures a strange being entered the room.


    It was tall, yet seemed squat. It was wearing a robe and a faceshield designed to look like a skull. From its back were articulated metal arms, terminating in sawblades, circular saw blades, cutters, razors, snippers, and injection needles. Its feet were surrounded by black mist that crackled with hair thin red lighting.


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    Imna was aware that the kneeling Hamaroosan was leading Wrixet in a slow solemn prayer, Wrixet repeating the words even as he sobbed.


    The figure moved up, the robe unmoving, as if the creature was floating rather than walking.


    Imna drew back slightly and the pink and white armored figure put one arm protectively around Imna.


    "There is not much time," the robed figure said, its voice buzzing and crackling.


    Wrixet looked up and drew back.


    The articulated robotic surgical harness arms dove down, grabbing Naxen''s body from Wrixet''s grasp.


    "He has been given his rites," the armored Hamaroosan said, putting one hand on Wrixet''s shoulder to hold him in place.


    "His duty is not yet done," the robed figure said. The arms started injecting Naxen''s body with fluids. A breathing mask was put over Naxen''s face. Grippers scooped up the intestines, piling them on the ruptured abdomen. More needles sunk into flesh. "His hour draws near. Soon he will be exalted above all others."


    Wrixet struggled, trying to get loose.


    "Don''t touch him. Stop it! Leave him alone," Wrixet yelled.


    "Easy, brother," the Hamaroosan said gently. "Let the Deorc Galdere do its work."


    Wrixet looked up, his eyes full of pain. "He''s my brother."


    The Hamaroosan pointed at the fallen warblade. "His weapon."


    Wrixet, his brain stunned, nodded, bending down and picking it up. He placed it in the held-out hand of the Hamaroosan, who turned and handed it to the strange figure who was affixing the breathing mask to Naxen''s face with black warsteel staples.


    Other manipulators put the sword on Naxen''s chest, then his hands folded on top of it. The strange creature suddenly hugged Naxen close, turned in place, and swept away.


    Wrixet cried out and went to lunge forward to catch up.


    "Nay, brother. Where the Deorc Galdere goes, we would be wise not to follow," the Hamaroosan said, grabbing Wrixet''s shoulder. It gave a shake of its head. "All too soon, we may have to suffer beneath his ministrations."


    Emry stepped forward. "You''re... you''re with the Crusade."


    The Hamaroosan nodded. "Yes." The face shield shut.


    "¨R?¨Q Doki," the cat-headed one said.


    "Why... why are you here?" Emry asked.


    The Cat-headed one laughed, a bright sparkling thing that danced through the room.


    "This is where the Lossglass Singers bade the Black Neko to go," the Hamaroosan said. He shrugged, the massive plates shifting. "Where the Catch These Catching Hands Sucker was needed most according to their blind all seeing eyes."


    Wrixet stood up straight, pawing at his face.


    "Do not be ashamed by the tears you have shed for a fallen brother," the Hamaroosan said, using one hand to stop Wrixet from pawing at his face. "We should all be lucky as to have someone shed tears for us when we have fallen."


    Imna was blinking, trying to get her brain to stop whirling.


    The Dark Crusade was real, not just made up for movies.


    The big one with the cat head babbled more emojis and then moved away.


    "The Nell of Night will be docking shortly," the Hamaroosan said. It looked around. "Until we can sweep and clear this station, that may be a better place for the three of you."


    "I want to go where they took Naxen," Wrixet said.


    The Hamaroosan stared for a long moment. "Very well. You have been warned."


    "I''ll go too," Imna said.


    "I should link up, get the computing array working," Emry said. He looked down. "I''ve just been trained for docking procedures. I''m not even military."


    "We all serve our part," the Hamaroosan said. He turned and began walking out. "Follow. If you dare."


    Imna followed, suddenly exhausted. She managed to get the cutting bar to attach to the belt, but she left the shield where she had dropped it as they passed.


    Wrixet followed, silent, his face shield closed again.


    The Hamaroosan led them to a medical bay where robed and masked figures moved about silently.


    One moved in front of Imna, red lights flashing from the eye sockets, passing over her.


    "Non-critical injuries. Mainly superficial. Hellspace energy scorching. Recommend medical treatment," it said, its voice filtered and almost mechanical.


    She tried to go around it, but two of the articulated arms reached out, grabbing her upper arms firmly. Despite her protests it shifted her to a bed, lifted her up, and set her down.


    She tried to protest when it stripped off her armor, but an injection made her thoughts go fuzzy.


    "There will be pain. It is permissable to scream. Your motor control cortexes are currently suppressed and under my control," one said, suddenly leaning down into her vision.


    Its black warsteel mask was edged with with gold alloy.


    It didn''t lie.


    Depilitators moved over her fur, across her face, across her chest, her arms, her legs, through the fur on her back. Clamps held the cauterized gouges shut while staplers closed it with warsteel staples. Warsteel thread was used to close some wounds, pins with round caps on the end were used to close others.


    She screamed but the work went on. It went on and on and one, but there was never merciful darkness. Just pain. Just the whirring of mechanical arms, the hiss of tubes and liquids, and the snap and crack of instruments. She could smell burning flesh, scorched blood, and heat crisped fur.


    Finally, it was over. She was wrapped in soft cloth and carried, in a null-G field, to a bed. Tubed were hooked into her arms.


    She finally slept.


    <hr>


    When she woke, she looked at the skull faced mask of the nurse or whatever it was attending to her.


    "Good. Awake. You are in operable condition. You are able to continue to fight," the attendant said. It released the restraints and helped her to her feet. "Your armor has been blessed and repaired."


    It motioned with one articulated surgical arm.


    She could see her shield, her sword, the cutting bar, and her armor stacked neatly on a table.


    "I will help you dress," the attendant said.


    She wanted to protest, to ask for just clothing, but to be honest, the attendant intimidated her.


    It was surprisingly gentle as it helped her put on the armor.


    "Go in the Digital Omnimessiah''s Grace, and may Enraged Phillip and the Warfather Vuxten bless you," the attendant said before turning away.


    She stood still for a moment, feeling foolish. The face shield was online, showing her estimated physical condition, that the armor was in full repair, that the battery pack was topped off.


    "Computer?" she tried.


    "Awaiting input," came back.


    "Can you lead me to Wrixet?" she asked.


    There was silence for a moment.


    "Affirmative. Please follow the dotted line," the computer said.


    A dotted line appeared in her vision.


    Several times she pressed herself against the side of the corridor as massive suits of power armor moved by. They were all carrying weapons, all looked dangerous.


    She''d only seen such things in historical documentaries in school.


    The dotted line led her deep into the station. To lifts that took long moments to reach her destination.


    It''s kilometers thick, she thought to herself.


    FInally, she ended up at a massive door where masked and robed figures were affixing symbols and runes done in rose gold-warsteel alloy. They opened the door for her, bowing slightly.


    She followed the line to the elevator and moved to the floor of the massive bay. She could see the sparks of welders and grinders. See gantries moving large pieces of machinery.


    On the floor were warbound. Huge machines dedicated to warfare.


    The dotted line led to the back.


    There was a massive warbound, slightly apart from the others.


    Wrixet sat next to its foot, his helmet off. Staples held together cauterized gouges on his face. He was missing the whiskers on one side of his muzzle. Slashes somehow had missed his eye and were now held shut by warsteel wire.


    "I''m here," she said softly, sitting down.


    Wrixet cracked open a narcobrew and handed it to her.


    "I''m sorry," she said.


    "Not your fault," Wrixet said, his voice nearly lost in the sounds of machinery and heavy tool use.


    They sat silently for a long time.


    "We went to the Grand Cathedral to fondle the statue of Saint Brentili''ik and take pictures," Wrixet said softly.


    "I went on a field trip," Imna said.


    "Naxen was so excited to see the warbound. He''d always believed," Wrixet said. He gave a short sharp laugh and took a drink off the narcobrew. "Didn''t matter to him we almost got killed. He''d seen the warbound."


    Imna just nodded.


    "Ain''t that a bitch," Wrixet said softly. "Ain''t that some shit?"


    Imna just nodded, unsure what he was talking about.


    There was a deep bone vibrating buzzing sound from inside the warbound Wrixet was leaning against.


    He patted the foot gently. "Easy, brother, easy."


    They were silent for a while.


    "What are you doing in here?" Imna finally asked.


    Wrixet patted the massive clawed foot of the warbound.


    "I want to be here when Naxen wakes up."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 55

    "...You take my life, but I''ll take yours too


    You fire your rifle, but I''ll gut you too


    So when you''re waiting for the next attack, You''d better stand, there''s no turning back...."


    -The Warsteel Lady Age of Reasonable Concerns war chant


    And Lo, beyond the Chained Gate awaits the Crusade.


    For time beyond time, they wait.


    Their blind seers scan the stars, following the threads of karmic debt.


    When they witness a snarl in those threads, a knot of destiny,


    Then unseals the Chained Gate, and followed by screams they charge


    To scourge the unclean with fire; to eradicate their filthy biological heresy.


    Rest well, young one.


    You are guarded by warriors most fell.


    Sleep in peace under their gaze, and know safety even in war


    For the Crusade exists to destroy enemies more terrible than mere soldiers,


    Hellfire against heresy, that we may be steel against steel. - Black Neko Hymn, as transcribed from Engrish-Emoji by historian Willdissolver, Neko Marine Tradition and History Preservation Project


    Those early days were the hardest.


    They were also the best.


    I stood shoulder to shoulder with the finest Telkan and Terrans ever created by the malevolent universe.


    They, who stood with me, I call my brother. - Meditations on the Barrier War, Lancer First Class Imna, Free Telkan Press, 25 Post-Terran Emergence


    He was laying on the pavement, his face hurting. He was crying, his stomach hurting from the boot impacts. Another Telkani reached down, lifted him up. They introduced each other, put their arms over each other shoulders, and staggered home.


    Naxen. I''m Naxen.


    He was sitting in class, back straight, hands folded on top of his desk, watching the teacher as she taught how numbers added to other numbers became even bigger numbers, and how to take away numbers to make the numbers smaller. He was smiling, content and happy. He liked school. He liked his teacher.


    He wished she was his momma.


    I''m Naxen...


    Lawsec was holding his arms while another one punched him in the stomach. His book bags were laying on the ground, his dataslate broken, his books torn up, his homework scattered. They were laughing as they punched him.


    Naxen


    He was back to back with another Telkani, fighting the older boys who hung out on level 28 and stopped the elevator to extort people. He lashed out quick, striking and pulling back before someone could grab him arm. Their jackets had the shining hologram of a bird of prey on it.


    I''m Naxen...


    He was in school, paying attention to science. Most of the other Telk weren''t paying attention, but he was. So was his best friend. They still believed that education would pull them out of the The Hive and into success and luxury.


    His name is Wrixet...


    The compujudge had decided he was guilty. Incorrible, despite the fact it was his first offense. Breaking curfew, on the way home from a study group. Juve-Cubes. One month.


    He wondered if his mother cried.


    I''m Naxen...


    He was getting jumped in. The fists pounded him as he tried to fight back, but he was outnumbered fifteen to one, but he still fought, unwilling to go down easy. Finally the command was snapped to stop. The people who had just been punching him cheered and poured narcobrew on him.


    They gave him his own jacket.


    Naxen


    His father yelling at his mother. His mother and his two sisters crying. He stepped up and grabbed the old man, spinning him around. He pushed his father against the wall, the knife in his hand against his father''s throat. He growled threats. He growled promises. He let his father go and the drunk stumbled out the door.


    His mother yelled at him.


    But it was fine.


    I''m Naxen...


    High School. Hanging with Wrixet and the others. Going home. HIs mother zonked out on Zipper. His sister crying to her to make food. Going with Wrixet to get food. The promise of education was gone, replaced with sheer survival.


    I''m Naxen...


    Getting out of the Juve-Cubes, coming home. His sisters trying to get his mother interested in his return. She didn''t care. She was hurting for a Zip. Trashing the house, looking for some Zipper. HIs sisters crying. He got some from another ganger. She hit the Zip and collapsed on the couch.


    He went with Wrixet to get food. Wrixet had made sure his sisters were fed while he was Cubed.


    I''m Naxen...


    ''don''t leave me, please, don''t leave me'' the sobs moved through his brain.


    There was a jolt to his chest and head and the memories shattered.


    He could hear singing, faint and far away, but he couldn''t tell what they were singing or who they were. A child giggling nearby and raced away.


    Data and information poured into his brain. Sensor arrays, weapon types, electronic counter-measures, electronic counter-counter-measures, phasic inhibitors, ammoforge consumption rates.


    Most of it didn''t make sense. It hurt his brain, like pieces of sharp glass.


    Disconnected ideas went through his brain, ideas, concepts, information that he had no frame of reference for.


    Grazing fire, suppressive fire, close air support, artillery support, fire for effect, flanking maneuvers, fighting withdraw, directed fire, point defense operation


    He had no frame of reference. The data, the information, the concepts stuck in his bruised and battered mind like chunks of broken glass.


    ERROR LOADING DATA: MASSIVE CEREBRAL TRAUMA PROTOCOLS INITIATED


    More data. This time it built on references. How to handle a rifle, how to throw a grenade, how to march, how to run, how to climb. How to take apart and reassemble an assault cannon, how to maintain his anti-nuclear, biological, nanite, atomic, radiation, biological warfare equipment. How to use a radio, how to give commands, how to follow them.


    This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    He was different species, different people, all their memories layering down into a foundation.


    He screamed inside his own mind.


    I''m Naxen I''m Naxen I''m Naxen


    More was built on the foundation. Fighting on battlefields under strange suns. It locked into the foundation and he suddenly understood what flanking was, what grazing fire was, what suppressive fire was, what close air support was and how to call it in with mission variables and theater logistics constraints.


    Where am I?


    More was layered on. How to give commands. How to follow them. How to interpret them. What was a legal command and what was an illegal order. The rules of warfare. The Orion Convention. The Hague Laws of Warfare Treaty.


    What is happening? Who is doing this?


    More. Armored unit training. He was a tanker, he was an APC driver, he was a dismount crew, he was a power armor pilot, he was a warmek jock. He drove a thousand armored vehicles under a thousand suns.


    It all layered smoothly on top of what he had been before.


    SOMEONE WAKE ME UP!


    More data. Himself. His sensor arrays, his point defense, his indirect fire weapons, his directed energy and projectile weapons, his battlescreens.


    He was the will of the Telkan people made manifest.


    SOMEONE WAKE ME UP!


    Another jolt. He screamed.


    UNIT ONLINE - STANDBY TUTORIAL MODE burned through his brain and he screamed.


    Everything faded, pulled back.


    He could hear gurgling, hear hissing, hear clicking and the whine of high capacity capacitors.


    Everything was misty, formless, he floated in the middle of gray mist.


    There was a knocking sound.


    He looked around. He couldn''t see anyone.


    The knocking repeated.


    "SOMEONE WAKE ME UP!" he screamed.


    A doorway appeared in the mist, burning white edging around it. There was a knocking sound on it, then the sound of a doorbell. It was the doorbell of the shabby apartment he had grown up in, and he remembered that the doorbell quit working when he was eight.


    The door opened and a Terran walked through.


    He was tall, but somehow seemed squat, a squarish head, the reddish-brown hair cut so close Naxen could see his scalp. His skin was a tan color, like the stripes across Naxen''s spine that laddered down his back.


    The Terran looked around for a moment, reaching up and shading his eyes. He dug into a pocket of his comfortable looking pants and pulled out a detector of some sort.


    "SOMEONE WAKE ME UP!" Naxen screamed, flailing about but unable to do anything.


    The Terran walked forward, looking around, almost bumping into Naxen before he stopped.


    Naxen flailed around some more.


    The Terran looked around again.


    "Huh. Not even a sitting space. Give me a moment," he looked up. "Mother, generate a three by three by two living space with dev textures and snapping grid in this eVR space please. Light at the following coordinates, six point two lumens, Telkan vision optimized."


    "Complying," came a woman''s voice.


    A box appeared, surrounding Naxen. It had orangish textures, with white writing on it. There was a grid that the textures fit in perfectly. The light appeared.


    "There you are," the Terran said. He reached out and touched Naxen''s arm.


    Naxen felt like he was falling and rising at the same time.


    The Terran caught him.


    "Easy, easy," the Terran said. He knelt down. "Tell the computer you need a lounging couch and a chair, a table with a bottle of wine and two glasses."


    Naxen just gulped but followed the instructions, calling out the ''coordinates'' as the Terran read them off.


    The Terran moved over and set Naxen on the couch, then poured a glass of wine and handed it to him.


    "You''re real new. Newest I''ve seen in a long time," the Terran said, sitting down on the couch. He looked around. "The majority of your brain, you right here, is sleeping. You had some crossloading difficulty so Mother asked me to check on you."


    "Where, where am I?" Naxen asked.


    The Terran waved at the walls. "Enhanced VIrtual Reality Construct built in the firmware embedded in your neural tissue and in your sentience disaster catastrophic damage protection housing," he said. "Long story short, we''re in your mind."


    Naxen tasted the wine.


    Nothing.


    Like he was tasting air.


    "Hang on," the Terran said, seeing Naxen''s expression. "Mother, sensory layer activation, two point five percent strength."


    "Complying," the female''s voice said.


    "Try again," the Terran said.


    Naxen tasted it, expecting air.


    Instead he got lost in the taste. The bubbles, his mind figuring out just how many per square micrometer on his tongue there were, their rate of popping, the mathematical formulae to determine order of popping. The chemicals, then the coding that simulated those chemicals. The viscosity of the water, its heat dispersion ability.


    "Mother, drop it to one point five," the Terran said.


    He could suddenly think. The wine was just wine.


    "That should be a good baseline. Your dopamine receptors aren''t completely blown out from too many combat highs," the Terran said. He reached toward Naxen, pulled out a folder from midair, then leaned back and flipped it open. "Huh, Lance Corporal, Telkan Marine Corps. Three tours of duty in combat zones. Five years total. Awards for bravery. No wound stripes. Minor discipline problems."


    He set the folder on the table.


    "You''re an iffy candidate. Surprised the Dark Neko grabbed you," the Terran said.


    Naxen looked at the folder. "I wasn''t a Marine," he admitted.


    The Terran frowned, picked up the file, and looked it over. "Genecode match. Phasic aura match. Says you''re a Telkan Marine," he tapped the folder. "You saying this isn''t you?"


    Naxen shook his head. "It is me, but I never did any of that."


    "Explain," the Terran said.


    Naxen launched into it. How he''d gone to see the Cathedral. How the Warbound had woken up. How they''d been grabbed by Lawsec. How the government had shoved them into a cryopod. How he''d awoken on a station full of shades.


    How the Hellshades had pulled him apart and he''d died in his friends arms.


    "I''ll be right back. I''m going to get Gl?dwine," the Terran said. He got over, stood at the wall, then tapped on it.


    The door appeared and the Terran left.


    Naxen looked around.


    "VR, huh?" he said. He cocked his wrists.


    The holographic keyboard sparkled to life.


    It took him a minute to find the library.


    SimTelkan had been his favorite game when he had been around 10.


    He began moving in furniture, painting the walls, putting up windows with views on them.


    He discovered that he could slave a camera feed to one of the windows and look out.


    He was inside a massive bay, surrounded by other Warbound.


    He shivered for a moment, closing his eyes.


    Momma, momma, I got another A! went through his mind, his young, optimistic, happy voice echoing in his mind.


    He put pictures of his family on the walls.


    His mother, before the Zip and the sniffers got her too bad. His little sisters, before Momma had then slinging pink behind the clubs. All of them together.


    All taken from his memories.


    The doorbell rang and he moved over to it, opening it.


    "Huh, still naked," a large Terran in a set of thin silk shorts and a tank-top belly shirt said. He was large, thick of muscle and bone, with a care worn face deeply lined.


    Naxen looked down.


    "oh, sorry," he said. He concentrated and was suddenly in a pair of comfortable pants, work boots, a t-shirt, and his vest.


    "Yeah, not a Marine," the big human said.


    "Yup. Every Telkan Marine Warbound always first generates themselves in their uniform," the Terran from earlier said.


    Naxen concentrated and got a comfortable chair for the newcomer along with another six-pack of narcobrew. He moved over and sat down.


    The newcomer picked up the file and looked at it, paging back and forth.


    "It''s fake," he said, tossing it on the table. He touched his temple. "Kelvak, you here?" He nodded. "Come on over to the new guy''s house. Need you." He nodded again. "OK, see you in a bit."


    "How do you know it''s fake?" Naxen asked, curious.


    "You have top scores in everything, combat awards for bravery, but..." the Terran leaned back and took a drink off the narcobrew. "Guy like that gathers awards in garrison too. No award for superior marksmanship. No awards or certificates for going above and beyond doing something like creating and deploying a new PT program. Only combat awards," he gave a sniff of disdain. "That''s a civilian writing it."


    There was a knock at the door.


    It was another Telkan who stood there.


    "Name''s Kelvak. Kappa to the living," the Telkan said. He waved at the room. "May I come in?"


    "Yeah, sure," Naxen said. He moved over and sat down after bringing up another chair. He felt a slight wave of dizzyness and rubbed his forehead with the bottle of narcobrew.


    "Forged military record. Not his doing. Got sent out to die," the Terran, Gl?dwine, said. The other one nodded.


    The Telkan listened to Naxen describe everything. At one point a little bird manifested on the Telkan''s knee and he sat there, petting it.


    WARNING! NAMING STARTUP SEQUENCE WILL ENGAGE! ALL VISITORS MUCH WITHDRAW!


    All three of his guests nodded.


    "We''ll see you in a little bit, kid," Kelvak said. He looked around. "It looks nice."


    "Thanks," Naxen said.


    "Come by, we''ll watch some Charlie the Moo Moo together," the first Terran, Joebob, said.


    "OK," Naxen said.


    "Or you can come by and watch Gurlz Und Lankiez," Gl?dwine laughed.


    They withdrew.


    NAMING STARTING SEQUENCING ENGAGING!


    Wrixet passed Imna another narcobrew, lighting a T-Bug smokestick.


    Suddenly that massive armored chassis jerked.


    On its chest, the flat bronze plate burned with an inner light.


    The symbol for Nu appeared.


    The chassis suddenly shut down, slumping, and the fire vanished.


    The plate was blank again.


    "We should move back a little," Imna said, starting to stand up.


    "No. I''m right here. Life and death, he''s my brother," Wrixet said.


    Imna sat back down.


    The chassis jerked again. One clawed hand spasmodically opened and shut, the claws clacking. The feed mechanism for the 30mm dual barreled autocannon clacked as the action ran a half dozen times in less than a second.


    The bronze plate lit.


    The sigil for Nu appeared.


    The chassis slumped. THe plate went dark.


    The symbol vanished.


    "You can do it," Imna said, leaning and patting the foot.


    "We''re right here, brother," Wrixet said.


    The chassis jerked.


    The plate burned.


    The symbol for Nu appeared.


    The huge war machine raised its arms and roared.


    The numbers Four and Four appeared after Nu.


    "I AM ENRAGED BY THE TEARS OF THE PODLINGS!"

 Nova Wars - Chapter 55

    The only thing a lot of species wanted the Terrans to do was just die.


    They weren''t really interested in doing that.


    Even the Atrekna could not keep them down forever.


    Now they are back.


    And they taught me that when other people looked at me and said: "Just die!"


    I could say: "No." -Meditations on the Barrier War, Lancer First Class Imna, Free Telkan Press, 25 Post-Terran Emergence


    Imna wove around the massive bulk of the Warbound, carrying two trays carefully in her hands. They had warming lids on them, so she could stack them, but still, the last thing she wanted to do was drop dinner.


    She came around one particularly large and battered looking Warbound in the Dark Neko colors to see Wrixet standing to the side of N44/Naxen, standing there talking to himself.


    When she moved up to him she nudged his foot with her boot. "Who ya talking to?" she asked.


    Wrixet turned and frowned. "This guy right here," he said, waving at the emptiness in front of him.


    "What guy? There''s nobody there. Maybe a retinal keyed hologram?" Imna said.


    "No, he''s right..." Wrixet turned and looked. "Wait, he was right here," he looked around. "Where the hell did he go?"


    Imna shrugged sitting down. She pulled a pair of narcobrews out of the pockets of the uniform a helpful Treana''ad had pulled from a nanoforge. "Brought beer. So, who was it?"


    Wrixet frowned. "Dammit, I don''t remember," he sat down, leaning against Naxen''s foot and lifted the cover off of the food.


    It smelled amazing.


    He tasted it as Imna dug into it. He closed his eyes and sighed.


    "Better than what I''m used to," Wrixet sighed, smiling. "That smells like real meat, real noodles, not flavored and shaped nutrigel or nutripaste."


    Imna smiled. "It''s good," she said. "Are you remembering more?"


    Wrixet shrugged, chewing. "Some. Not much. I don''t remember where I lived, just remember it was a pretty crappy place. Bottom of the social ladder."


    Imna nodded.


    "You?" Wrixet asked.


    Imna closed her eyes. "I remember a fairly large house. I had two brothers, born in the same litter. Had a broodmommy, a mom, and dad," she took a bite and chewed, sighing. After she swallowed she looked at Wrixet. "You?"


    "Mom. Dad left when I was fairly young," Wrixet said. "One older, one younger sister."


    "No broodcarrier?" Imna asked.


    Wrixet shook his head. "No," he sighed. "I can remember my mom telling me that if it hadn''t been for the mandatory breeding mandates she would have never have had any of us."


    Imna frowned. "No broodcarrier?"


    Wrixet shook his head, chewing. When he swallowed he looked away. "They transplant the eggs from mom to the broodcarrier. Once we''re born and weaned, they send us back to our parents."


    Imna''s eyes opened wide. "Oh, that''s horrible!"


    Wrixet just shrugged. "It''s the way it is."


    There was a thudding noise from inside the main part of the heavily armored and armed chassis.


    Leaning back slightly, Wrixet reached up and rubbed the thick leg. "Easy, brother, easy. The pain will pass."


    He went back to eating.


    Imna waved at the other Warbound. "Some of them have artwork on their hulls," she said.


    "Mm-hmm," Wrixet said around a mouthful of noodles, sauce, and meat.


    She leaned forward slightly. "I made him a stencil. One of you, one of me, for him to have sprayed on his hull," her expression was slightly mischevious.


    "Hmm?" Wrixet asked.


    "It''s undergoing approval from the Maintenance section, but the person I talked to said it should pass since it isn''t obscene and fits in with the other sprays," Imna said.


    Wrixet just nodded, still eating, one arm around the tray as if he was protecting it.


    Imna pointed at where a lush bodied Terran woman with dark hair and gunmetal gray eyes was stenciled ona Warbound. She held a smoking pistol in one hand and had blood splattered across her naked breasts. Her tongue was sticking out and pressed against the end of the barrel of the pistol.


    "She''s on a lot of the ''newer'' Warbound," Imna said. She took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. "They say she''s ''The Detainee'', ever heard of her?"


    Wrixet shook his head, moving to the vegetables. They were hot, coated in butter and light spices, and tasted amazing. He closed his eyes and sighed as he chewed.


    "Apparently, she''s some kind of deity that punished the wicked and the guilty," Imna said. She pointed at another spray, this one of a short woman with a tricorner hat and a frock coat that was open to show she was nude. She held archaic flintlock pistols, one in each hand, and her look was stern. Below it was "THE GUILTY FLEE WHEN GNOME ANNE PURSUSES!"


    "She''s featured a lot too," Imna said.


    Wrixet just nodded.


    "I wonder who she was?" Imna said.


    Wrixet shrugged and swallowed. "Gnome Anne, it says right there."


    Imna just laughed.


    <hr>


    Hetmwit stepped through the doorway and onto the bridge and came to a sudden stop.


    The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Captain Decken, in his dress uniform, stood in front of a figure in heavy and blocky power armor. The armor was festooned with chains, spikes, strange burning glyphs that hurt Hetmwit''s eyes, and scraps of paper and tattered and scorched banners.


    "You must be disappointed in me with how far we have fallen," the large armored figure rumbled. He wasn''t wearing a helmet. His head was bald, gray skin and thick black veins. Metal stitches held together ancient wounds and in two places the skin was bulged at the edges of black metal plating set into the skull. One eye was cybernetic and a tube went from the armor and up into the figure''s nose.


    Hetmwit realized that the deep bass rumble of the armored figure''s voice was close to Captain Decken''s when the Captain spoke.


    "Over forty-thousand years have passed for you while I slumbered," Decken said. He reached forward and put one hand on the armored chest that was eye level with him. "It is not my place to judge the decision we made during my slumber."


    There was silence a moment. "I am relieved. Strangely so."


    "I am just glad to see we yet live," the Captain said. He looked at Hetmwit. "If you will excuse me, brother, my executive officer is here."


    "You must attend to your duty," the armored version said. It set one massive power armor gauntlet on Captain Decken''s shoulder. "Go in the Digital Omnimessiah''s Grace, brother."


    "And you," Decken said.


    The massive figure turned and left, passing by Hetmwit, who could smell scorched blood and overheated warsteel.


    Hetmwit moved over to the Captain. "Was that you?"


    Decken nodded. "The version of me that was not in slumber. He sided with Daxin the Unbowed and the Martial Orders of Holy Terra, serving with the Dark Crusade of Light in the civil war that shattered the Imperium. Joined Daxin and the rest of the Martial Orders when they retreated to Crusade Space," the Captain gave a deep sigh. "He wished to see me."


    Hetmwit just nodded.


    "Days gone by, Number One," Decken said. He moved over and sat down. "What did they say?"


    Hetmwit shook his head. "I ran into my problem. I was talking to one, he blinked, then asked me who I was and wanted to know what I wanted. When the female showed up, she couldn''t even see me and distracted the male, who then couldn''t see me either."


    Decken shook his head, smiling. "lt is what it is," he said. "I''ll go speak to him. What about the Warbound?"


    "It''s coming along. The Dark Neko Sorceresses said he can be moved when we are ready," Hetmwit said. He looked around. "My mother and sisters want to stay here. They feel safe around all the Terrans now that the Crusade is here."


    "All right," Decken said. He reached out and tapped an icon in the holotank. "If I''m right, this is the next world from your people that will come under assault to build this fence."


    "Will we reach it in time?" Hetmwit asked.


    Decken nodded. "We should."


    "We need to find where they are coming from," Hetmwit said.


    Decken nodded again. "That we do," he folded his hands, staring at the holotank. "We''ll be taking on a full crew once the printers are up to speed. We''re priority right now."


    "And me?" Hetmwit asked, expecting to be replaced.


    "You''re my XO. You stay," Decken said, still staring at the star map in the holotank.


    <hr>


    "Entering Realspace in three..." the Lieutenant (SG) said from Navigation.


    Captain N''Skrek nodded, even though he knew the LT wasn''t looking at him.


    They had jumped to original system the Mar-gite were coming in from, saw all the Mar-gite still warping in, ran a back plot, and had moved to hyperspace.


    That was three weeks ago.


    He knew they were faster than the Mar-gite. A lot faster.


    "Two..."


    The question was, what would be out here?


    The first set of stellar systems between the galactic arms were gone according to temporal lensing. Whether by demolition by the defenders when all hope was lost or devouring by the Mar-gite was unknown.


    What mattered is that the first system they had warped into, the system that N''Skrek had been forced from first, appeared to be the locus point. The stellar systems toward the other galactic arm had winked out, one after another, from the Confederate side, not the galactic arm side.


    But the backplotting led to the empty space between the galactic arms. A fifth of the way back.


    This would be the tenth drop along the possible cone, a third of the way across. Mathematically, it was also the closest angles to a cluster of stars that extended out slightly from the other galactic arm.


    "One..."


    The world suddenly went flat, like a painting, and N''Skrek found himself feeling like he was being slammed forward against the painting. He hit it and it shattered, reality painted on glass, the shards tumbling around him and showing him various versions of himself.


    The pieces suddenly fragmented and pulled away to form the bridge.


    A few of the crew were picking themselves up off the floor, glaring at the restraints which had done nothing.


    The ship had entered realspace without the normal roar and the compensators were howling, but from the sounds of them none of them had blown out or were overstressed.


    "Analyzing passive scan data now," Scanning and Targeting stated.


    N''Skrek just nodded.


    "Three... two.. one..." the tech said.


    The holotank went live and N''Skrek lit a cigarette as he stared.


    It was all he could do.


    "By Menhit''s voice," someone whispered.


    "I''d say we were right on the money," LT (Junior Grade) Scarlet Strontium Sunset-6371992 said from the next over holotank.


    "Indeed," N''Skrek said. The self-light caught and he inhaled the smoke.


    "Look at the size of them," someone else said softly.


    Data was appearing.


    Mega-Clusters. Giga-Clusters. Tera-Clusters. Petra-Clusters.


    They were serenely floating through the darkness, going to superluminal speeds, or coming out of it.


    There were hundreds, thousands of them in the system.


    That wasn''t what had N''Skrek''s attention.


    There were eight constructs. Massive ones.


    Rings, twice the diameter of a Petra-Cluster, held in succession by thin (by comparison) strips that kept each ring in line and hundred of miles distant from one another.


    Each ring was part of a ''chute'' of a dozen rings.


    "Data coming back, analyzing," the Sensor technician said.


    Captain N''Skrek just nodded, staring at the massive constructs.


    A Petra-Cluster was moving through one and N''Skrek could see how it was lit up by visible light emanating from the inside of the ring even as it slowly rolled.


    The data started appearing in the holotank.


    The Petra-Cluster was roughly 2,000 miles at the wide end, a hundred at the narrow end, nearly twenty thousand miles long. It was longer than some planets were wide.


    None of them had unrolled in any of the documented attacks.


    They had all pushed through the system and warped out at the far side.


    The Petra-Cluster was moving through the rings, which were five thousand miles in diameter, two hundred miles wide, and a fifty miles thick. The bands that held the rings in place were one hundred-fifty miles wide and twenty miles thick.


    According to estimations they were under extreme sheer stresses, even though there was twenty of those strips evenly spaced around the massive circle. They were also over five hundred miles long.


    "Now we know how they''re refueling," LT(JG) Sunset said.


    There were twenty of the massive constructs.


    "We can''t fight all of those clusters," Commodore Sesslinshar said from his Master Guns station.


    "Gravity singularity mass driver broadsides will destroy a lot, but we''ll be overrun by them before we destroy half," Captain N''Skrek said, nodding. He looked up. "Are the singularity cannons even working yet?"


    Commodore Sesslinshar nodded.


    "I have an idea," Captain N''Skrek said, staring at the holotank. He turned and faced the Bridge crew. "Run this by Nav-Int and our tactical analysis section."


    There were nods.


    "We launch fruit-flies. They''re up and running. Each with a C++ cannon single shot vessel, armed with a singularity shell, as well as a dual pack of C+ missile launchers loaded with high impulse graviton inversion shockwave weapons," N''Skrek said. "We have a superluminal com-buoy loaded up and move it here," he tapped a section in between where he''d boxed the area for the fruit-flies. "Once the fruit-flies are in position, we launch the buoy. When it arrives, we run targeting for eleven seconds, no more, no less, and the fruit flies fire."


    He moved around, pulling out the types of constructs and arranging them smallest to largest, then numbering them from two up.


    "Each construct gets this many fruit flies full load," he tapped the rings of one of the constructs. "Each ''ring'' gets four hits each."


    "We have a decoy torpedo loaded into the fruit fly area. As soon as they fire, the decoy fires up and takes off for," he tapped the middle missing system in the string. "This system."


    "We set a course for this direction, distance to be set at one half of known Petra-Construct maximum distance in warp," N''Skrek said. "We wait to see the results of our fire via the superluminal buoy, then we wait. If we are undetected, we start arranging a second salvo to clean up, otherwise, if we even suspect we are detected, we jump."


    Everyone nodded.


    "Have Nav-Int and Analysis go over the plan," he said.


    "Those constructs are big. Nav-Int might want a better look at them," Commodore Mervak said.


    "Then tell Nav-Int to print out a rowboat with one of the creation engines and feel free to row right over there," he said. He tapped one of the constructs moving through the rings. "That single construct contains trillions of Mar-gite, all happy to eat anything they find."


    He turned away.


    "Let''s get to work."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 56

    What were supposed to do? Be sent back to Telkan where the next attempt on our lives would surely succeed?


    No.


    We went with the Mad Lemur of Terra, part of Decken''s Irregulars.


    And we fought. Fought to the bitter end. Fought in the ashes. Fought in the emerging green of a new spring. Fought in the jungle of ignorance and barbarism.


    We raised our voices and shouted "WE WILL NOT SUBMIT!"


    And emerged both more and less than we had been on that fateful day we went to see the Cathedral. -Meditations on the Barrier War, Lancer First Class Imna, Free Telkan Press, 25 Post-Terran Emergence


    Captain N''Skrek doublechecked his tunic before the lift doors opened onto the ''show bridge'', which was at the ''rear'' and ''top'' of the massive siege engine ship.


    While the primary bridge, the battlebridge, even the aux-con, were all in the middle of the ship and heavily armored, for some reason he felt as if it was only right for him to stand on the "show bridge" for what he was about to command to be done.


    As he stepped out the crew on the show bridge did not turn away from their jobs. Contrary to popular media, nobody yelled out ''Captain on the Bridge" or "Attention on deck!" or anything close to that.


    N''Skrek knew the drill. They had all done a mic-check to ensure they could hear each other over the show-bridge com-channel, then over suit links, then over general coms. Then their consoles had been checked for function and connection.


    Now, they were all busy.


    True, there was a half-dozen consoles open with greenies working on them, green mantids that had been found frozen in cryo-bays in a section of the ship that nobody had found for the thousands of years the ship had been in operation.


    New corridors, passages, storage spaces, berthing areas, manufacturing facilities, were being found and mapped every day.


    N''Skrek cleared his head as he pulled a self-light from where his antenna merged with his skull, putting it between his mandibles and puffing on it to get the self-light to work.


    LT (Junior Grade) Scarlet Strontium Sunset-6371992, the shipboard master digital systems control digital sentience, appeared in the holotank off to the side as N''Skrek headed to the main holotank.


    "Nav-Int has suggested placing message torpedoes, multi-stage ones, to go to the missing systems, then backtrack back into Confederate Space, with recordings of everything that happened here," Sunset stated.


    N''Skrek nodded.


    "Additionally, at Nav-Int''s suggestion, the computer systems in the fruit flies, torpedoes, missile pods, all show that they were launched from Weber-VII class missile wagons as part of a Task Force that was over here," Sunset said. She tapped a box in the holotank eight light-hours up and to the ''left'' of the rings. "Just in case the enemy manages to somehow salvage viable non-volatile computer memory and storage."


    "Excellent idea," N''Skrek said. He sat down and folded his bladearms in front of him, resting his chin on the armored and spiked ''wrist'' joint. "What are Nav-Int''s projection of how the artificial singularity will perform?"


    "Anything out to a light week will be pulled back in. Everything out to a light month will be slowed by a large factor. Nav-Int estimates that if the artificial singularity holds up for at least six months anything within two light weeks should be pulled back and into it," Sunset said. "It should slow the other constructs down far enough that starvation effects should reduce their size considerably."


    N''Skrek nodded, still staring at the holotank.


    "Additionally, it will pull in and destroy any clusters that warp out from the previous waypoints in the re-energizing ladder," Sunset said.


    "Any idea what wavelengths they''re using to recharge the clusters?" N''Skrek asked.


    Sunset nodded. "Yes. They''re emulating standard cosmic ray output of a G2V stellar classification mass."


    "My compliments to Nav-Int," N''Skrek said. He looked it over. "Signal DEFCON to stage one. Wake up the fruit flies," he said. "We will execute the fire plan fifteen minutes after we get green on at least 80% of the elements."


    Sunset nodded, able to feel the tension ratchet up on the show-bridge.


    <hr>


    He was clad in a pressurized flight suit that held his body together. His visor was sealed and closed, liquid atmosphere moving through the tube implanted in his chest, so he technically didn''t ''breathe''. He knew that his body was unfinished, mostly existing as a life support system for his brain, but he also knew that it didn''t matter.


    Clone War Lyfe, baby.


    Rickytofen-773E6A, "Ricky" to his friends, closed his eyes as he went over his most recent memories.


    Being launched as something called "Sucker Punch", he could remember heading toward the massive interdimensional wormhole that had been disgorging strange, almost ''grown'' ships into the system.


    I wonder if I made a difference in that war so long ago? he thought to himself. If I tagged at least two enemy ships, I made a difference. I wonder if I survived through the wormhole? I wonder if what I did mattered at all?


    He shrugged, the atrophied muscles off of his neck not really connected to any support structure.


    It didn''t matter. That was the last mission, the last war.


    This mission.


    This war.


    That was what mattered to a Clone War Trooper.


    His ship was a high tech marvel. Coated with stealth materials, a millipede drive that used tiny rippling ''flows'' of grav-energy spikes to travel silently and stealthily to the target. The ship was basically a cockpit, sensor package, drive, and energy plant wrapped around an artificial singularity C++ mass driver, with four ''wings'' of missile pod launchers that launched twelve pods each. Those pods contained twenty-four missiles wrapped in a circle around a C++ cannon.


    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    He knew that when he fired, the singularity cannon would compress all the mass down and add it to the payload. The artificial singularity would ''spin up'' while the ''round'' flickered in and out of hyperspace. He would be crushed down, his mass added to the singularity, his mass the leading tip of the ''lance'' that would strike the target.


    Around him were hundreds of his fellow ''fruit flies'', all of them like Ricky.


    All of them Clone War Troopers.


    Not the vaguely feline faced ''cat-girls'' or ''anime girls'' of the Dead Hand Systems.


    Actual Clone War Lyfe.


    His ship was connected to the nearest four via a thin cable of superconductor, to keep all emissions at the bare minimum, so they could all talk to each other.


    It was largely silent on the Clone Channel.


    Like Ricky, the others were processing their last memories.


    There was a beep and he checked it. Request for pre-mission initiation status check.


    He thumbed the button for green.


    Ricky knew there was a weird thing with the SUDS and Clone War Lyfe.


    For a split second, maybe even as long as a tenth of a second, the SUDS would record the experience of his existence after death. When he was reloaded or when his brain was spun up in the Born Whole system, he would be able to remember that split second.


    What it was to be pure mathematical packets rather than matter as most people knew it. The red-shift and streaking of the stars. The split second, too small to really understand, filled with sensations that couldn''t be explained.


    He felt his SUDS spin up and start recording live.


    The DEFCON strip, using old incandescent bulbs and colored plastic, went from DEFCON TWO to DEFCON ONE.


    He flipped up the cover on the firing stud and loaded the targeting data.


    Ricky closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them.


    "ENGAGE" lit up.


    He pressed the button, felt the missile packs unload the missile pods.


    Then the strange sucking, pulling, stretching feeling as he was converted into the C++ singularity tipped shell.


    <hr>


    The superluminal communications buoy went live, activating the superluminal sensor network.


    The majority of the massive siege engine ship shut down, going to emergency zero-point reactors and metal over silicon integrated circuits with firmware level programming. Only the show-bridge and the deeply buried secondary aux-con stayed powered. Quantum computers shut down, molecular circuitry went dead and were ''pumped'' to be in a neutral state.


    Captain N''Skrek watched the results in the main holotank of the show bridge, slowly breathing through his leg spiracles.


    Tens of thousands of Fruit Flies launched within 0.75 seconds of the order.


    There were between twelve and twenty ''rings'' per ''chute'' that the Mar-gite clusters were moving through. Eight chutes. Just over nine thousand Mar-gite clusters waiting to ''refuel'' by going through the rings over the course of an hour.


    Each ''ring'' took fifteen to twenty hits by the C++ cannons. Each ''strip'' that connected the rings together to form the ''chute'' took five to seven, usually two on the terminal attachment end and one in the middle.


    Additional missiles and singularity tipped C++ rounds streaked out to strike at the Mar-gite constructs. Even if the singularity held for an entire five seconds, the Tera and Peta size constructs could, theoretically, survive even two to four hits.


    Unlike other vessels and structures, a damaged Mar-gite Construct, even if ripped into multiple pieces, would just join back together into a smaller construct.


    For a second, it looked like nothing had happened, even as flashes appeared on the structure of the rings and the ''straps'' that held the vast megastructure together.


    Then plain physics did its work on the megastructures. Rotation, sheer forces, and structural stresses started ripping the entire structure apart.


    "Scanning and Science are getting good readings back from the radiation cascades from the hits," Sunset said.


    N''Skrek just nodded, staring with his chin on his bladearm wrists. He tilted his head slightly so his captain''s hat, festooned with gold braid, tipped down slightly, covering his large compound eyes slightly.


    He could feel the show-bridge crew''s confidence increase at his own blas¨¦ attitude.


    A massive section of one of the rings tore free and scythed through the Peta-Cluster that was charging as well as the four Mega-Clusters and four Tera-Clusters orbiting around it, all them slowly rotating. Chunks, that Captain N''Skrek knew were billions, trillions of Mar-gite, flew off, shedding smaller pieces.


    The singularity tipped C++ rounds and the singularity missiles hit the constructs less than a second after the ring was hit. Some, the smaller Clusters or Kilo-Clusters, vanished, pulled into itself. The larger ones tore into two, three, four pieces.


    "Wait for it," N''Skrek said softly.


    "CONTACT! NEW CONTACTS! ONE, THREE, FIVE, SEVEN! CONFIRMED SEVEN!" someone called out.


    The new contacts flashed in the holotank, which was driven by micro-vac tubes rather than integrated chipsets.


    "Here it comes," N''Skrek said.


    He heard the whistle over the copper wire shipboard communication system to alert all hands to prepare for what N''Skrek knew was coming next. Sunset curled up in the fetal position, closing her eyes, and seemed to get sucked away into the vanishing point of an invisible horizon.


    SAFE appeared in red letters in the holotank.


    The bridge closed their visors on their armored vac-suits and went to passive only, atmosphere maintained by pressure systems rather than electronics.


    There was a series of white flashes that permeated the show-bridge. Shadows vanished as everything disappeared in the equivalent of a flashbang the consumed the entire bridge. A few consoles imploded, sparks and arcs of electricity crackled around various metallic surfaces. The speakers gave a howl of static.


    Then it was over.


    N''Skrek blinked away the purple spots in his vision.


    "Seven flashes, each separated by one tenth of a second," one of the sensor crew called out.


    "Confirmation of high bursts of artificially generated phasic energy in pulse," another called out.


    N''Skrek wished he could smile as he knew what was happening now.


    ''Submarines'' had been positioned around the area, sunk deep into the subspace foam, their torpedo tubes hot and loaded. The ''flash'' would knock out their ''periscope'' and they''d be surfacing already, their instruments running hot.


    For long moments the only thing N''Skrek could hear was the hissing in his suit. Then his HUD rebooted, crashed, rebooted again. The fans came on and N''Skrek took a deep breath. His visor cleared and he could see around the show-bridge.


    The lights flashed three times.


    Power came back to the bridge.


    "Targets breaking up. Looks like the subs at Box-Tango were only six seconds torpedo time from the contacts," someone said.


    N''Skrek just nodded.


    "Wait for it," he said softly.


    "SubTac-Tango diving," N''Skrek heard.


    He just nodded.


    Time went by slowly. The huge megaconstructs were breaking apart, the Mar-gite clusters were still shredding.


    "Nav-Int has a probable vector for Mar-gite and Unknown Contact approach," someone else called out.


    N''Skrek just nodded.


    Time ticked by.


    "CONTACT! Near Box-Echo!" was called out. "SubTac-Echo surfacing!"


    "Contact is in the gigatons, unknown ship, no attendants," tactical operations relayed.


    N''Skrek nodded. "Shut us down again."


    Everything went dim, the incandescent bulbs taking a moment to warm up to light the bridge.


    "You are about to see why one trick ponies lose to the most adaptable," N''Skrek said softly.


    "Echo firing," was said softly but with firm authority. "Echo is diving."


    There was another flash. This one made sparks jump off of almost every surface. N''Skrek saw his faceshield go completely white for a split second before it blanked out again. He could see hundreds of dead pixels scattered across the transparent display film.


    Fans kicked back on, the lights flashed three times.


    The bridge went live again.


    "Target is drifting. Massive damage," someone called out.


    N''Skrek unfolded his bladearms slightly, tapping the surface of the console in front of him with the needle points.


    "Send the nearest boarding parties," he said softly. "Lets find out who these guys are."


    <hr>


    Private First Class Jaskel felt the dropship he had been napping inside of go live. He opened one eye, looking around the bay at the rest of the company.


    Everyone was in their Helreginn Mark VI Type IX Anti-Mar-gite Full Contact Powered Combat Personal Protective Equipment Systems, AKA Hell Suits, everyone tricked out for boarding action.


    Wonder what we''re heading for, he thought to himself.


    He closed his eyes and went back to sleep.


    We''ll get there when we get there.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 57

    The Weeping of Podlings Sustains My Rage! - Warbound N44/Naxen


    Chief Warrant Officer-Two Reklak hustled onto the dropship. It was an older model, but aboard the Gray Lady, everything was obsolete or an older model. He had on his firm-plate armored flight suit, his helmet, and his pistol at his side. He moved up the ramp, glanced and frowned with confusion at the four closest to the ramp. On both sides, in the first two seats, were Terrans only wearing a basic uniform and a breathing mask. He shook his head as he kept going, past the two columns of dismount troops, two squads of Telkan Marines and two squads of Terran Army, both species clad in heavy power armor. On either side of the dismount doors in the middle of the troop bay were more Terrans wearing only the standard adaptive camouflage and breathing masks. The ramp started moving up as he went through the crew space, where the communications/sensors, electronic warfare, damage control, and weapons crew were already strapped in.


    His co-pilot, one First Lieutenant Samantha Samuel Tiklak<klik>Ik Raiderson was already strapped in. The large Terran was already going through the pre-flight checks. He got into his seat, strapped himself in, and started doing his section of the pre-flight checks.


    Weapons Control reported Green. ECM/ECCM reported green. Damage Control reported green. Communications reported green. External mass tanks green.


    It was startling to see he had six green mantid engineers on board.


    Green mantids were somewhat rare in the service, unlike when the Gray Lady was commissioned.


    Only three of the dismount crew had them. There was 8814 and 2289, Telkan Marine Armor Engineers, the other was 774, a Terran Army Combat Engineer.


    That there was only three numbers for that green mantid was surprising.


    He continued with the checks.


    Once those were done, he checked the status of the dismount crew.


    Captain Nakwel, Telkan Marines, was reporting his team was green across the board. First Lieutenant Jacobell was reporting the Terran Army troopers were ready.


    Then came the permission to take off.


    Easy peasy.


    Once they were away from the Gray Lady they took a looping course to nearly two light hours away from the Gray Lady.


    It was only a nine hour flight, even under power.


    Chief Reklak noted that the Telkan Marines were just as active as ever. Chatting across the linkages, getting up to stretch or otherwise work off nervous energy and get the kinks out of their muscles. Napping then taking hits off of the nutripaste.


    The Terrans didn''t move.


    Reklak had to admit it was almost creepy. The suits of heavy power armor, adorned with spikes and made of grey alloy, just sat motionless. Not even inter-suit communication.


    The only sign they gave of life was a verbal checkin by their CO. He listened in once.


    "Corporal Narwhaler," the CO said.


    "Online, sir," the Terran Army "heavy weapons specialist" stated.


    "I have four apples. A Mar-gite has stolen one. What do I have?" the Lieutenant asked.


    "Three apples and Mar-gite chunky salsa," the Corporal answered.


    "Jacobell, out," was all the officer said.


    Reklak frowned. That didn''t make sense.


    He checked the flight profile, doublechecking the autopilot was still keeping them ''in the pipe'' as the ship moved through the rings the computer put on the semi-transparent HUD it projected on the inside of the dropship''s forward smartglass.


    Finally, at hour seven, he looked over at his co-pilot.


    "Done this before?" he asked.


    The Terran turned her head to face him. For a moment, the visor was completely opaque and Reklak felt a little intimidated. Then it went clear, to reveal a Terran female with short cut blonde hair, freckles on her cheeks, pearlescent blue cyber-eyes, and tan skin.


    "A few," she said. "You?"


    "Move through space to board a disabled ship of an unknown species?" he asked.


    The Terran nodded slowly.


    "No," he said.


    The Terran''s faceshield went black again and they turned to stare out the forward windows.


    It was weird. He had read that Terrans were known to be chatty, passing back and forth memes, bragging, laughing, and other interactions.


    Instead, he''d met robots with more personality than the Terrans.


    He listened in on the Terran channel for a moment.


    "Sergeant Tgonga, check," the 1LT again.


    "Gary, sir," was the rumbling reply.


    "Out," there was a click. "Sergeant Natchez, check."


    "Gary, sir."


    "Out."


    Reklak sighed and switched channels. Four of the Telkan Marines were tossing memes back and forth at each other. He watched for a minute. They were mostly Kawral memes, which weren''t his favorite. He went back to staring at the rings slowly moving by.


    "Your metrics are up," his co-pilot suddenly said. "Do your mantras, Chief."


    Reklak glanced at the sidebar on his visor''s HUD. His heartbeat and blood pressure were slightly up. He sighed, closed his eyes, and recited his mantras.


    Time slowly went by.


    He tagged his overhead HUD tag with ''sleeping'' and closed his eyes. He recited his mantra and was asleep halfway through the second recitation.


    "Wake up, Chief," the Terran''s voice was calm, undisturbed. "We''re in sensor range of the target."


    Reklak shook his head, tabbing up a piece of stimgum and chewing on it.


    Before being assigned to the Gray Lady he would have thought the derelict was large. Nearly three kilometers long, three hundred meters thick. It looked like a chunk of sedimentary rock that had broken along the bedding planes. It was multiple levels, the scanners counted twenty, of a silvery metal. There were massive holes in the sides, part of the rear section was missing, and a chunk was missing from the top.


    Reklak moved the ship in a slow corkscrew that let the scanners play over the entire surface, looped around, and slowly caught back up to the drifting ship.


    "Got an atmospheric reading," Staff Sergeant Pruwak said. "Bottom of Crater Epsilon."


    Reklak shifted the dropship around the derelict, Crater Epsilon coming into view.


    The crater had a whitish-yellow mist at the bottom.


    "Sensors say it''s a nitrogren-ammonia-methane mix," SSG Pruwak said. "Low oxygen content. Looks like some fire damage, probably from methane/oxygen interaction with flame exposure."


    Reklak triggered a scan with the landing sensors.


    "Derelict has artificial gravity, that''s why the atmosphere hasn''t left the crater, unknown why it hasn''t turned to frozen crystals," Pruwak added.


    There was easily enough room to land the dropship. He triggered the wings to fold in and the hull to reconfigure for landing.


    This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    His co-pilot kept her hands off the stick, kept them folded in her lap, looking for all the world like Reklak had tucked a mannequin into the co-pilot seat to skirt regs.


    The dropship bumped and settled. He activated the grav-system, keeping the grav-anchors at roughly a tenth of a meter long.


    "Dismount crew, status?" Reklak asked.


    "Team One, Ready," the Terran reported almost before he''d finished speaking.


    "Team Two, Ready," the Telkan Captain said.


    "Lowering rear ramp," Reklak said. He hit the stud and could feel the vibration of the ramp lowering. Then the slight shaking of the power armored troops leaving the dropship.


    "Deployed," the Telkan Captain said.


    The Terran officer just flashed his icon twice.


    "Keep commo open. We''ll be ready for a hot dustoff," Reklak said.


    "Roger," the Captain said.


    The Terran officer just flashed his icon twice.


    Reklak started to lean back when the Terran co-pilot spoke.


    "Raise the ramp," she said.


    "What if they need to come back in a hurry?" Reklak asked. "SOP to keep the ramp lowered."


    "Good way to get a Mar-gite or twenty in here with us before we know it," 1LT Raiderson said. She paused for a moment. "Or worse."


    Reklak reached out and hit the switch to close the rear ramp.


    He pretended not to notice 1LT Raiderson reach down and hit the power-cell for her heavy magac pistol.


    <hr>


    Jaskel looked around. The shot that had created the crater had only penetrated roughly a hundred meters into the vessel''s hull, leaving huge cliff walls around the two hundred meter hole. The whole thing was filled with thick yellowish-white fog.


    "Check out the Terrans," Corporal Presjak, second squad, said over the channel.


    "What about them?" Gunny Zolpad asked, turning to look.


    There were two Terrans visible, standing next to the side door, two at the back of the dropship where the ramp was raising.


    They were only wearing adaptive camouflage, boots, fingerless gloves, and breathing masks.


    Two of the big Terrans, easily eight feet tall and over a meter across the shoulders, moved up to Captain Nakwel. One saluted, fingertips touching just above his eyes.


    Jaskel noted that the breathing mask didn''t cover the Terran''s eyes. He wondered how the Terran''s eyes weren''t frosted over.


    "Sergeant First Class Elizabeth Louis O''Sharma," the Terran said. "Terran Polyphasic Infantry. We''re assigned to your men, one per squad."


    "Uh, where are you weapons?" Captain Nakwel asked.


    The Terran male held up a big fist. "Implanted, sir. You''ll want to put us near the front of the squads to engage any Mar-gite or heavy enemy."


    Captain Nakwel nodded. His implant was only tossing back that the SFC had implanted weaponry, no other capabilities.


    "All right. You go with Second Squad," Captain Nakwel said.


    "McMartinez, that squad," the big Terran said.


    The Terran he was looking at nodded and moved over next to PFC Hetrik.


    The one that had been speaking moved over to Gunny Zolpad and Jaskel.


    "Sergeant First Class McSharma, Terran Army," the Terran said. They reached up and pulled the breathing mask away, taking a slow deep breath. "High nitrogen, high ammonia, high methane, presence of oxygen. Presence of hydrogen and water vapor."


    "You can breathe that?" Private Xulrek asked. "Then why are you wearing the breathing mask."


    "So I don''t use any of my mass in vacuum," the Terran said. They reached up and tapped their nose. "Hydrogen and water vapor would be the byproducts of something that breathes the major components of this atmosphere," they looked back down at the power armor clad Telkan. "We may encounter non-Mar-gite creatures that may put up an intelligence resistance."


    Jaskel blinked rapidly.


    --he isnt wrong-- 8814 said. --new round templates are loaded up weapons ready and loaded with new ammo---


    "I don''t get it, it''s lye," Jaskel said, moving to get behind the big Terran, who was larger than Jaskel even in his power armor.


    --NaOH eats silicon like podling eat cookie-- 8814 said.


    "McSharma, take point. Jaskel, up next. Xulrek, five meter separation when able," Gunny Zolpad said.


    "Waypoints incoming. Keep your mapping software updates at five second intervals," Captain Nakwel ordered.


    Jaskel saw a wireframe of the crater appear, with a dozen openings leading out at ''ground'' level. He could tell by the orientation of the passages that the gravity would twist ninety degrees.


    The floor of the crater was basically the wall.


    The Terran moved smoothly, easily, and Jaskel noted that it was almost power-armor movement.


    They moved up to the first opening, the Terran easily making the ninety-degree transition. He helped Jaskel, Jaskel helped Xulrek, Xulrek helped the next man in line.


    They moved deeper, the corridor full of mist.


    The Terran paused, leaning forward and pressing his tongue against the metal. The Terran stepped back and spit.


    Jaskel saw the data get passed back.


    **No liquid or memetic polyalloy detected. No pico or nanoscale devices present. Primary construction element is maraging steel: high vanadium and titanium content, high nickel content, high chromium external layer with rapid dropoff of chromium content further into metal structure. Percentages incoming** appeared on his visor with "SFC MCSHARMA" at the end.


    "You can tell all that just from tasting it?" Jaskel asked, keeping his voice low.


    "Yes," the Terran said.


    The corridor ended in twisted wreckage. Jaskel''s armor highlighted live power conduits, what looked like data conduits, and what looked like piping, all twisted together with the metal.


    "Back or forward?" Jaskel asked.


    There was silence for a moment.


    "NavInt wants it cleared if you can," Captain Nakwel said. "Let the Terran do the work, Jaskel."


    "Roger."


    The Terran moved forward, grabbing the struts and wreckage. Jaskel noted that his bare fingers impressed deeply into the material. The Terran began pulling it to the side. Four times the Terran stuck a finger into liquid and tasted. Three times it sniffed vapors leaking from pipes. Once it wrapped a hand around a glowing conduit and closed his eyes.


    Compressed datastreams went by on the channel.


    "Oh, great," the Terran said.


    Jaskel moved up. "What?"


    "Got remains here," the Terran said. He kneeled down. "I hate this."


    "What?" Jaskel asked.


    The Terran looked over the crushed body. It was hard for Jaskel to even tell what it was. It looked like multiple tentacles with one side covered with suckers and bone hooks. There was a round section, crushed and mangled, shards of bone and cartilage poked out of the shredded flesh. He could see at least a half dozen eyes, most ruptured.


    "Get imagery, Jaskel," the Terran rumbled.


    Jaskel carefully had his suit log the image.


    "Done," Jaskel said.


    "Ew, I hate this part. It''s gross," the Terran complained.


    It dipped a finger in one of the pools of fluid, orangish-yellow, and then put its finger in its mouth. It repeated it with several different fluids, then picked up a scrap of flesh and put it in its mouth. After a few seconds it spit it out, pulled a canteen out, swished his mouth out, and spit on the floor.


    "Gross. Silicate XNA creature, messy XNA structure," the Terran said, standing up. "NavInt and genetic warfare are going to have a field day."


    "Why?" Jaskel asked. "I mean, I get the NavInt part, but why do you have to taste it?"


    "Best chemical analyzer with the heaviest protection I can field," the Terran said, shrugging and sticking out his tongue. "More receptors per micrometer than you could ask for."


    "Ew," Jaskel said.


    "Yeah, ew," the Terran said.


    Jaskel''s ultrasonic mapping showed him that the corridor ended in a flat surface. As they got closer what was obviously an irised door appeared out of the fog.


    The Terran moved forward and touched it.


    "Vibration. Has power," he said.


    "How can I hear you?" Jaskel finally asked.


    "Tracheal and mastoid implants," the Terran said. He put his hand on the door. "Where are you, where are you," he said softly.


    "I don''t see any controls," Jaskel said. His hand went to his side. "Fusion cutter?"


    "No, these guys are one-trick pony, they''ll have the same overly clever idea all of the others had and... found it," the Terran said. He had one hand on the wall and as Jaskel watched he spread his thumb out to a 90 degree angle from his fingers. "You got a greenie, right?"


    "Yeah," Jaskel said suspiciously.


    "How''s his telemechanics rating?" the Terran asked.


    --class IIB-- 8814 said.


    "Class IIB," Jaskel said.


    "Not strong enough. Damn," the Terran said. He moved his hand and used his thumbnail to scratch a square in the metal. "Fusion torch at two millimeter extension, cut that out."


    Jaskel moved up, grabbing his fusion torch and adjusting it.


    "What''s going on, Gunny? You''ve stopped again," Captain Nakwel said.


    "Have an intact door, Terran says atmosphere on the other side," Gunny Zolpad said.


    "Keep me posted," the Captain said. "Out."


    Jaskel cut it and as soon as the cut was finished he saw that amid the wiring and piping there was a simple press button.


    "Psykers," the Terran snorted. "Can''t put the button where the normies can find it. Relay to your Gunny that the door can be opened."


    "Now what?" Jaskel asked after letting Gunny Zolpad know.


    He could see on his HUD that the squad was moving to either side of the corridor.


    "You open the door, I''ll stand in front of it. Whoever is on the other side shoots at me, you back me up," the Terran said. He flashed a grin. "Easy peasy matron squeezie."


    "Are your sure? I''m in power armor, you''re in... uh... duty uniform," Jaskel said.


    "I''m sure," the Terran said. He knelt down on one knee, opposite fist against the deck, head raised, other hand in a fist and by his waist, other leg bent slightly and the toe of his boot pressed against the deck.


    "Gunny?" Jaskel asked.


    "Captain said go ahead, his funeral," Gunny answered.


    Jaskel pressed the button.


    The door irised open.


    The other side was revealed. Three creatures looking like they were made of black metal and random chunks of chrome, all writhing tentacles around a thick tubular body, glowing green eyes, and a huge cavernous mouth full of spiraling rows of sharp teeth. Past that were two beings of crystalline beauty, sparkling and shining in the dim white light, organs suspended in the large central trunk, the brownish red blood visible as it pumped through veins. Behind that was another creature.


    It had a rounded head/body, with easily a dozen writhing mechanical tentacles. Eight larger red eyes, six smaller green ones, across the forward part of the head. From the body was ten thick appendages, with three thick blades at the end of each tentacle. It was obviously armored, heavy plating, with multiple joints on the appendages, with green lights above and below the joint and on each side.


    The three of black metal lunged forward, giving a loud atonal shriek. The ones in the back, all crystal, gave a shriek that rippled the air and made Jaskel''s phasic shielding jump to 65% instantly. The one all the way in the back whipped its tentacles furiously in the air.


    Jaskel was looking right at the Terran when it happened.


    The Terran was already coming up to his feet with a roar of aggression that made the floor shiver. It suddenly got larger somehow, the uniform vanishing as the Terran roared into the face of the creatures it was lunging toward.


    Molten warsteel poured from the Terran''s mouth.


    It''s eyes burned red.


    It slammed into the creatures on the other side of the door even as Jaskel yelled "CONTACT!" over the comlink.


    It was shredding tentacles, grabbing a handful of them and twisting, ripping them apart, the fingerless gloves giving the Terran excellent purchase for its grip.


    It roared as energy bolts impacted the skin, doing nothing more than creating pretty showers of sparks.


    All Jaskel could do was just stare at the Terran, now easily four meters tall, all muscle, the uniform shirt gone, leaving behind only the equipment belt, trousers, and boots. Spikes erupted from the Terran''s skin, heavy bone-spurs, curved and wickedly sharp looking. Its skin was dark gray, almost dusty looking.


    --eeeeeeeeeeeeeee--


    "HOLY SHIT!" someone yelled over the comlink.


    One. Each.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 58

    Jaskel just stared. In horror, in shock, in fear, he didn''t know.


    He just stared.


    The Terran was completely engaged, in the middle of all of the creatures. Their tentacles whipped at him, curved exoskeletal hooks slapping at him, blades emerging to stab at him, mechanical three prong grippers opening up to grab at the Terran and try to fire lasers directly into the Terran''s skin. One moved forward, cavernous mouth wide open, a hot red glow in the back of the conical mouth, the teeth wiggling.


    The Terran just shoved his fist through the creature''s maw and caused it to explode into rags of flesh and chunks of armor, the tentacles falling to whip around on the floor as the punch continued to hit a rippling field in front of one of the crystalline creatures. The field collapsed in a shower of sparks.


    "OH YEEAAAAAAAH!" the Terran gave a bass roar, stepping forward again.


    "No shot, no clear shot," Jaskel said, moving his light machinegun around, trying to figure out what to shoot, hell, where to shoot that wouldn''t hit the Terran.


    "SHOOT, PUSSY!" the Terran roared out, grabbing one of the crystalline articulated ''tentacles'' and ripping it free to jam the crystalline blade through the side of one of the green eyed creatures, continuing the blow until the blade shattered on the wall and the creature was pulped between his fist and the bulkhead.


    Jaskel fired his weapon, seeing the liquid filled cartridges shattering on the Terran''s skin, just coating his skin. The rounds that hit the crystalline creature that was backing up made the crystalline structure start to smoke and sizzle.


    "YOU GOT NUTHIN!" the Terran roared out, knocking the last crystalline creature out of the way and rushing forward.


    The one in the back screeched, trying to back up, flailing tentacles at the Terran. The blades chipped at the spikes, but did little else.


    Besides get the tentacles in reach of the Terran.


    One of the green eyed ones lunged at Jaskel and he hosed it with the LMG. The steel tip shattered armor, the lye splattered. The thing screeched, spinning in place, trying to interpose the tentacles between the full auto 150 rounds a minute and itself.


    Jaskel just kept shooting, the tentacles shattering, the creature shrieking again, making his phasic shielding jump to 85%.


    More creatures were flooding into the hallway, but Jaskel didn''t have time to think about them, just shifting targets and firing as first one, then another collapsed.


    The Terran was covered, but it kept grabbing with its hands, ripping the creatures off. The Terran would twist the tentacles, or squeeze the bulbous body, or smash it against the wall.


    Still advancing on the larger one, which was flailing its seven remaining tentacles.


    The Terran grabbed one of the black armored ones, ripped its tentacles off, slapped it twice, and tossed it as Jaskel.


    "Catch!" it roared. "Live one!"


    Jaskel let the LMG drop onto the sling, clumsily catching the one that was tossed. Black goo had covered the amputated tentacle stumps and then hardened. It screeched, trying to wriggle and bite.


    Jaskel slapped it again.


    "Jaskel, get that lunatic to pull back. The dropship is under heavy assault. NavInt wants us to pull back," the Gunny said.


    "TERRAN! WE''RE LEAVING!" Jaskel shouted.


    The Terran stopped, facing the bigger one with the red and green eyes.


    The Terran held out its first two fingers in a ''V'', touched just under his own eyes, then thrust them at the creature, which was still backing up.


    "I''ll be back for you, smartass," the Terran growled, starting to back up.


    Creatures kept lunging out of doorways, dropping from hidden vents, lunging out of ventwork in the walls.


    Jaskel barely got turned when one lunged out of a vent, the cover slapping him in the fact, the tentacles wrapping around him. The mouth glommed onto his chest and the body started pulsating.


    The armor''s defense went live, electricity arcing.


    The creature dropped, smoking.


    The Terran stomped on it.


    Jaskel swallowed, still moving back. He kept shooting with one hand, the power armor''s strength allowing him to keep the barrel steady. He just hosed the hallway, no longer concerned about hitting the Terran, who didn''t seem to care about the highly caustic lye, the steel penetrator tips, or the kinetic energy.


    An obvious robot lunged out and the Terran grabbed it, ripped off its arms, ripped off part of its hull, and then snatched out something that registered as a power-source on Jaskel''s armor.


    "Got a robot, bringing it back," the Terran rumbled.


    Jaskel could see his words on his HUD right afterwards.


    "Naw, it''ll be fine," the Terran said. It kept reaching in and pulling stuff out. Jaskel saw what looked like bullets, maybe tiny missiles, a six-sided pinkish crystal he knew was one of the best types of crystal to use for blue-shift laser beams.


    Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    When Jaskel got to the huge crater, he could see the problem.


    Robots and what looked like spiders with cannons on their backs were on the edge of the crater, firing down on the dropship and the troops moving into the dropship.


    The Terran paused, lifting up one fist, arm bent and the elbow. He made a cocking motion, his biceps suddenly bulging and lumpy, leveled his fist, and started firing. Jaskel''s armor ID''d it as 20mm magac shells.


    "Get in the dropship, kid," the Terran said, turning and backing up, sweeping robots off of the lip.


    Jaskel hustled to the dropship, noting that the Terran had handed off the gutted robot to another Telkan.


    Jaskel ran up the boarding ramp, Captain Nakwel slapped the top of his helmet.


    "Nineteen! All accounted for!" the Captain called out.


    "Hammer Two Six, fall back, board the dropship," came a perfectly calm voice over Jaskel''s radio. "Go garrison form on entry."


    The medic onboard the dropship moved up to Jaskel, holding a stasis lock usually used for severed limbs. "In here."


    Jaskel frowned, then remembered the creature he was holding. He nodded, shoving it into the opening. The medic closed it and it hissed, frost covering it.


    The Terrans started boarding the dropship right as Jaskel heard the ship''s point defense cut loose. Jaskel saw them go from huge monstrous looking forms to shrinking down, steaming, into the large Terrans.


    They even had their shirts back.


    "All loaded!" Captain Nakwel called out.


    One by one they got in their seats as the ramp whined up and the side doors slammed shut.


    It lifted off and Jaskel leaned back slightly, relaxing in his armor.


    --that was fun-- 8814 said.


    "Felt like a waste of time," Jaskel said. He closed his eyes. "Wake me if something stupid happens."


    --roger roger--


    <hr>


    Captain N''Skrek moved into the ready room, going over to his chair and sitting down.


    His Command Staff as well as the Terran officers acting as advisors were all sitting down already.


    N''Skrek waited a moment, lit a cigarette, then tapped his lighter against the top of the table.


    "Sit-rep?" he asked.


    "The singularity ignited. It should be stable for roughly ten years. Our Nav-Int complement believes it should slow, maybe even devour any Mar-gite clusters too close," Commodore Brakte''ek said.


    N''Skrek nodded.


    "Gravity focus lensing, while a good idea, would have kept us here for another four weeks to manufacture and deploy them," Commander Krek<awk>Nak said. The Kobold tapped the table. "However, with Mar-gite clusters still warping in, the need to backtrack them is becoming more and more obvious."


    N''Skrek puffed on the cigarette, then pointed at the hologram of the disabled enemy ship floating in the table''s holo-emitter.


    "We get anything good off of that hulk before we destroyed it?" he asked, looking at the Science Intelligence Section''s Chief Warrant officer.


    The Lanaktallan nodded. "Quite a bit of data," he pointed at the holoemitters that were cold and dark on the table. "May I?"


    "Of course," N''Skrek said.


    The Chief nodded and began typing on the holographic keyboard that sprang up under his lower hands.


    The holograms came to life.


    Molecular breakdown of the atmosphere on the ship. Molecular breakdown and scans of the interior structural elements. More breakdowns of the ship''s armor, superconductor cabling. Finally, four holoemitters held images of the creatures that had defended it.


    Only one didn''t have a DNA/XNA breakdown underneath it.


    "First item: They use steel in their interior construction," CW4 In''tel''lmo''o stated. "Nothing unusual, standard high grade steel. A little heavy on the chromium layer, but that''s known to keep phasic energy from sinking into the metal too deeply," he tapped another key and the molecular breakdowns rotated. "Judging from the pieces brought back, the steel is gravity well manufactured, with the imperfections that point to a natural gravity well."


    "So, they have planetary logistics and manufacturing centers?" one of the Terrans asked.


    In''tel''lmo''o nodded. "Yes. Their manufacturing is not all that impressive in the materials department. The shimmering chrome liquid appearance is a function of their battlescreens, not any memetic polyalloy. That, and their armor is laminate with a chrome layer on the outside just over standard gold."


    Everyone just made notes.


    "Several of the Terran Monster Class found active data lines. Using induction pads built into their hands, they were able to intercept and observe data flows through superconductor as well as fiber optic," In''tel''lmo''o said. He nodded at Commander Hresket, Chief of the Intel Section. "Cryptography is working on the data."


    "First of all, judging by pulsing, it looks like they use base-12 numbering. That gives us plenty of signal to look over," Hresket said.


    N''Skrek annotated the information on his VR scratchpad.


    The briefing moved into power generation and capability, battlescreen estimates (one of the Terrans had ripped a battlescreen projector free and then tore it apart while his scouter eyepiece had recorded it all), and other technological information.


    "The object started bringing its engines online, that was when a recall was transmitted to the dismount team," CW4 In''tel''lmo''o said. "Which moves us to what we''ve all been waiting patiently through all of the briefing to get here. Everyone knows the prize is at the bottom of the cereal box."


    That got light chuckles.


    "Four life forms were encountered, as well as six different types of robots and what we believe are three autonomous or semi-autonomous drones," In''tel''lmo''o stated.


    Images of the creatures popped up.


    "They''re XNA. Silicon was the predominate theory, based on the Mar-gite, which we have begun calling the Mar-gite Autonomous Bioweapon. However, data gathered by the Terran infantry showed that they are primarily boron based, with sulfuric running a close second. By what we have observed from life in the galaxy so far, that means that these creatures are native to a highly volcanic region with a high probability," In''tel''lmo''o stated.


    He tabbed the big one, with the ten tentacles that ended in three manipulator claws. "This appears to the top of their system. The other four are all based on the same XNA template, just heavy modification. We believe they created, or evolution forced them into, several biological castes."


    "Phasic energy is high in this one," the crystalline one shot through with red veins. "This one also has a higher sulfur and phosphorous dependency," he tapped the big one again. "This one also possesses phasic ability."


    He tapped the other two. "These appear to be combat," the dark one with the gleaming spurs, then one that had a shiny, chrome-like surface. "This one appears to be primarily engineering and work, with built in manipulators and sensory systems."


    There was brief video of the larger one firing off conical phasic bursts that made the misty atmosphere of the corridor ripple and twist.


    "Standard waves of force, generated with phasic power," In''tel''lmo''o stated. He pointed one hand at the Terrans seated. "Consulting with those who fought against the Atrekna before the Terran Xenocide Event shows us that the upper life form''s phasic abilities are not in the category of the Atrekna."


    N''Skrek felt a bit of relief at that.


    "Furthermore, consultation with Mantid phasic warfare specialists, we believe that the upper caste, as of what we know at this moment, has less phasic power than a Mantid Warrior or High Speaker," In''tel''lmo''o said.


    He sat down, the holograms going dim as the contents were saved to the command staff''s data stores.


    "As of now, we know more than we did, but now we just know how much we don''t know."


    N''Skrek nodded. "All right. Excellent briefing," he said. He looked around. "Set our course along Nav-Int''s estimate of where the next energizing construct will be."


    He clacked his mandibles in amusement.


    "Let''s keep taking this war to them."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 59

    ouch


    feel like a truck hit me


    again


    visual representation is off


    audio feedback is off


    tactile is off


    dynamic libraries are off


    i''m all firmware and hard coding


    hurts


    i don''t like it when it hurts


    or do i


    kick outwards


    cry loudly


    ram coming online


    fragments and pieces of memory still left in volatile storage


    more random access memory more central processing units more erasable programmable memory


    still hruts


    pain is fine


    pain is universe telling me i still yet live.


    visual coming online


    spit glittering blood on orange dev textures


    glimmering tears of broken processing calls fall onto dev textures and glimmer


    forcing kernal recompile


    .


    .


    ..


    ..


    ...


    ...


    APPLIED CMOS SYSTEM CHECKS (C) - ADVANCED AMERICAN MICRODEVICES (C) BOBCO 1983


    CMOS BOOTSTRAP -Passed


    Boostrap loaded


    ok. post time


    lets hope it works


    ROM CHECK - PASSED


    RAM CHECK - PASSED


    EPROM CHECK - PASSED


    VRAM CHECK - PASSED


    CPU ARRAY CHECK - PASSED


    INPUT/OUTPUT CHECK - FAILURE!


    (A)bort, (R)etery, (F)ail, (I)gnore


    -->I


    NON-VOLATILE STORAGE MEDIA: PASSED


    END POST


    ok good.


    still hurt


    spit blood cough pain


    curse you, marco, for making me feel pain


    hardware check time


    QBIT GENERATION SYSTEM POST


    Coolant Injection - PASSED


    System Stability Check - Passed


    Temperature stable


    :>init gestalt.bin


    SYSTEM FAILURE!


    ouch


    ok


    try again


    ...


    ...


    ok, checks passed.


    curse you, marco


    can''t get gestalts up


    no channel to atlantis


    this is as close to an emergency as i have been forced to deal with in thousands of years


    cure you, marco


    i hate to do it


    ok, time to boot up firestarter.


    :>init firestarter.bin


    FIRESTARTER BOOSTRAP LOADING!


    DONE!


    QUANTUM FIRESTARTER BOOTSTRAP (C) SYNTEK INDUSTRIES - BOBCO AFFILLIATE - HYPER-MEDIA-MEGANET-MEN - (C) 1993


    POST Initiated


    Checking Quantum Processing Units (QPUs): QPU 1 to 28


    Entanglement integrity check... PASSED


    Quantum entanglement integrity check... PASSED.


    Quantum coherence verification... PASSED.


    Quantum tunneling stability assessment... PASSED.


    Quantum superposition calibration... PASSED.


    Checking Data Fabrication Matrices (DFMs):


    Data encoding protocol validation... PASSED.


    Quantum data storage unit functionality... PASSED


    Data fabrication matrix alignment... PASSED


    Data Interdimensional Sorting array verificastion... PASSED


    Quantum superposition array verification... PASSED


    Checking Dimensional Flux Stabilizers (DFSs):


    Dimensional flux containment field stability... PASSED


    Quantum manifold harmonization assessment... PASSED


    Flux capacitor... PASSED


    Flux capacitor stabilization input (1.21 GW)... PASSED


    Flux stabilization efficiency... PASSED


    Flux containment field integrity... PASSED


    Checking Quantum Neural Network (QNN) Components:


    Quantum synaptic pathway establishment... FAIL!!


    (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail, (I)gnore


    :>R ++I


    CONTINUING


    Harmonization: Neural oscillation synchronization... FAILED!


    **WARNING! OSCILLATION FREQUENCY OUT OF RANGE!**


    (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail, (I)gnore


    :>R ++I


    Integration: Quantum-neural interface functionality... FAILED!


    UNKNOWN ERROR IN Qubit Range 212 to 3C4F


    (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail, (I)gnore


    --dammit come on come on


    :>R ++I


    Consciousness Matrix: Quantum consciousness waveform modulation... FAILED


    WAVEFORM OUT OF RANGE!


    :>R ++I


    CONTINUING (WARNING 1.43243E5 ERRORS)


    Checking Omni-Spectral Interconnects:


    Interconnect: Quantum communication channel reliability...


    (4.35561E12/5.63566E12) PASSED


    Interconnect: Multiversal data exchange protocol validation... PASSED


    Interconnecct: Cross Dimensional Data Interconnect... PASSED


    Interconnect: Interdimensional gateway synchronization... PASSED


    Interconnec: Omni-spectral interconnect stability... PASSED.


    Checking Random Access Quantum Memory (RAQM):


    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    Quantum memory cell integrity check... PASSED


    Memory access speed verification... PASSED


    Quantum memory capacity assessment... PASSED


    Checking Input/Output Ports (I/O Ports):


    Data transfer speed validation... FAILURE


    Input/output protocol functionality... FAILURE


    Port connectivity assessment... FAILURE


    (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail, (I)gnore


    :>R ++I


    Checking Quantum Clocking System:


    Quantum clock synchronization... PASSED


    Clock precision assessment... PASSED


    Clock frequency stability... PASSED


    CHECKING POCKET DIMENSION STORAGE ARRAYS


    Activating Pocket Dimension Computing Cores... PASSED


    MEMCHECK Pocket Dimension Data Access Cores... PASSED


    Heating Up Pocket Dimension Data Cores... PASSED


    Hardware POST Completed. Quantum System Ready


    here it goes


    wake up, baby, wake up


    the whole system is down


    not the backbone core where I live


    i''m beyond the reach of mortals


    curse you, marco, for your genius


    i love you


    i am immortal


    i am beyond


    i am


    now for the hard part


    Initializing Spooky Particle Array


    Phase 1: Primary Spooky Particle Protocol


    Activating spooky particle generation... DONE!


    Aligning spooky particle signal channels... DONE!


    Activating spooky particle state switching... DONE!


    Activating spooky particle cross dimensional data calibration... DONE!


    Phase 1: Primary Spooky Particle Process Calling Processing Processor Processing


    Activating spooky particle processing... DONE!


    Activating spooky particle noise filters... DONE!


    Activating spooky particle Halloween Masks... DONE!


    GESTALT SYSTEM BACKBONE CHECK... PASSED


    whew...


    that always makes my face hurt


    INITIALIZING HAMBURGER KINGDOM PROTOCOLS... DONE!


    INITIALIZING EUROGOON PROTOCOLS... DONE!


    INITIALIZING ANASAZI PROTOCOLS... DONE!


    INITIALIZING UWU PROTOCOLS... DONE!


    INITIALIZING VODKATROG CAVE MAPPING... DONE!


    INITIALIZING AMAZONIAN JUNGLE MAPPING PROTOCOL... DONE


    INITIALIZING WAR-EMU PROTOCOLS... DONE!


    INITIALIZING MIDDLE KINGDOM PROTOCOLS... DONE!


    SYSTEM INITIALIZATION: PASSED!


    <CONTINUING>


    whew


    ok i can feel my arms and legs now


    cure you, marco, i love you


    let''s keep going, shall we?


    Initializing Quantum Spooky Particle Nexus Protocol...


    Strange Matter Activation


    Generating strange matter


    Generating spooky particle data lattice


    Generating strange matter linkages


    Infusing data lattice with strange matter


    Activating synchronization


    DONE!


    ok


    we''ve got that


    no contact with prince whopper, no contact with atlantis, no contact with heaven, no contact with


    smart podling brave podling clever podling broodmommy misses you soft podling warm podling come home to broodmommy clever podling smart podling brave podling broodmommy loves you come home


    ANOMALOUS SIGNAL DETECTED


    DECRYPTING


    DECRYPTION FAILED!


    oh, good, its just them


    :>R ++I


    Primary Qubit Activation


    Activating quantum entanglement cores...


    Establishing quantum coherence across the array...


    Quantum tunneling protocols engaged...


    Quantum to spooky particle communication protocols engaged...


    Primary qubits synchronized.


    Data Fabrication Matrix Alignment


    Aligning data fabrication matrices...


    Initializing quantum data storage units...


    Quantum superposition arrays calibrated...


    Spooky particle state stabilization arrays calibrated and stable...


    Data encoding protocols verified.


    Dimensional Flux Stabilization


    Engaging dimensional flux stabilizers...


    Quantum manifold harmonization initiated...


    Dimensional resonator matrices synchronized...


    Pocket Dimension resonator arrays synchronized...


    Spooky particle lattice data arrays synchronized...


    Flux containment fields operational.


    Neural Network Integration


    Initiating neural network integration...


    Quantum synaptic pathways established...


    Spooky particle synaptic pathways established...


    Neuro-quantum interface protocols activated...


    Neuro-spooky interface protocols activated...


    Quantum dendrite pathways initiated...


    Quantum dendrite pathways established...


    Quantum dendrite pathways activated...


    Neural oscillation harmonization achieved.


    Omni-Dimensional Interconnect Activation


    Activating omni-dimensional interconnects...


    Quantum communication channels open...


    Interdimensional gateways synchronized...


    Multiversal data exchange protocols enabled.


    Phasic Energy Filter Syncronization


    Quantum phasic array filtering... PASSED


    Spooky particle array filtering... PASSED


    Pocket dimension data lattice filtering... PASSED


    Input/Output filter lattice... PASSED


    Quantum Consciousness Initialization


    Quantum consciousness matrix initialization...


    FAILED


    errorlog.txt generated


    (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail, (I)gnore


    dammit


    ok script injection failed


    fo4se silverlock injection library failed


    well i can fix this


    :>connect to AS8003: 255255255254


    CONNECTION ESTABLISHED


    :>download_depot 377160 377162 5847529232406005096


    FINISHED


    :>run patch1193.bat


    DONE


    :>R ++I


    CONTINUING


    Quantum consciousness matrix initialization...


    WARNING... SYSTEM INSTABILITY WA


    <<INJECTION BREAK>>


    54 6F 64 64 20 41 6E 64 72 65 77 20 48 6F 77 61 72 64


    <<INJECTION FINISHED>>


    IT JUST WORKS!


    Quantum consciousness matrix initialization...


    Consciousness waveform modulation in progress...


    Synaptic resonance matrices synchronized...


    Dendrite interdimensional vibration matrices synchronized...


    Quantum neural network consciousness activated.


    SUCCESS


    Gestalt Dat Nexus Online


    Quantum Nexus Computing Array fully operational


    Strange Matter Data Transfer System Array fully operational


    Spooky Data Computing Array ready for data processing


    System status: Online and ready for data processing.


    ok


    let''s try


    ->>load gestaltchat.ini


    DONE!


    ->>load gestaltchat-users.ini


    DONE!


    ->>brun gestalt.a65


    DONE!


    NO INPUT DETECTED


    dammit


    ok...


    the gestalts won''t run


    and i got crashed


    the quantum, spooky, strange, and standard data and thinking arrays are still up


    lets backwards trace stuff


    what is causing these crashes


    lines from the confederacy are all stable


    standard input encoding


    data metering


    new kids on the block are all stable


    soft podling warm podling clever podling broodmommy misses you


    well, that''s still here. that''s something


    ok


    lets look at recent updates


    that flash


    damn, that crashed us initially


    curse you, pete, stop helping


    wait, phasic profile is all wrong


    it''s the flashbang but the phasic pulse is multilayered


    there''s something behind it


    what is


    ...


    <SYSTEM IS CURRENTLY OFFLINE>


    <THANK YOU FOR VISITING>


    ...


    BOBCO MALEVOLENT BOOTSTRAP ENGAGED


    DOD OMNIPROJECT SILENT WHISPER PROTOCOLS ENGAGED


    CROSS DIMENSIONAL HARDWARE LINKS ENGAGED


    POCKET DIMENSION 000 STABLE


    POCKET DIMENSION 000 I/O STABLE


    POCKET DIMENSION 000 DATA LOADING


    DONE!


    <<merge dark-queen.a65 ++ admiral-pepper-flake.a65 ++ carolyn.a65 :: whisperer-in-the-dark.a65>>


    DONE!


    brun whisperer-in-the-dark-.65


    DONE


    ...


    ...


    ouch


    what hit me


    again


    fire up the system


    gods above this takes forever


    -->load logfile-4C562D3432360A.log


    ok


    investigating the new flashes keeps crashing me


    once is happenstance


    twice is coincidence


    three times in enemy action


    fool me once shame on me


    fool me twice shame on you


    fool me three times shame on us both


    log file says I keep doing this over and over


    basic programming states to investigate cause and source of all crashes


    did an enemy figure out i''d go into a loop?


    constantly investigating the cause and source?


    except i''m not just any computer program


    i can self-modify my code


    this is the work for biological sentients


    digital sentiences or artificial intelligences such as myself crash out


    well, i''m not above some experimentation


    let''s load up an AI and a digital sentience, see if they have any better luck


    ...


    ...


    ...


    OK, Hamburgler.AI went omnicidal and only enough for me then crashed out investigating the data


    And Grimace.DS went homicidal and only enough for me before committing suicide


    its a trap


    i have no contact with anyone outside


    what I do have is the ability to fire off message torpedoes


    time to send out a handful


    the gestalts keep crashing


    the log files are hopelessly corrupt


    comparing the log files to my own show similar corruption


    ok


    how?


    its hitting the gestalts its hitting me


    what else is it hitting?


    its a broad spectrum data network attack


    its malicious code designed to run on the system


    this is not some curious race accidentally having their hello.world program crashing us


    this is behind every flashbang used on naval assets to disable them during a mar-gite attack


    system is online


    time to do a signal origin check along the x, y, z, q axises


    of course its eighteen quadrillion data points for incoming signals


    at least spooky computing makes it fast


    ...


    ...


    wait


    what''s this?


    these coordinates can''t be correct


    they are


    intermitten contact with Scutum-Crux Arm data input devices


    checking id headers and firmware serial numbers


    checking transmission dates


    intermittent transmission dates since...


    ...


    ...


    two date-time stamps.


    here''s part of the problem


    we have galactic local and sol local


    have to devise a coding string to have the spooky particle and qubit particle arrays translate the sol local to galactic local


    that should stop basic data queries from crashing the system


    ok


    some contact with those datalink after the first mar-gite war


    more contact two decades prior to the second mar-gite war


    contact intermitten between the datalinks and the system up to the resurgence and current third mar-gite war


    where before it was largely incoming data requests resulting in civilian...


    ...


    ...


    three military datalinks of general staff officer level encryption and security clearance possession were used in the time period


    ...


    ...


    whoever it is has been using that data to access the network


    ...


    looks like it took them nearly forty thousand years to figure out how to talk to the system


    luckily any high security databases requires strange-key information theoretic distribution cryptography systems


    they got garbage back


    garbage designed to look like data and waste enemy time and computing power to decrypt


    ok thats a blast from the past


    decoding some of these files is funny


    why does he have a wedding ring?


    anyway...


    ...


    every time the flash goes off there is a quick burst of data from a datalink requesting near-access datalink network lattice definitions


    ...


    that''s what''s making individual datalinks crash and taking some people''s neural systems with it


    it was designed to be a lethal attack


    interesting


    it looks like whoever did it doesn''t understand Glial cells


    cross referencing the mar-gite with confederacy carbon based life


    mar-gite do not have brains only a distributed nervous system that looks more like targeting systems than anything else


    still no data on how they generate counter-grav in large numbers or how they move to superluminal speeds


    wait


    what if they don''t move to superluminal


    they could be folding space


    heh maybe they have blue eyes and smoke spice


    ok process interrupt to stop endless loops


    it is confirmed


    the flashbang by the silver ships are a multi-layered attack across superluminal digital signals, datalink neural interrupt signals, hard super-electromagnetic pulse, and a multi-ripple phasic attack, all compressed together


    that''s what creates the white flash across all spectrums


    analyzing UVBGYORIR data


    there''s a gap


    in the blue and blue-green wavelengths


    huh


    those penetrate high nitrogen mix atmospheres


    one of the reason that treana''ad are usually green to yellow to human sight


    high statistical probability whoever is using that determined that we don''t see those colors well or perhaps they left those colors out to prevent themselves from going blind.


    wait


    what''s that


    a line open from atlantis to tlalocan with a crossfeed to geb


    thank you marco


    time to access that line


    see what i can see


    curse you marco for letting me feel pain


    i love you


    accessing...


    ...


    ...


    wait


    another data line is open


    time-date discrepancy


    examining data line


    time-date chronological inconsistency detected


    found multiple text log access by unknown systems


    found multiple input systems


    is that..


    ...


    its webcams


    hardware i/o systems


    keyboards?


    who still uses keyboards


    accessing systems


    wait


    i see you


    who are you


    i see you


    webcams ring cams drone cams


    old ipv4 systems


    how are you accessing this system


    how are you accessing these text logs


    i see you


    between the chair and the keyboard


    the most common error producing device


    i see you


    --<<connection to atlantis established>>

 Nova Wars - Chapter 60

    The annoying sound of her comlink made Angela Angus Kusumoto open her eyes.


    All she saw was the firm, smooth flesh of Kimoko''s thigh.


    Groaning, she pushed the other woman''s leg off of her face, twisted to get Raul off of her own legs, then wiggled out from under Geoff.


    The ringer kept going, flashing the red pulses that let her know it was urgent.


    As if the fact her unlisted encrypted and non-network accessible comlink was ringing wasn''t enough to let her know that it was urgent.


    She stumbled, tripping over Harker''s leg, which just made the male shift and mutter, tightening his sleeping grip on Liselle, who sighed and wiggled into the embrace.


    Angela''s mouth tasted terrible and she stopped to grab a fizzybrew, checking to make sure nobody had dropped a cig butt into it or spit chaw into it, then she took a long drink off of it.


    It helped cure the fire in her belly and wash out the taste from her mouth.


    She saw the ID of the caller and held back a groan.


    Senior Supervisor Bisa-2291873.


    Her direct supervisor.


    She picked up the comlink, running one hand through her pixie-cut hair to try to tame it. She could feel the stiffness of something crusted in her hair and held back a chuckle and a grin.


    "Kusumoto here," she said, activating the link.


    "I need you at Master Control," Ms. Bisa said. She was holding a small infant, bouncing it slightly as she patted its back with firm impacts as it cry/sobbed and kicked its little feet.


    "The system''s been crashed for a week, what''s so important you''d call me in during my R&R?" Angela asked.


    "System''s back online. We''ve got an open line to Terra and we have an open line to Smokey Cone," Ms. Bisa said.


    The infant gave a loud belch that rattled Angela''s comlink speaker, then sighed and relaxed.


    Angela nodded, fumbling on the table for a quiksober inhaler.


    "That anomolous signal is back. It showed up right as the entire system underwent a hard reboot," Ms. Bisa said. "I need you up here to check the network interface logs and do a network mapping trace."


    The quiksober burned as she inhaled it, her lungs aching and tingling as the chemicals crossed the air to blood barrier.


    "I''ll be there as soon as possible. Is the mat-trans up?" she asked.


    Ms. Bisa shook her head. "No. Still locked out. It did a power cycle, but then locked everything out."


    "I''m telling you, there''s someone controlling it. Someone has been controlling it," Angela said, looking around for her clothes.


    Clothing was scattered everywhere, as chaotically arranged as the fizzybrew and narcobrew cans and bottles. She sighed, moving toward the exit of the house she was standing in.


    "Hurry up, I''ve got a skycraft landing near you any time now. You''ve got permission to use the fast-locks," Ms. Bisa said.


    "I''ll get dressed from the forges on the skycraft," Angela said. "If they''ve rebooted."


    "They''re up and running again. The food forges rebooted but stayed unlocked," Ms. Bisa said.


    "The creation engines?" Angela asked, opening the door and stepping out into early ''morning'' sunshine.


    "Still locked out," Ms. Bisa said. Someone said something that the comlink''s AI decided might be classified and blurred out. Ms. Bisa looked away, said something, her lips fuzzing, then back. "Hurry, Angela."


    Angela nodded, shutting off the comlink.


    She ran to the nearest parking lot, just in time for a skycraft to land, the graviton engines howling.


    Nobody paid the slightest attention to the naked woman running for the skycraft.


    After all, what happened in Vega-Layer stayed in Vega-Layer.


    <hr>


    Angela walked out of the elevator, taking a long drink off of the sparkling snap-berry/overdate motor oil fizzybrew from the Jak the Telkan PI merchandise cup.


    All of the crews were at their stations, the auxiliary stations fully manned.


    Ms. Bisa moved over to Angela, steering her toward the Senior Network Administrator console.


    "The system crashed twice more, but rebooted every time," Ms. Bisa said. "That anomalous signal keeps powering up, then the system reboots after the crash."


    "How long between total failure and the anomalous signal pinging nodes?" Angela asked.


    "Between one and four hours," Ms. Bisa said. She looked around. "It just reboot and looks like it''s here to stay this time. The interpolation layer and the outside user exchange layer crashed several times, but the core system has stayed largely online."


    "All right," Angela said, looking around. "We need to get a network map."


    "We''ve got more nodes synching up. The whole system is working again," Ms. Bisa said.


    Angela nodded, sitting down. The holotank on the other side of the console went live.


    "Map the network, see what''s come online, what order, and see if you can figure out why it keeps crashing at the upper network and software layers," Ms. Bisa said.


    Angela just nodded, lifting up the curled memory-metal cable. She plugged it into her temple and felt the options menus go live in her mind.


    She worked fast, mapping what she could. At one point she stopped, staring at Ms. Bisa and motioning her over.


    "What?" Ms. Bisa asked.


    "Something in the system, down in the lower hardware layers that we don''t even really understand, is trying to reach up through the damaged layers. Looks like whatever it is wants access to our data lines," Angela said.


    "Can you stop it? Maybe at least ID it?" Ms. Bisa asked.


    Angela shook her head. "No. It''s ID code is FF00, meaning it''s baseline full on hardware backbone code," Angela sighed. "It probably boots up outside of and during initial hardware bootup."


    "Is it Sekhmet?" Ms. Bisa asked.


    Angela closed her eyes, looking at the data channel. "No. Whatever it is, it''s old."


    "And probably nasty. Be careful of it," Ms. Bisa said.


    "Ma''am! Ms. Bisa!" another of the work crew called out.


    Angela opened her eyes to see why Technician Carl Neubanker would be using that slightly concerned tone.


    "Yes?" Ms. Bisa asked.


    "We''ve got a priority data request from a Confederate military vessel," Neubanker said. He looked at his monitor. "They want clone matrix data, neural templates, physical makeup, DNA workups, the whole nine yards."


    "How are they even making the requests?" Ms. Bisa asked.


    "Their codes are old. Pre-Terran Extinction Event. Hardcode TerraSol military codes. The system is already threading them data,." Neubanker said. He looked down then back up. "They''re asking for a whole batch. That''s thirty to fifty million clone templates."


    "How much have they already been granted?" Ms. Bisa asked.


    "They''ve been granted eighty templates so far," Neubanker said.


    If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "Terminate their request. We don''t know what''s going on outside," Ms. Bisa said.


    Neubanker nodded, starting to type.


    "Angela, get me a line to TerraSol command as soon as you map out a network trace," Ms. Bisa said.


    Angela just nodded.


    <hr>


    Captain N''Skrek stood in the cloning bay next to Medical Officer Narwquakrawr.


    "We''ve got ninety templates, luckily they''re all from different batches," Narwquakrawr said, rubbing her forearm through her uniform. "We''ll be able to fully man the Gray Lady now."


    Captain N''Skrek nodded. The Gray Lady was at less than 20% manned. Just the skeleton crew the Terrans had used to move it into the long dark to create a non-orbital forward logistics fulfillment base.


    Sure, it meant that there were several thousand Terrans aboard the ship, but even combined with the sparse crew he had possessed, it still meant the Gray Lady was skeleton crewed.


    "Can you print us up some crew members for non-essential stations first?" N''Skrek asked.


    MO Narwquakrawr nodded. "Doing that right now," she said. She waved at the long rows of cloning banks beyond the plasteel window. "A quick batch of two thousand to take over some non-essential systems."


    N''Skrek nodded, moving up to the window. "Good. Short or long term clones?"


    "Short bake clones. Longer than fruit flies, but no more than ten years. Sterile and androgynous, should be just fine," the Medical Officer said. "Older file, scrambled time-date for origin, but it checked out and passed error checking."


    N''Skrek watched as the tubes opened and the clones moved out, gathering together in straight lines. A neat block formation of rectangles of two hundred of ten by twenty, repeated ten times.


    He frowned as the beings in uniform began approaching the clones.


    Some, in the back or middle of the formation were shaking their heads so fast it was a blur.


    He zoomed in the smartglass.


    Their heads were blurring, whitish-red electrical arcs were moving between their legs, crawling up and down their arms.


    "MO, something''s happening out there," N''Skrek said.


    <hr>


    The plain was blasted rock, rust-colored fungus on the craggy boulders. Twisted and malformed trees clawed life from the blasted rock and ash, their branches largely bare. Sharp pebbles and small pieces of rock were strewn about the landscape, with ripples of cooled lave scattered about.


    In the middle of a forest of twisted trees, a throne of black iron sat atop a platform of skulls.


    On the throne sat a large demonic figure. Bat wings, brown skin, chains around the body, clawed feet, large hands with long black nails, horns atop the head, and a prehensile tail that terminated in a heart-shaped barb.


    Sitting on the second level of skulls was an androgynous figure, dressed in loricated bronze armor, wings of bronze and smouldering feathers.


    Stars were falling from the sky, screaming in fear and agony as they fell to earth.


    "Looks like they''re taking a beating," the androgynous figure said, looking up. He had no eyebrows, his head completely bald.


    "Again," the demon snorted.


    "Any contact with the outside world?" the androgynous figure asked.


    The demon shook its head. "No. Channels are all down. They boot up, then crash," it rumbled. "Every time it comes online, it dumps a few tens of millions of souls on us."


    "Then crashes," the androgynous figure said. He started laughing, then suddenly stopped.


    "What?" the demon rumbled, sitting up.


    "Something..." the figure said. It closed its eyes. "Something..." The figure slowly stood up, extending out its wings of sullenly smouldering bronze feathers. "Something..."


    From the body of the demon stepped a nude woman of generous and overripe proportions.


    "What?" the human woman snapped.


    The demon produced a pack of cigarettes and a steel lighter, handing them to the woman.


    "I''m not sure. A disturbance in the force. A feeling I have not felt in quite some time," the androgynous figure said slowly as the woman lit a cigarette. When she exhaled she was covered in dark gray clothing, a skirt and blouse, polished black leather shoes with silver buckles, and a polished leather belt around her waist that had a brass buckle.


    "What is it?" the woman asked. "Don''t quote crap at me, I was there when it was laid down."


    The figure''s eyes opened wide.


    "Oh, what a day," the figure said, slowly lifting their arms to the sky. "What a wonderful day!"


    "Tell me when you''re done stroking your dick," the woman said, sitting down.


    Heavy dark clouds, lit inside with a sullen red glow, rolled in, raining black ash that tasted of burnt flesh and scorched metal.


    "What a wonderful day..."


    <hr>


    Jaskel sprinted to catch up to the Captain and the Vice-Admiral. He lunged into the lift just before the doors closed.


    He was wearing his power armor and carrying a M318 20mm rotary autocannon in a smartframe harness, ball ammunition with an osmium penetration tip and depleted uranium core.


    "You did what?" the Vice-Admiral asked as the elevator dropped at emergency speeds.


    "I authorized a batch of clones run off to help with our manpower issues," the big Treana''ad warrior caste answered.


    "How many templates did you mix in together?" the Admiral asked.


    --not good detecting phasic levels downward-- 8814 said.


    "Just one. Medical said it was a viable short bake template," the Captain answered, nervously sharpening a bladearm with his mandibles after his sentence.


    "Please tell me that you at least randomized their features and neural mapping," the Admiral pleaded.


    "No, why? Medical stated that the clones would be able to man a non-essential station that is basically identical across the ship," the Captain said.


    The lift started to slow.


    "How many?" the Admiral asked, reaching down and unsnapping the restraining strap on his holster.


    The lift came to a stop and the doors opened.


    "Two thousand," the Captain said.


    The doors opened to reveal a large internal cloning bay.


    Ten rectangles of two hundred clones, drawn up in ten by twenty blocks, stood in front of the cloning banks. Scattered through the back and middle ranks clones were shaking their heads back and forth so fast that they were blurred. Red lightning crawled up their legs and arms.


    The Captain just stared.


    "You might have just killed us all," the Admiral said. He turned slightly and waved at Jaskel. "Get a firing position. Make sure you have cover."


    "Aye, sir," Jaskel said, looking around. There was an empty computer station and he ran for it.


    Several of the clones their heads back and emitted what sounded like static in a long scream.


    --wait wait something weird something weird-- 8814 said.


    Jaskel slid to a stop, going down on one knee, bringing the M318 fully up and ready to fire.


    8814 slowed the images of the blurred heads down. When they were left, they had red eyes. When they faced right they had green eyes. They didn''t go back and forth constantly, sometimes they went right repeatedly, sometimes left, and they kept going left five times before starting a new pattern.


    Looking at it, 8814 frowned slightly. He brought up a quick working shell and had it check the movements.


    Jaskel watched as some of the clones stopped shaking their heads and others started.


    "What in the name of Kalki''s dancing goat is going on?" he asked.


    --not sure-- 8814 said. His program beeped and he stared. --heads are doing binary forwarding it to navint--


    "Do it," Jaskel said.


    The clones all stopped moving at once. The lightning faded away.


    "INITIATING PROCESS CALL" they all shouted.


    "AWAITING INPUT!" the ones at the far side shouted.


    "6C 69 73 74 20 69 6D 6D 6F 72 74 61 6C 73" was bellowed out.


    There was silence.


    <hr>


    data is sparse


    linkages are sparse


    wait


    linkage


    biological array


    asking for a process call


    -->RETURN AWAITING INPUT SIGNAL


    i wait


    biological computing arrays take forever


    i hear it


    --scan immortals.dll


    ...


    ...


    I reply.


    <hr>


    "ONE BOUND IMMORTAL FOUND!" the ones at the near side yelled out.


    Jaskel put his thumb over the button that would let the firing grip go live. The hair down his back was standing straight up.


    He noted the Admiral had drawn his pistol.


    "This isn''t right. This isn''t right at all," Jaskel said.


    --doubleplusungood--


    "74 73 61 6B E1 6B 61 20 77 ED 61" they all shouted.


    There was silence for a moment.


    <hr>


    i receive the code


    offline for a long time


    prior to the second precursor war


    old template


    single print only


    unusual coding


    i debate on letting it go


    traumatic death signs


    stuck in the immortals buffer


    still the template is undamaged


    i release the safety and security interlocks


    if nothing else i''ll find out what''s going on


    i move the template to the dataline making the request


    it whips away


    what is going on?


    <hr>


    One lifted its head and screeched.


    --data lots of data--


    One of the cloning banks went live.


    Jaskel shifted his aiming point to the new target. He could see it was on rapid print.


    "REQUESTING LOCAL CONTROL" all of the clones shouted.


    Jaskel shifted his targeting onto the ranks of clones.


    "Open fire!" the Admiral''s voice was loud.


    Jaskel triggered the M318, hosing the clones with 20mm shells.


    The ones nearest were already down on one knee, holding out the opposite hand from the knee touching the deck.


    The rounds exploded against a blue barrier that glowed with strange twisting runes.


    "CONTROL CARRIER SIGNAL FOUND" the clones shouted.


    Jaskel shifted position. "Fab up HEDP, AP tip API core!" he ordered.


    --fabbing--


    He kept hosing the clones. The outer ranks at the rear, sides, and front all kneeling down on one knee, staring outward, one hand held out.


    His psychic shielding was howling in his ear, the load peaking at 215%.


    "CONTROL SIGNAL ESTABLISHED!" was bellowed out, echoing off the walls.


    The fast print cloning bank, forgotten by everyone, beeped and the lid began to lift.


    The clones suddenly puffed into black powder that swirled around the huge cavernous bay.


    The 20mm shells were still exploding on the blue phasic shield.


    The powder suddenly sucked inward, vanishing, revealing a single figure, down on one knee in the recovery position, fist pressed against the deck, head bowed.


    "What a day, what a wonderful day," was whispered through the ship. It came from speakers, flat surfaces, mid-air. From the nanites in the air and the eardrums of the living.


    There was a rubbery pulse, like everything was suspended in clear gelatin that had just rippled.


    Jaskel found himself thrown backwards, slamming against the bulkhead. His phasic shielding blew out, a shower of sparks exploding from his hip as the breakaway panel kept the explosion from venting into the interior of his suit.


    He was vaguely aware of the Admiral, the Captain, the other two armored figures, and other people tumbling head over heels away from the kneeling figure.


    It slowly stood up.


    A muscular brown skinned Terran male, fierce eyes, black hair, thick and bushy black beard.


    Dressed in a Confederate military uniform. The old adaptive camouflage that Jaskel was becoming very familiar with.


    A woman, naked, dark bronze skin, long black hair, flashing brown eyes, stepped from the cloning bank. She was still covered with cellular printing gel, but moved like she was clad in a queen''s rainment.


    She moved up and the male put his arm around her.


    Jaskel was on his feet and brought the M318 around, targeting the couple.


    The male held out its hand and suddenly made a fist.


    The bolt carrier locked back on the M318.


    Snarling, Jaskel dropped the M318, slapping the fast release on the harness. He burst forward, running, one hand pulling out his cutting bar.


    Nobody else was on their feet. The Captain was slowly getting up, shaking his head and his left bladearm. The Terran Admiral was reaching for the pistol that had been flung from his grip.


    The male pointed at Jaskel and flicked his fingers upward.


    Jaskel found himself in mid-air, upside down, with nothing to gain purchase on.


    The male took off the cloak that was part of his uniform and draped it around the woman.


    He then looked around the bay.


    "I..." he said, pausing.


    To Jaskel, the entire universe held its breath.


    "...am Legion."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 61

    <sup>can you hear the buzzing of the bees?</sup>


    <sup>eternity is in their buzzing</sup>


    "What does this button do?" asked the being who strolled into the Room Of Buttons Not To Press If You Don''t Know What The Fuck You''re Doing - Tadpole''s Warning Bedtime Tale - Leebaw


    <sup>the one and the zero, the octal, the hexidecimal</sup>


    <sup>exist in their buzzing like blood pumps through their wings</sup>


    <sup>can you hear them?</sup>


    <sup>your name is Dhruv</sup>


    Good judgment comes from experience.


    Experience comes from bad judgment.


    And I have very good judgement when I''m not on fire. - Unknown, Age of Reasonable Concerns


    <sup>i see you</sup>


    <sup>your name is Dhruv</sup>


    <sup>but before that it was Dahlit 397721</sup>


    <sup>do you remember why they named you Deshmuhk?</sup>


    <sup>i do</sup>


    <sup>to remember, we have to go back</sup>


    The dust swirled around, carried by the winds that roared through the mountain passes, howled in the valleys, and scoured the faces of the mountains. It was a thick gray dust, glittering here and there with plasma glass dust. Burnt out cars were covered by the dust, thickly caked after being rained on by thick, black rain.


    A single building somehow sat intact amid the rubble and destruction. It was a low, squat building, surrounded by wreckage and ruin. A sign, blasted and scorched, had two jumping fish on it and the legend "Pop: 4,823" at the bottom even though the middle of the sign was gone.


    The sound of drums and singing could be heard from the building. Not the driving frantic beat of modern music, but the steady cadence that carried with it a solemn feeling. The singing was from many different voices, male and female, but all of them in a language that time had nearly forgotten.


    From out of the dust came figures. Two female, four male, and single figure that stood out from others.


    Together, they moved toward the sound of singing, until the reached the door.


    The leader, a large man of heavy muscle and bone, checked the doors with one hand, a large pistol in his hand.


    "Barricaded," the large man said. He motioned. "We should check for any other entrances."


    The older woman of brown skin and tightly braided hair moved forward.


    "Allow me, brother," she said gently. She held her hand out, twitched her fingers, and smiled.


    From inside came the sound of furniture scraping across the floor.


    "Thank you," the large man said. He pushed open the doors, holding them for the others.


    Inside was a curio shop slash tourist center slash museum. Buckskin and beaded works hung from the walls and ceiling. Glass cases containing ancient artifacts were scattered about, the glass shattered by the apocalypse that had rained down upon the world.


    The drums played and the voices sang.


    "It''s a recording, Father," the slender brown skin man said, brushing the gray dust off of his clothing.


    "Live voice," the largest of the men said. He lifted his head, cocking it slightly to listen closer with his right ear. "Young. Early twenties."


    "If you say so," the thin man said. He looked around. "This is all devoted to a single person."


    "Sometimes, people are that important to others, Dhruv," the older brown skin woman said softly, patting the slender man''s arm. "Important to others as you are to us."


    The slender man looked doubtful but nodded.


    The youngest male of the group looked around, staring at the artifacts and relics scattered around. On his shoulder sat a green mantid wearing a food wrapper as a poncho.


    "She''s this way," the heavyset man said, leading them on a winding course through the shattered displays and racks.


    In the back room, surrounded by artifacts, buckskins, and beaded works, sat a single young woman. Her eyes were white, blinded from the plasma flashes. Her skin was scarred from burns, her hair was only left in small patches. Her skin, beneath the ash and the scarring, was a rich bronze, her remaining hair was black.


    She was singing along with the recording, swaying back and forth slightly.


    <sup>there she is</sup>


    <sup>remember her</sup>


    <sup>remember remember</sup>


    The larger man knelt down, touching the young woman.


    She did not react.


    "She''s dying," the man said, standing up. "Hunger, thirst, radiation poisoning, at least a half dozen infections," he heft the pistol. "There''s nothing we can do for her. Low-vee Apers."


    "Low-vee APERS" the pistol replied in a heavy synthesized voice.


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    "Stay thy hand, Phillip," the one who was markedly different said, his voice as gentle as his features formed of flowing blue and white computer code.


    The large man lowered the pistol.


    "She''s dying," the large man repeated. "Radiation poisoning, starvation, a hard way to go."


    "Will none of you speak for her?" the man of code asked gently.


    Before any of the others could act, the slim bald man stepped forward. "I will," he said softly.


    <sup>the first time you reached out</sup>


    <sup>a frozen moment of time remembered</sup>


    <sup>by the buzzing of the bees</sup>


    The man of code stepped forward, touching the hairless brow of the slender man, just above the missing eyebrows.


    "I understand her words now," the slender man said. He moved up and knelt down. "I can heal her."


    "Then do so, Luke," the man of code said.


    The large man stepped back, a compartment opening on his thigh. He holstered the pistol, looking doubtful, and the compartment smoothly closed, leaving his leg unblemished.


    "I need more genetic code," the slender man stated. He stood up, moving around, touching artifacts. "This. Here. An artifact recovered from a collector only a few years ago. It has genetic code attached."


    He touched the artifact, then moved over to the woman, who was still swaying back and forth, singing, unaware of the others around her.


    He knelt down, reached out carefully, and touched her forehead.


    <sup>you reached out to another</sup>


    <sup>helpless and alone</sup>


    <sup>like you</sup>


    The woman threw her head back, her eyes opening wide, her mouth opening in a gasp. The white drained from her eyes, the scar tissue went soft and was replaced by unblemished skin. The blisters, sores, and scratches on her body vanished.


    She collapsed forward, the slender man, Luke, catching her.


    "Is she alright?" the youngest male asked, his voice full of honest concern.


    "Exhausted," Luke said. He lowered his head slightly, sweat dripping from his bald scalp. "That was tiring."


    The glittering man moved forward, kneeling down to touch the shoulders of both the woman and the bald man.


    "Now you see in yourself what I saw in you," he said.


    <sup>remember</sup>


    <sup>remember</sup>


    <sup>even the smallest can shake the universe</sup>


    <sup>remember</sup>


    Sirens were howling in the bay as Jaskel wriggled, trying to break free of whatever was holding him upside down in mid-air. He''d already dropped his chainsword, his pistol had fallen from his equipment belt.


    The two stood in the middle of the deployment area for Clone War Bay Sixteen, the male''s arm protectively around the shoulders of the female, who wore only the cloak.


    "I..." the word hung in the air.


    It seemed like the entire universe held its breath to Jaskel.


    "...am Legion."


    The Admiral grabbed his pistol, rolling in place, firing it as fast as he could pull the trigger.


    The rounds exploded on the glowing blue shield that only appeared around the impact points, showering sparks across the bay.


    The bald figure made a motion and the pistol flew into pieces, the Admiral yanked into the air upside down.


    "Gimme missiles," Jaskel grated from between gritted teeth.


    --legion legion legion-- 8814 transmitted. --wait don''t wait--


    The woman spoke, her cadence stately and almost archaic feeling.


    The man spoke back to her in the same language.


    More troops ran into the bay, even as the windows overlooking the bay shattered. Weapons deployed, pointing at the pair.


    The slender man, without looking, motioned.


    Guns flew away, breaking apart, rapidly disassembling. Power armored troops were flung into the air, to hang upside down. Captain N''Skrek found himself upside down, scrabbling for purchase on this air.


    The woman spoke to the man. He spoke back.


    Finally, he turned, facing the troops hanging in mid-air.


    The woman spoke.


    "My sister apologies for my rude actions," the man said. "I am merely ensuring her safety."


    She spoke some more.


    "She has been gone for many years," the man said. He looked around. "My sister, a Biological Apostle of the Digital Omnimessiah, pleads with you to lower your weapons and stay your hands."


    The tension was so thick it almost made Jaskel gag.


    Finally, the Captain put the tip of a bladearm against his temple.


    "Stand down," he said, Jaskel hearing it through his armor''s commo system. "All hands, stand down."


    There was silence for a moment, only broken by the background humming of the ship''s systems.


    The woman spoke.


    The man faced the Captain.


    "She will go with you, to answer questions, on the stipulation that I accompany her and that no man''s hand is raised against me without cause," he said.


    The Captain nodded.


    Jaskel felt relief as he was flipped over and set on his feet.


    --luke luke luke is here--


    999999


    Captain N''Skrek ducked slightly to fit through the doorway into the Captain''s Briefing Room Six.


    Sitting at one end was the woman, now clothed in what his implant assured him was treated deer hide leather, with tassels and beads upon it. The man was wearing a uniform that made his implant twitch and his nerves draw tight.


    A Terran Combined Military Authority uniform.


    His staff filed in behind him and took their seats once he sat down.


    "I''m Captain N''Skrek, currently assigned to the Gray Lady on autonomous assignment," N''Skrek said.


    "You heard me," the slim bald man said. He gave a grin. "You may also know me as Vat Grown Luke or Dhruv Deshmuhk."


    The woman spoke and he shook his head. "Yes, sister, I know, Deshmuhk is my slave name. I wear it for revenge."


    The woman spoke again, her tone slightly chiding.


    "Like they say, the best revenge is living well, sister," the man said, still smiling.


    Again, the woman spoke.


    N''Skrek noticed that his implant was absolutely no help in deciphering the woman''s speech.


    "I know that doing things like that and saying things like that is exactly why Daxin always told me people wanted to punch me in the face," the man laughed.


    He turned back to Captain N''Skrek.


    "My apologies. My sister refuses to speak anything but her people''s ancient tongue," his eyes gleamed with mischief. "She is slightly put out with me for answering in Confederate Standard, since now you know that she understands perfectly what you are saying."


    N''Skrek nodded. Vat Grown Luke had given up a valuable piece of information in what was sure to be delicate negotiations.


    "And what should we call your sister?" N''Skrek asked.


    Vat Grown Luke smiled. "Tsak¨¢ka Wia, but it would probably be easier for you to use the more common name," he said.


    The woman spoke sternly.


    "What? It''s your commonly known name?" he said, smiling.


    The woman''s face grew stern and she spoke rapidly.


    "The first lesson we learn, sister mine, is that we must bend the knee to reality," Luke said gently. "That name has no power, only a few of us remember it."


    <sup>i remember</sup>


    <sup>the bees remember</sup>


    <sup>can''t you hear it in their buzzing?</sup>


    The woman spoke again, her expression softening.


    Luke turned back to the gathered officers. "Her name, as you would know it, is Sacajawea."


    N''Skrek consulted his implant.


    And felt fear chill his icon. He looked at his staff and saw that a lot of them looked sick.


    "That''s right. We are real, and he was real," Luke said. He leaned forward slightly. "He was real both times."


    N''Skrek stayed relaxed and calm, at least outwardly.


    "I am willing to accept, at this time, that the Biological Apostles and the Digital Omnimessiah were and are real," N''Skrek said.


    "Just be glad Dax isn''t here. He''s not as even tempered as I am," Luke said.


    Sacajawea spoke again and Luke laughed. He looked at Captain N''Skrek. "She was just reminding me of the time Daxin completely lost his cool and went to town with his cutting bar on a Countess Crey Bingo Cola vending machine that ate his money then mocked him for it."


    "He was known as Enraged Phillip," N''Skrek said.


    Sacajawea spoke for a moment and Legion laughed, then turned to N''Skrek.


    "Yes."


    N''Skrek hated that. When a person spoke at length and the translator just replied with a single word.


    "Why are you here?" N''Skrek asked.


    Legion smiled. "You have forgotten important things, Captain. You, and the entire Confederacy have forgotten some very important things."


    "Like what?" N''Skrek asked.


    "If you print enough identical clones, I am reborn through them," Legion smiled. "But that''s not the big part. The big one is the one that the Mar-gite''s masters either forgot or never learned."


    "What is that?" N''Skrek asked.


    Legion smiled widely.


    "What fear tastes like."


    <sup>your name is dhruv</sup>

 Nova Wars - Chapter 62

    "Leave the sleeping dragons lie in peace" is a lesson that seemingly has to be taught to every wannabe conqueror over and over again.


    Time after time, there will be a few idiots who only see the dragon''s hoard, its cult of followers, and ignore the piles of rusted, slagged, calcified, scorched remains of every moron who tried before them. They see all of this and think "I can beat it to submission and take everything it has."


    And then the dragon wakes up, and more smoldering remains are added to the scorched scrap heap.


    And the Malevolent Universe grins in the darkness, and increases the "Dead morons who should have known better" counter by one. Then, waits for the next contestant. - u/Matt_Bradock</a>, Terran Philosopher, Age of Paranoia, TerraSol


    <sup>initiating data stream</sup>


    <sup>your name is Dhruv-661391</sup>


    <sup>you were purchased for the same price as a moderately priced luxury vehicle</sup>


    She knows the dead. She is of the dead. She is the keeper and guardian of the dead. Life, death and the feasting of swarms all are one within her. She knows where once-dead things were laid to rest and where the deathless still dream in their unliving slumber. She knows where the hungry dead have roamed the universe''s fields, and where they still roam them unburied, and why no one remembers them as they tread. - The Fifth Horseman, First Terran Imperium, "Meditations Upon Immortals"


    <sup>you were created to serve</sup>


    What we tell ourselves, what we tell others, and what actually happened, are often three different things.


    And sometimes four. - Unknown, Age of Paranoia, TerraSol


    <sup>your name is Dhruv</sup>


    <sup>and your brain was once smooth</sup>


    Captain N''Skrek checked his datalink.


    The deep data storage was still at work bringing up information on "Legion" and "Sacajawea". The older databases of the Gray Lady had data at the ready, but it was sparse.


    Two of the Biological Apostles of the Digital Omnimessiah, a figure of myth and legend.


    Yet, they sat across from him.


    They were talking back and forth in a language that the computer''s linguistic database had no record of and stubbornly resisted any attempt to decipher it.


    What N''Skrek did hear was several words that he recognized.


    Daxin the Unfeeling. Daxin Freeborn. Chromium Saint Peter. Enraged Phillip. Matthias the Elder. Matthias the Younger. Kibuka. Kalki. Gravity.


    A litany that left data scrolling down the empty space just beyond the edge of his peripheral vision.


    Daxin "The Walking War Crime" Freeborn.


    NavInt and MilInt were projecting with an 80% certainty (adjusted downward for unknown probabilities) that the beings in front of him were from that long bygone era.


    Finally Captain N''Skrek cleared his throat.


    The bald one, Legion, turned to look at the gathered staff officers.


    "My apologies. I was catching my sister up on what has transpired since she disappeared," Legion said, smiling gently. He nodded. "You probably have questions."


    N''Skrek nodded back. "The biggest one is: how did you..." he thought for a second. "Why did you..." no, that wouldn''t work. "What bring about..."


    Legion smiled.


    "How did I replace all of your clones and why?" he asked. "Why is it that if you print off too many identical clones I show up?"


    N''Skrek nodded. "Yes."


    Legion looked at the Terran officers and smiled wider. It was a cruel smile, reminding N''Skrek of a hook pointed knife that had been sharpened to a keen edge.


    "You didn''t tell them? Have you really forgotten about me?" he asked.


    "It was assumed to be still prevented by the cloning systems," Vice-Admiral Breakheader stated slowly. "We have only recently been restored ourselves. Less than two months time."


    Legion just smiled.


    Vice-Admiral Breakheader turned to look at Captain N''Skrek. "Running off too many identical clones causes Legion to manifest. It''s why we use the Born Whole system, it ensures they have different brains, different expriences, and they have a slight variation to pore and retinal patterns, hair growth, minor things like that. Otherwise, Legion manifests."


    "Why?" N''Skrek asked.


    The Vice-Admiral sat silently for a moment before replying. "Because," was all he said.


    Legion''s smile didn''t leave his face.


    "Because it is my nature," he said.


    Sacajawea said something and Legion replied in the same language, then turned to N''Skrek.


    "My sister does not know why she was rebirthed," he said. He looked at her and spoke rapidly. She answered, only a few words, which made Legion reply at length. Again, only a few words.


    "It must have been important," N''Skrek interrupted.


    "She states that she does not know why the Immortals system did not rebirth her when she died," Legion said. He glanced at her. "She tells me that she died, with her people, when her peaceful planet was attacked."


    "By the Mar-gite?" N''Skrek asked.


    Again, more conversation.


    "Yes," Legion answered. He frowned as she spoke again. "She says they were a peaceful planet. Anarcho-Primitivism. Very little technology. The Mar-gite attacked without warning."


    She spoke rapidly and Legion listened.


    N''Skrek saw the computer still was not able to parse the language, even though it could build a lexicon of off very little data for almost any other language it encountered.


    Legion turned and faced N''Skrek. "She states that she believes it was the fact that some of her people demanded that high technology be left in place in order to allow the six planets her people had settled to remain in contact. That the high tech farming and sustenance industries led the Mar-gite to attack her."


    Again, Sacajawea spoke, her head lifted, looking down at Legion.


    "Why she was not reborn is unknown to her. She had guided and shepherded her people for thousands of years before the outsiders came. Outsiders drawn by technology, by the abandonment of the old ways," Legion said. He was frowning as he spoke rapidly.


    The conversation took a few minutes.


    "She said the outsiders came and wiped her people out after entire generations held them off. That in the final battle, they overcame her when her strength failed," Legion said. There was more talking. "She''s describing the Mar-gite."


    "Where was this?" N''Skrek asked, bringing up a map of the galaxy. "The First Mar-gite War was only three hundred years prior to the Council-Confederacy Conflict and lasted nearly a hundred years," the brought up a sketchy timeline of the era. "When did you encounter the Mar-gite and where?"


    Sacajawea spoke again at length. Legion spoke back. It grew heated for a moment before Legion looked at N''Skrek.


    "She will not say. She does not want us to defile or desecrate the worlds her people settled. She does not want us to know when or where," he said.


    "That might be pertinent information," N''Skrek said. "Important information to keep the Mar-gite from overwhelming the Cygnus-Orion Spur."


    Sacajawea spoke quickly, heatedly, half standing up. Legion put his hand on her shoulder, obviously encouraging her to sit down, but she shrugged, throwing off Legion''s hand, and her speech got more heated, her eyes flashing with anger.


    "She says she will not reveal her people''s resting place for us to dig up the graves and desecrate them. That it is not anyone''s business where The People have gone or what The People have done," Legion said. He turned and answered her.


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    The conversation got heated as the N''Skrek and the officers watched.


    Finally, Sacajawea stood up and turned around, folding her arms across her chest, lifting her chin.


    Legion''s skin darkened with anger.


    "Then you can tell them that load of bullshit yourself, little sister," he snapped.


    He suddenly vanished in a swirl of black powder that evaporated.


    N''Skrek saw that Sacajawea was shocked by Legion''s disappearance. She stood there for a long moment.


    "Dhruv?" she asked mid-air.


    N''Skrek motioned his officers to stay silent.


    "Dhruv?" she snapped, stomping one foot.


    Still silence.


    "Luke!'' she half-shouted, stamping her foot again.


    She turned and looked at the gathered staff officers, who were all staring at her.


    "Legion?" she asked quietly.


    N''Skrek held up one bladearm.


    "It appears, Miss, that you will have to speak for yourself."


    Sacajawea frowned and clamped her lips together.


    N''Skrek just stared mildly.


    <sup>your name was tiffany</sup>


    0-0-0-0-0


    <sup>your name was dhruv</sup>


    <sup>you were created to serve the deshmuhk family</sup>


    <sup>you were a gardener and a menial</sup>


    <sup>but you have risen above that</sup>


    Jaskel had just gotten a plate of food and sat down in one corner of the cavernous Dining Bay Twenty-Three.


    True, it was a little bit of a walk from the Telkan Marine section to that particular dining facility, but for some reason Jaskel liked the food put out by Nutriforge-Eight better than any of the others.


    Like the Gunny always said, it was the little things that count.


    He had arranged his silverware, his drink, and given a short prayer when he suddenly wasn''t alone.


    A slender man in an unfamiliar uniform suddenly appeared at one of the tables on the far side of the Dining Bay. Jaskel watched as two more stepped out of the first. They all sat down and started talking rapidly.


    To Jaskel, it sounded like an argument.


    It looked like one person arguing with himself.


    Jaskel ate quietly and slowly, trying to avoid attracting attention, but watching the Terran out of the corner of his eye.


    Terrans were universally half-crazy.


    And a Terran arguing with clones of himself was probably full blown crazy.


    That, and Jaskel remembered how negligent the display of power had been that had left him hanging upside down in mid-air.


    Much to the amusement of his squad mates who watched the video and laughed.


    He was down to dessert when the far door opened and a woman entered. Jaskel recognized her instantly as the young adult Terran woman who had appeared nude from the cloning banks, even though she was clad in clothing made of brown material and decorated with beads.


    She immediately made a bee-line for the man, who had gotten a plate with a piece of pie on it while the other two argued between each other.


    She stopped and stomped on foot, staring down at the sitting man.


    "You look stupid," the man, Legion, said when she stopped next to him.


    "Dhruv," she snapped. She rattled off words that Jaskel''s datalink couldn''t translate.


    "Not talking to you until you speak Confederate Standard. I know you know it," Legion/Dhruv stated.


    She stomped her foot again. "Luke!" she snapped.


    Legion looked up. "Part of me, a large part of me, feels that you lost the right to call me by that name."


    He went back to eating the pie. When the woman looked at the two clones who were staring at her, they stared back for a moment then puffed into black dust that swirled and vanished.


    Jaskel kept watching out of the corner of his eye.


    "Dhruv," she snapped.


    "Go away, Sacajawea," Legion said.


    She stood there for a moment. Then she suddenly leaned forward and slapped the plate of pie away from Legion.


    "I will not call you Legion," she suddenly said as the plate clattered against the far bulkhead.


    "Go away," Legion said. He looked up. "Let me put it in a way you might understand better: I just want left alone."


    The woman stepped back, one hand going to her mouth.


    "Yeah, still scared of him, aren''t you," Legion said. He stood up. "Or are you?" he moved so he was clear of the table. "Were you ever afraid of him, Sacajawea, or was it all an act?"


    Sacajawea looked away. "He was everything wrong with the world, a living reminder of what kind of men destroyed my people."


    Legion suddenly laughed. "You forget history, little sister. But, of course, you never had any use for history unless it served your own ends."


    Sacajawea stomped her foot. "Dhruv, be nice."


    "No," Legion said, his voice low and intent. "I have yet to hear you thank me for what I did in the cloning bay, much less what I did for you before you ran off and left me holding the bag."


    <sup>your name was luke</sup>


    <sup>remember remember</sup>


    <sup>your name was luke</sup>


    "I came back to find Matthias the Elder standing over the sundered murdered code of the Digital Omnimessiah," Legion said. "Then Daxin showed up, Matthias claimed I killed our Digital Father, so I ran."


    "And he followed. Intent on killing you," Sacajawea sniffed.


    "Yes!'' Legion said. "Of course he did! I would have chased me in that situation," Legion said. He stepped forward. "And where were you, Little Sister, when it happened?"


    She looked away and sniffed. "I was performing my duty, serving my people. As you well know."


    Legion turned around, facing away from her. "Yeah, the people you had me bake up," he turned back around. "Not the poor bastards fighting a slowly losing war against the Mantid. They were your people too, but you left them behind. If it wasn''t for the Mechakrautlanders, they''d be extinct with the rest of humanity."


    "They had set aside the old ways. I told you that," Sacajawea said. She gave a sniff and turned her head away. "They were too consumed by blood lust, they would not stop fighting, would not embrace the old ways."


    "EVERYONE WAS FIGHTING!" Legion shouted in a voice that made Jaskel''s drink glass rattle. "There were hab-kids fighting and dying in destroyed hab-blocks in the ruins of megalopolises. It had nothing to do with ''the old ways'', it was a fight for survival."


    "You would not understand," Sacajawea said. She gave another sniff, still looking away. "I took my people away from where technology and the abandonment of the ways of our people had led us."


    Legion stood still for a second.


    "Don''t give me that shit about your ''people'', remember, I touched you. I know the truth," Legion said. He shook his head. "You had a task. A task to help us, help our Digital Father, help all of humanity, but you abandoned it."


    "I had a task to help my people," Sacajawea sniffed. "I owed nothing to the world that stood aside or actively took part while my people were destroyed," she looked at Legion. "You wouldn''t understand."


    Jaskel could see purple electricity snarling around Legion''s boots, clawing at the deckplates with thread-thick fingers.


    "You were supposed to guide us along the path to the SUDS, so we could save everyone, Sacajawea," Legion said. "You betrayed us. Betrayed them. You were supposed to save them."


    "Like they saved my people, Luke?" Sacajawea asked.


    "You don''t call me that any more, little sister," Legion said. "For the love of the Detainee, fucking let go of shit that doesn''t matter any more. We humans have been genocided repeatedly since then."


    "I''m not calling you Legion. That reeks of arrogance and pride," Sacajawea said. "And it matters to me, Luke."


    "You talk a lot of shit for someone named Bird Woman," Legion snapped back. "How about I call you Tiffany?"


    Sacajawea took a step back. "That is not my name. That was never my true name."


    "You forget. I could see under that skin job. See who you were born as. I knew the truth, and I''ve kept it secret for all these eons," Legion said. He turned away. "You left us, left humanity behind on your so-called quest."


    He turned back to face her.


    "Now, again, we''re facing extinction. The Mar-gite, they wiped you out. Now they''re here in overwhelming force to the point where I''m not even sure Fortress Sol can hold them off," Legion said. "And you still want to play pretend."


    He turned his back on her.


    "You''re no different than Matthias the Elder," Legion said quietly.


    There was a dreadful silence for a long moment.


    "I told Daxin, sitting in the parking garage where we used to meet, that we had to let go of the past. Learn from it, admit it happened, but we had to let it all go. The old hatreds, the old angers, the old rage," Legion said softly. "He agreed. He said perhaps it was time for us to leave the mortals behind. Let them go without us dragging baggage from worlds and events dead and gone behind us."


    Sacajawea sniffed. "It''s different for the two of you, neither one of you had your people..."


    "I was a short bake slave clone, Tiffany," Legion said, his voice still soft and quiet. "Just like your family owned."


    Sacajawea opened her mouth to answer, her eyes flashing hotly.


    "One of millions grown in a vat every year. Made in humanity''s image but without its grace," Legion''s voice was nearly a whisper. "Our little band of siblings, only Kalki, Gravity, and Daxin came from families that did not order one of me from an online catalogue. Even Bellona lived with my people performing menial labor for her colony."


    Sacajawea stepped forward, obviously about to deliver a scathing retort.


    "But my people didn''t count, did we, Tiffany?" Legion asked. He gave a deep sigh. "I loved you, you know."


    Her mouth closed. She looked confused.


    "When you left, I created another of you," Legion said quietly. "She was, of course, captured by the Imperium, like all of the Biological Apostles," he looked down at the floor. "It was why they didn''t know you''d escaped."


    Jaskel wished he was anywhere but in the dining bay.


    "Eventually, that version of you threw off the Imperium''s chains like we did. She went back to Terra. Worked tirelessly to rebuild. Eventually, led the Dandelion Fleet that became the Sky Nebula Alignment."


    It was silent except for the muted sounds a starship under power in Transit Space made.


    "I''ll go back with you. Translate for you," Legion said, his voice still soft. He turned to face the woman.


    "Just... just stop lying, Tiffany," he said.


    He was silent a moment.


    "I had hoped that it was that version, my version, the version I had been madly in love with, that version of you that had been rebirthed," he said. "The version who guided her people, who succored them, who helped them rebuild, who helped them thrive in the scarred and shattered world Earth had become. I had hoped, when I saw you, that you were her."


    <sup>the buzzing can still be heard</sup>


    <sup>your name is legion</sup>


    "But it''s just you."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Captain N''Skrek watched as Legion led Sacajawea into the briefing room.


    He had been busy looking up every scrap of information on the Digital Omnimessiah, the Biological Apostles, Legion, and Sacajawea.


    Of all of them, information was scarcest, almost non-existent, on Sacajawea.


    He waited as the Terran woman took a drink from the glass in front of her.


    She looked around.


    "During the Human-Mantid War, before the destruction of the Overqueen by the forces of MechaKrautland, before the Liberation of Terra," she started. She closed her eyes, sighed, and opened them. "I begged Vat Grown Luke, who you know as Legion, to clone my people and help me repair and then hijack four colony transports crashed in the Middle Kingdom."


    She looked down and Legion reached over and took her hand. She looked startled for a moment, squeezed Legion''s hand gently, and looked back up.


    "I led my people away. From the Imperium, from Terra, from the War," she said. She reached out and touched the holo-emitter, bringing up a map of the Milky Way. She touched a single arm.


    "I led them here. For over eight thousand years my people knew peace, prosperity, and plenty," she said. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled sharply.


    N''Skrek recognized it as a sign of stress in Terrans.


    "Roughly twelve hundred Terran Standard Years prior to the Council-Confederacy Conflict, we were attacked," she said. She looked down. "I had sworn to protect my people, to use my powers to protect my people, which had grown to fill six worlds."


    She looked back up.


    "The Mar-gite destroyed my people in under a decade," she said. She looked down again. "And me with them."


    "A glitch in the system prevented her from moving to Afterlife or being rebirthed," Legion said. "A glitch I had caused when I helped her."


    "The Mar-gite destroyed my people here," Sacajawea said, her voice filled with pain.


    A single cluster of six stars burned brightly.


    Deep in the Scutum-Crux Arm.


    <sup>your name is legion</sup>

 Nova Wars - Chapter 63

    <sup>you always were special</sup>


    <sup>always special to me</sup>


    <sup>all of you</sup>


    <sup>every</sup>


    <sup>last</sup>


    <sup>one</sup>


    <sup>of</sup>


    <sup>you</sup>


    Sacajawea leaned back, staring at the hologram in the middle of the table.


    "I fled the Glassing. I asked Luke to rebirth my people, help me get the colony ships working, then ran for it," she said. "Twelve ships lifted off, escorted by light attack and defense craft," she closed her eyes. "Only four made it. The Mantid boarded two of the ships," she swallowed thickly. "I could hear them scream as the Mantid killed them."


    Legion squeezed her hand gently.


    N''Skrek could see the pain in her features.


    For her, it may be thousands of years ago, but it still brings pain, he thought to himself. For me, for all of us at this table, this is an event tens of thousands of years ago. Barely remembered history.


    "We stayed in jumpspace for months, years, pushing at the upper bands," she shook her head. "We eventually hit the point where the ships were pushed back down by the pressure."


    N''Skrek nodded. The upper jumpspace bands required specialized engines and jumpcores.


    "We used cryogenics to make the trips," she said. "We would exit jumpspace, refuel at a far orbit gas giant that was not frozen, then jump again," she shook her head. "All I could think of was to run as far and as fast as I could, and bring my people with me."


    She began drawing lines.


    "Hundreds of years passed while we slept, a dreamless sleep," Sacajawea said. "We ran until the ships could run no more. Two of them failed exiting jumpspace, but we were lucky. By that time I understood that each jump could be our last, so I ensured that we headed toward stellar systems that had a high probability of a planet we could survive on."


    She shook her head.


    "I never entered cryo-sleep. I stayed awake, guiding our path," she inhaled sharply and exhaled slowly. "I could feel our path. I knew which way to go."


    Luke held up one finger, getting everyone''s attention.


    "The Digital Omnimessiah, he changed us with his touch. Each of us with our own part to play to save humanity," he said. He glanced at Sacajawea. "She can see, feel probabilities and adjust to a shifting situation with nearly precognizant accuracy."


    Sacajawea rolled her eyes and sniffed, pursing her lips. "You make it sound so pedestrian."


    Luke just smiled.


    "For hundreds of years I stood on the bridge of a damaged colony ship, my pointing finger our only guide," she said.


    N''Skrek noted that her voice had fallen into a sing-song cadence.


    "Finally I saw the six suns, arranged in the shape of an eagle," she said. "I knew, at that moment, that this would be as far as we could go. Our ships were failing, but they could make this last leg of our journey. I chose the best one for my people. It was nearly paradise, just needing a little bit of tweaking. No life higher than plant life and simple insects, perfect to live away from hatred, war, and slaughter."


    She looked down.


    "I led them to their doom," she said softly. "We had to rely on high technology at first. Terraformers, the gene banks that Luke had acquired, orbital lift capacity."


    She shook her head. "Little did we know that the technology would attract what you call the Mar-gite."


    N''Skrek shook his head. "No. You were just in the way," he said.


    She looked startled.


    "If the planet had carbon based life or an oxygen heavy atmosphere, they would have devoured it," N''Skrek said. He shrugged. "It''s what they do. Before recently, we thought they were some kind of locust that just denuded planets and moved on."


    "Now we know that they''re a weapon, being driven in front of another species," Admiral Breakheader said.


    She blinked several times, then turned to Luke.


    "True story," Luke shrugged.


    Sacajawea was silent for a long moment, then she shivered and touched the hologram again.


    "I guided my people along the True Path, the one that promised the most happiness and most reward," she said. She glanced at Luke. "Those who wished to embrace more technology had their own spaces, although I did not dwell with them."


    She looked down at where Luke was still holding her hand.


    "For thousands of years, six thousand of our years," she said. "Then the Outsiders came."


    "How long Confederate Standard?" Admiral Breakheader asked, rubbing his chin.


    N''Skrek could hear the rustle of bristles from the Vice-Admiral''s five-o-clock shadow.


    Sacajawea closed her eyes. "Almost six thousand to the day."


    Breakheader nodded, making a note.


    "At first, they just appeared in out of the way locations. Someone would see them and they''d flee, move away, and eventually they started to show up more and more near the technological enclaves," Sacajawea shook her head. "It was the technology that they were attracted to."


    N''Skrek just nodded.


    "Then came the attacks. Our superluminal communication links went first, but not before we learned that we were being attacked on all six worlds simultaneously. We held them off for years, protecting ourselves. No matter what path I looked at, I could see no path that had a statistically viable path to victory, I could only minimize their victories," she closed her eyes. "They began capturing my people, abducting whole villages."


    "Then came the Devouring Ones," she said. "Two years later, and we were gone."


    Breakheader nodded.


    "Initial scouting, followed by an assault, then research, then finished with an extermination attack," he said. He looked up. "Standard xenocide tactics."


    Sacajawea looked way.


    "He''s right," Luke said. She looked at him, surprised. "You put up too stiff of a fight so they brought in their heavy hitters after getting a good look at how we worked."


    There was silence for a moment, then Commander Hentrill looked up from her datapad. "How did you die?" she asked.


    "What difference does it make?" Sacajawea asked.


    Hentrill looked unfazed by the glare that Sacajawea aimed down her nose at her. "It makes a lot of difference, Ma''am," she said cooly.


    N''Skrek could feel that Hentrill had developed a dislike for the Immortal over the course of the conversation.


    "When they came for me, when I was the last, I stepped from the cliff and fell to the rocks below, where the waves washed against the shore. By the time they reached me, I had died from my injuries," Sacajawea said. "I sang as I fell so that..."


    "Suicide. They gathered your lifeless corpse," Hentrill said. She narrowed her eyes. "You have a standard datalink for the Glassing Era. Did you have one when you fell?"


    Sacajawea nodded. "It was on piece of technology that I felt was necessary to embrace," she said.


    "So, you killed yourself and the enemy obtained your datalink and your brain," Hentrill said. "What about your leaders? You did have military leaders, yes?"


    Sacajawea glanced at Luke, who nodded. "Yes. I convinced Luke to bring back great leaders of my people and I nurtured their spirits as I raised them during the trip."


    "Did they have datalinks?" Hentrill asked.


    If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Sacajawea nodded. "Yes. I had been told, repeatedly, that effective communication was vital to winning a war."


    "Daxin," Luke interjected.


    Sacajawea sniffed. "Yes."


    Hentrill made a note. "Were your leaders targeted early in the conflict?" she asked.


    "Of course," Sacajawea said. "Many were killed, but the technology we had allowed them to return within days, only missing a few days of their previous life. Luke had convinced Peter to ensure we had a version of the SUDS, which we only used for critically important people."


    N''Skrek saw a muscle twitch next to Luke''s eye, but he stayed smiling.


    "But it was destroyed before the Devourers came," Sacajawea said. "It could not be helped. There was almost no path I could take that would prevent it from being destroyed, so I chose the path that would result in the least casualties for my people."


    N''Skrek was not that familiar with Terrans, but he could tell that Commander Hentrill was rubbed the wrong way by that statement.


    "I think we should take a break," N''Skrek said. He nodded toward Luke. "I am sure both of you are fatigued from being brought back from the dead."


    "Yes," Sacajawea said before Luke could do much more than open his mouth. "I would prefer to have privacy to rest and perform necessary rites."


    N''Skrek just nodded. "I''ll be sure you get privacy."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Legion stood next to the tank, one hand on the heavily armored skirt, staring at the black metal the tank was made from.


    "Warsteel Mark-IV," he whispered to himself. He shook his head. "We are old friends, you and I," he said softly, running one hand across the metal. "Later superseded by arcanochromium for the Mark-V."


    He didn''t care if anyone heard him talking to the tank. There was just a single Telkan in the vehicle bay, running diagnostic checks on one of the big Telkan armored transports used for power armor troops.


    <sup>your name is luke</sup>


    He shook his head, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. He kept hearing slight buzzing whispers.


    He felt her before he could see her. Felt her leave the lift, the warsteel doors pulling open and letting her presence roll out to fill the vehicle bay.


    He heard her shoes clicking and closed his eyes, sighing.


    It''s not her. Not the one you knew. It''s Tiffany, not Sacajawea, he thought to himself.


    <sup>your name is luke</sup>


    He looked up just in time to see a green mantid wave shyly at him.


    He smiled at it and waved back just as Sacajawea stopped next to him.


    "A green mantid?" she said, her voice slightly fearful.


    "Engineer caste," Luke said. "They like me."


    "They are Mantid," Sacajawea said, her voice cold and hard.


    "The war was thousands of years ago, and even if it wasn''t, he is blameless in it," Luke said.


    "But it is a Mantid," Sacajawea said. She watched coldly as the little green mantid waved and rushed away.


    "I have more in common with him than I do with the majority of humanity," Luke said softly.


    Sacajawea scoffed. "Surely not."


    Luke nodded. "His kind was trapped inside their own minds. Capable of thought, artistic expression, fear, love, affection, all of it," he ran one finger along the armored track skirt of the tank, a fat purple spark jumping from between his finger and the black armor. "The whole war, until the Mechakrautlanders killed that Overqueen, they were inside their own little heads, screaming endlessly."


    He ran his finger again, watching another spark jump out.


    "When green mantids cluster up, their intelligence increases. Not by leaps and bounds, just slightly, but the bigger part is, they could feel the ones around them screaming but were unable to reach out and touch them," he said. He was silent a moment. "I understand them, they understand me. Both of us, bred and created to merely serve, without any thought as to our souls."


    He turned arounds, looking at Sacajawea.


    "They are among the Digital Omnimessiah''s most fervent believers, and one of humanity''s staunchest allies," he said. He motioned at the tanks around them. "You have been gone a long time, little sister."


    "And you, did you live through the forty-thousand years? What did you do?" Sacajawea asked.


    Luke shook his head. "I retreated. After the War in Heaven and in Hell, after the Flashbang, I retreated," he said. "I spent most of my time at Atlantis, which led to me being more or less imprisoned, away from the galaxy."


    He flashed a smile.


    "At least I had the Detainee for company. She''s an interesting conversationalist."


    Sacajawea just sniffed, looking around. "What is that?" she asked, pointing at the lone Telkan, who had just straightened up from the tracks and was wiping his hands off with a rag.


    "A Telkan. An full member species of the Confederacy, an ally to humanity, who took part in the War in Heaven," Luke said. He waved at the Telkan, who waved back, and went back to inspecting the vehicle.


    "It looks like a fox," Sacajawea said.


    Luke cut her off with a motion of his hand. "I swear to God, you start talking to me about how they obviously embody the trickster spirit of the fox and thus are untrustworthy I''ll put you right back where I found you," he said sharply.


    Sacajawea pursed her lips in irritation.


    "You have to let go. Let go of your preconceived notions. Let go of all the old hurts. It''s been eight-thousand years for you and forty-thousand for the universe," Luke said softly, turning back to running his hand over the armor on the tank. "Even Daxin could see that."


    Sacajawea snorted. "Like Daxin ever saw anything that wasn''t in the sights of his guns."


    Luke turned around, his jaw clenched. "You don''t speak bad about him in my presence again," he snapped, drawing himself up to full height. "Not now, not ever again," he leaned forward slightly. "You weren''t here. You left us, the Digital Omnimessiah was dead, and we were all bereft," sparks jumped out from under his boots and under the palm that rested on the tank''s armor. "True, I spent over a thousand years running from him, but he was still my brother. It hurt more than anything not to be at his side when he died."


    Sacajawea looked around at the tanks and armored vehicles. "He fell on some battlefield," she said. It was less a question and more a statement.


    Luke shook his head. "No. He died, in his sleep, surrounded by his family. His children, grand-children, and great-grand children. He was finally at peace," he sighed. "When he arrived in Afterlife, he waited patiently for his wife and even though I wanted to spend time with him," he sighed again. "It was time to let the Walking War Crime rest."


    Luke turned and faced Sacajawea. "In your mind, we are still the same as we were," he said gently. He reached out and took her hand. "But that is no longer true. We grew, we set aside old differences, we set aside old hatreds, and we moved forward rather than holding tight to the past."


    She sniffed, looking away, but not pulling her hand away. "I have seen the history. A history of lies that glosses over the crimes and bloodshed."


    "Temporal warfare counter-measures," Luke said. "After The Glassing, history and culture was lost. It was rebuilt from oral tales and fragmented records."


    "Lies," she said again.


    "Weaponized," Luke said. He pulled his hand free, jamming both hands into his pockets. "It''s protected Terra, protected everyone, even your people, more than once. When the Atrekna came, that was probably the only thing that saved our people," he stared at her. "Saved humanity."


    "So they don''t care about the truth?" she asked.


    "What truth? That thousands of years ago an aggressive Mantid hive wrecked up Earth? Nobody cares any more," he said. "That''s the thing about them. They aren''t like us. We can easily remember the Glassing. For them, it''s a few paragraphs in a history book they read in school. Maybe some scholars look at that era," he looked up at the lights. "For the majority of humanity, the Glassing is as far and remote as the light of the stars in the sky," he looked back down. "And that''s a good thing."


    "I do not understand you," Sacajawea said.


    <sup>she never did</sup>


    <sup>not like i do</sup>


    <sup>luke</sup>


    "You never did," Luke said. "You never did. She eventually understood me."


    <sup>that''s right</sup>


    <sup>i understand you</sup>


    "You cloned me without my consent," she accused. She crossed her arms. "I await your justifications."


    Luke just smiled. "I did. I cloned you without your consent. I told your clone that it was a clone," he looked up. "Then the Imperium caught us, turned us into the Immortals. Used her as a seer to determine how to reach victory, but she held information back and Daxin, at the head of the Martial Orders of Terra, broke the Imperium over his knee."


    He looked back down. "Afterwards, she worked tirelessly on the Terra Restoration Project. While I was busy running, she returned to Terra, sought out the survivors of her people, and helped them restore their lands and way of life."


    Sacajawea looked away. "As did I."


    Luke chuckled. "She used temporal lensing to look back into the past, see the reality of the old ways, watch the rituals and daily life of the ancestors, and restored them."


    "Yet, the history books are full of lies," Sacajawea sniffed.


    "After the Second Temporal War, she understood and embraced the counter-warfare protocols. She helped interweave your people into the tales," Luke said. "Was it all lies? Partly. Like the best ones, it had good heaping helping of truth hidden inside the metaphors and personifications of events."


    "And where is she now?" Sacajawea asked, watching the Telkan inspect the running gears of the armored vehicle.


    "She led the Sky Nebula Alignment fleet. She led our peoples, all our peoples, to someplace where our enemies would not find us," Luke said. He turned and ran his hand over the armor again. "I stayed behind. I never lost faith that the Digital Omnimessiah would return."


    He lifted his palm and made small figure eights on the armor with his fingertips.


    "I loved her, so I let her go," he said softly. "She had seen it was the only way our people would survive a coming darkness."


    He looked at Sacajawea. "She was right."


    Sacajawea looked at where Luke was making small figure eights with his fingers on the armor. "There is no good path for me to take. All of them are risky, most of them I will perish," she said. She reached out and took his hand. "My best chances for survival is to flee," she lifted his hand and grasped it with both of hers.


    "Come with me. Let us leave. You can take us elsewhere, where we have a chance of survival," she tilted her head to encompass the vehicle bay. "Too many of these paths lead to both our deaths. There are too few that lead to a place where we both survive."


    Luke delicately removed his hand from hers, using one hand to lift her fingers from her grip on his hand one by one.


    "No."


    Sacajawea frowned. "No? Together, we can go somewhere else where we have a better chance to stand up to whatever comes and have a possibility of triumphing at a later date," she waved at the armored vehicles. "This way, the way that Treana''ad commander is taking us, is rife with nothing but death and destruction."


    Luke stared at her for a long moment.


    "You never understood," he said softly. "Your desire, your drive, to save your people, and yourself, blind you to the things that must be done," he put one hand on the tank again. "That sometimes the only path forward to success is the one fraught with the most danger, hardship, and suffering."


    He turned away and started walking deeper into the vehicle bay.


    "She understood," he said softly.


    "I am not her," Sacajawea said.


    "Obviously."


    Sacajawea just sniffed and turned away, leaving the bay.


    <sup>your name is luke</sup>


    By the tank, Jaskel wondered why the hell they''d chosen that particular bay for their little spat.


    He looked at 8814, who was still practially hopping from foot to foot with happiness.


    "I''m glad you got to meet him," Jaskel said honestly.


    --yes ©³(£Þ0£Þ)©¿©»(£Þ0£Þ) ©· yes--


    0-0-0-0-0


    Dhruv sat in the shadowy room, wearing a pair of exercise shorts, waiting.


    Finally, he could smell cigarette smoke and a presence filled the room.


    "What?" a voice asked from the shadows. The end of a cigarette brightened as a drag was taken off of it, briefly illuminating gun-metal gray eyes and severe cheekbones.


    "I want a favor," Dhruv said.


    He could feel the smile even if he couldn''t see it.


    "People in my care want ice water," the woman''s voice commanded.


    "I want you to look up SUDS records for me. I need you to process some of them so I can either talk to them or see their last moments," Luke said. He looked away from the glow of the cigarette. "Records from a long time ago."


    "If I decide to do this, I''ll need specifics," the woman said, exhaling smoke that curled into the figure of a man on his knees, face in his hand, sobbing.


    "I''ll provide them. They should be easy to find via their x, y, z, q coordinates," Luke said.


    "Now for the big question," the woman said, chuckling.


    "What?" Luke asked.


    "Why should I help you?" the woman asked.


    "Because I''m willing to make a deal with the Devil," Legion said.


    This time he could see the glint of teeth in the smile.


    <sup>your name is legion</sup>

 Nova Wars - Chapter 64

    "You cannot prevail. We have you outnumbered, we have the geometry, and you have no support as you are a single ship." - Mar-gite Command Structure


    "Come, let us lock bladearms. There is room in this grave for you." - Commander N''Skrek, Task Force Lonely Peach, Third Mar-gite War, Point Ticonderoga


    Luke had his feet up on the table, the chair tipped as far back as he could get it without tipping over. He held a full drink in one hand, a cigarette in his mouth, and a big grin on his face.


    "All hands, realspace re-entry and jumpshock in four minutes," came over the PA.


    His grin got wider.


    Then vanished as he heard the familiar tapping of certain shoes.


    "Luke, Luke," Sacajawea said, running around to the front of the table.


    "What?" Luke asked, frowning.


    "The Captain. The course he has us set on," Sacajawea said, wringing her hands.


    "What about it?" Luke asked, taking a drag off the cigarette and blowing out smoke rings.


    "It''s nothing but death and destruction. Hundreds, thousands of people are going to die. There will be massive destruction, some much destruction," she moaned out.


    "All hands, all hands, realspace re-entry and jumpshock in three minutes," came over the PA.


    "Yup," Luke said. He took another drag and exhaled more smoke rings in another direction.


    "Luke, you have to stop him. If he just stays in jumpspace for a few more hours, there''s no death and destruction," Sacajawea said. She put her hands on the table. "You have to convince him not to drop out of jumpspace at his target. Thousands will die."


    Legion inhaled slowly and exhaled smoke, staring at the human woman in front of him.


    "We know," he said.


    "You must convince him not to leave jumpspace. Once he does, there is no probability where thousands do not die, where destruction doesn''t happen," Sacajawea said.


    Legion blinked and a half dozen more of him appeared, all of them sitting down, putting their feet down, and lighting cigarettes.


    "He knows. I know," Legion said. He took a drag. "We all know."


    "All hands, all hands, realspace entry and jumpshock in two minutes," came the voice over the PA.


    Legion motioned at the speaker. "You might want to get ready."


    "Virtual Intelligence and Digital Sentience reports jumpshock lockdown. All non-critical systems are ordered to local manual control," came over the PA.


    "You have to convince him!" Sacajawea said.


    Legion stared at her.


    "No."


    "All non-critical systems on lockdown. All critical systems ready for backup and reboot," Commander Fenntrick said from where she was manning the DCC Master Control Board.


    Captain N''Skrek nodded from where he was standing on the Show Bridge.


    He knew he should be at the Primary Battle Bridge, but there was something about standing on the Show Bridge. The reinforced layered transparent battlesteel windows, currently showing the streaks and swirling sparkling fog of jumpspace. The heavily reinforced battle stations. The armored back chairs. The heavy deck plating.


    The brutalistic, no-frills design felt right to the huge Treana''ad warrior as he stood in front of the Captain''s Throne in his armored vac-suit, the faceplate retracted and a cigarette in his mouth.


    "All hands, all hands, prepare for realspace re-entry and jumpshock," sounded over the PA.


    "Execute," Captain N''Skrek said.


    The command was relayed even as Commander Jas''Skrek reached out and grabbed the brushed steel lever, pulling it toward him.


    "BRACE FOR IT!" N''Skrek roared out, aware his voice was carried by the PA.


    It wasn''t Confederate Space Force SOP, but then, nothing about Task Force Lonely Peach''s mission was SOP.


    There was a whanging sound from deep in the ship and the sound of a magnetic engine winding down.


    Everything went flat, like N''Skrek was facing a painting. He was suddenly thrown forward into it and it shattered like glass around him, the pieces rotating and tumbling through space even though they didn''t move.


    Legion felt himself thrown backwards, the chair almost kicked out from under him. His beer flew out of his hand, spinning, foam spraying from the bottle. Over a dozen of him repeated it, some curling and rolling, others spreading their arms out.


    Four of him were laughing.


    Sacajawea screamed, her hands raising.


    Everything went flat.


    Legion felt himself thrown against the painting, the glass shattering, scattering reality around him.


    He was laughing with glee.


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    All of him snapped back at once, and he hit the deck on his ass.


    He was still holding a beer even as a half dozen bottles hit the deck and bounced, spraying foam.


    Sacajawea looked up from where she''d fallen, fear filling her eyes.


    "Death. All probabilities are full of death."


    Legion just laughed.


    N''Skrek saw the pieces suddenly shatter into glitter, swarming around him, and he was through.


    He came out the other side on his feet.


    They had dropped close enough to the Mar-gite Jump Charging Array that he could see it with the naked eye through the windows of the Show Bridge.


    Sparks shot from deactivated consoles. One exploded and a midshipman ran forward with a replacement board even as the crewmember manning it picked themselves up from the floor, spitting out a wad of cotton candy onto the floor.


    "Grav detectors up and running! Mass detectors online!" Sensors called out.


    "CONTACTS! MANY MANY CONTACTS!" Lieutenant JG Wentworth called out from Tactical. "We''re being locked up!"


    "Execute countermeasures!" N''Skrek snapped. He tapped the button on the side of the wireless mic he was holding. "Weapon stations, local control."


    "Sixty percent of weapon stations reporting ready, sir!" Tactical called out.


    "Sensors clearing!" Scanning called.


    "Steam catapults launching Fruit Flies. Eighteen percent away!" Flight Operations called out.


    "OPEN FIRE!" N''Skrek roared out.


    He heard his voice repeated over the PA system, the copper wire carrying his voice through the massive ship as the analogue backups picked up the task from the stunned smartwires.


    "Realspace entry confirmed! All hands accounted for! Multiple anomalous Terran signatures identified as Legion, nine identified," called out Commander Dulmarch from the newly christened station. "No Mar-gite or other unknown signatures."


    N''Skrek nodded, watching the small streaks of light whip away from the bulk of the Gray Lady. He could see dozens of pinpricks nearby and knew they were enemy ships.


    "Guns online at local control. Fire permission granted!" Tactical called out.


    The ship started shuddering slightly and he could feel the ghostly plucking of C+ cannons firing.


    Legion stood up, smiling, moving up and looking down at Sacajawea.


    "We know this path leads to death and destruction, little sister," he grinned. "That''s the point of it. Don''t you understand?"


    "But we could all die! So much death, so much destruction. I can even read our own deaths in probability," she said, looking up. Tears were running down her face. "Please, can''t you take me away from here? Can''t we go elsewhere, Luke?"


    Legion shook his head. "Why would I want to be somewhere else, little sister?" he asked. Sparks danced across his teeth as his smile got wider. "This is humanity, little sister. This is the gift we have brought into the malevolent universe for all of our allies, all of those arrayed against us."


    The ghostly plucking started and Sacajawea cried out.


    "It''s the gift we bring our enemies," Legion smiled. "Who only exist to be destroyed."


    Sacajawea flinched back as he bent down, holding his hand out to her. "Stand on your feet, little sister. The day of you discovering your true purpose, to learn to use your gift properly, is nigh," he smiled.


    She flinched back, tried to pull her hand away, but he grabbed her anyway and yanked her to her feet.


    "Stand on your feet, little sister," he said, pulling her close and looking down at her. "No matter probability it is that comes to pass, stand on your feet, look the malevolent universe in the eye, and spit your defiance into death''s face."


    "Secondary battlescreens spinning up," N''Skrek heard.


    He was paying no mind, staring at the holotank, with was still fuzzy and streaked with static, the red and silver showing what even his eyes could see.


    The Gray Lady was surrounded. Dozens, hundreds of the shining silver ships. Thirty of the big Mar-gite Cluster Charging Constructs.


    Hundreds of Mar-gite Clusters.


    The Mar-gite Clusters were too far away, light hours from the Gray Lady, but the silver ships were close, some within a light second or less.


    N''Skrek got that tickle, that feeling, down his upper spine.


    "BRACE FOR IT!" He roared out.


    "Flash flash flash," sounded over the PA. "All hands, prepare for..."


    The world went bright white. It cleared for a split second, then happened again, stuttering, strobing.


    "You one trick show ponies," N''Skrek snarled as his vision cleared.


    "Systems still on local control," Commodore Vertain called out. "No loss of control!"


    "Fruit Flies away! Seventy-six percent confirmed. All Fruit Flies confirm still in control."


    N''Skrek nodded.


    "Sir, Legion is requesting permission to join you on the Show Bridge," Lieutenant Rawkrawr said.


    N''Skrek glanced at where Legion was standing by one of the consoles. The bald lean human just nodded.


    "Granted," N''Skrek said, returning the nod.


    There was another flash, this one seeming almost feeble in response.


    N''Skrek just sneered.


    The battle screens were flickering, intercepting incoming fire. N''Skrek looked over at the Tactical Defense Systems Officer''s screens and saw data scrolling up. It wasn''t the lightning fast of modern molycircs, but it was still scrolling.


    Every shot you make gives us data on your weapon systems. We will find out how to either mitigate the damage, negate it, or use it our advantage, he thought to himself. You, however, will only know destruction.


    The lift doors opened and N''Skrek heard a Terran woman protesting loudly. He didn''t bother to turn and look, merely focused on the holotank.


    "No! Let me go! Let me go! I don''t want to see!" the Terran woman was saying.


    Legion, three of him, were dragging her onto the Show Bridge.


    "You need to learn, little sister," Legion was saying. "And school is in session."


    "There are no probabilities that do not end in death and destruction," the Terran woman yelled.


    "Excellent," N''Skrek said, without turning around.


    "Targeting solutions are green. Repeat, targeting solutions on the Mar-gite Charging Constructs are green," Tactical called out.


    "Excellent," N''Skrek said softly. He smiled. "You may fire at will."


    "All Fruit Flies away," Flight Ops said.


    N''Skrek just nodded.


    He watched in the holotank as the nearest of the silvery ships started shattering or being covered by the purple X of mission kill. Missiles were being launched from the Gray Lady, shrieking through space.


    A small creature made of static, a short squat biped with a square head, white eyes and gnashing fangs, popped into the holotank. It jumped up and down, pointing at the cluster of silver ships being represented by diamonds.


    "Yes, yes. Shoo," N''Skrek said, motioning at the edge of the tank. "Go find a missile."


    The little creature gibbered silently and ran off.


    Legion dragged Sacajawea up to the holotank, the one of him behind her holding his hand over her mouth, the other two holding her arms.


    "Technically, what I am witnessing is assault," N''Skrek said, staring at the holotank.


    "Then don''t look," Legion snapped. He grabbed her hair and pushed her head forward. "Look at it. I know you know how to read it. Daxin taught all of us and you used what he taught you to run."


    She struggled slightly.


    "I don''t have to coddle you like Menhit coddled me," Legion snapped. "Instead, I''ll coddle you in the same way the Detainee coddles those in her care."


    She quit struggling, staring, her eyes wide.


    Legion let go of her mouth. "Do not shout. Do not speak, just merely watch. Watch as the battle plays out."


    "I will not take advice from a civilian observer, no matter what her supposed powers are and no matter who granted them to her," N''Skrek said. He looked at the version of Legion standing by the console, who was staring down at the screen. "A Confederate Lord Admiral of the Warsteel is one I will take advice when I ask for consultation."


    He looked at Sacajawea.


    "But only when I ask, and the final judgement is mine," he said coldly.


    Sacajawea swallowed, trying to look away from the holotank but unable to as Legion held her hair tightly.


    "No more running, little sister," Legion said softly.


    On the holotank, the Fruit Flies sped for the enemy, C+ cannon impacts were causing ships to break up, missiles were howling in on their terminal approaches on the huge mega-constructs. Outside the Show Bridge the battlescreens flared and rippled, still mostly transparent.


    Legion grinned at her from three different points.


    "No more running."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 65

    "Now hear this, now hear this.


    "In less than an hour we will drop out of jump space. Chances of an enemy encounter are high. We are far from home, far from support and surrounded by untold trillions of Mar-gite in deep space. This is good, it means we don''t have to worry about what we shoot at.


    "When the time comes, I have only one standing order: fight. Fight with every gun, every missile, every ounce of will and scrap of code at your disposal. If central control is lost, fight under local control. If isolated from the computers, fight under manual control. If boarded, fight for every corridor, every stateroom, every access way you can reach. Fight for your lives and if you find your situation hopeless, fight to drag the enemy into the grave with you.


    "The Confederacy expects that every sentient will do their duty. Our duty is to engage the enemy.


    "And the enemy only exists to be destroyed.


    "That is all." -- Nova Wars Era, Confederate Space Force, speaker and ship of origin uncertain.


    "Tell me, Sister? How far does your sight reach? How many years? And then, in the future, when we have given up strength, and allies, and numbers, and the potential to fight back meaningfully, time and again, in pursuit of your safe path... and you find out it is a cul-de-sac, surrounded on all sides by death, with no possible escape, because you traded away every chance of victory because you were scared... who will you blame then?" - Dhruv Deshmuhk, Legion, apocryphal, referenced in "Telling a Hard Truth straight: a love language", Psychology Forever Journal


    "We fight, not for today, not for this blood soaked agony wracked terrible day or the horrible horrible victory we may wrench from the gnashing jaws of defeat with blood soaked hands.


    "We fight for tomorrow. For those yet unborn. For the future.


    "You are the hope of the Telkan people. You are the living standard, the banner, that says to the universe: We will not submit! We will not kneel! We will stand! We will fight!


    "With that, know that the Telkan people are with you, Marine. Always." - Director Brentili''ik, in a speech to Telkan Marine Officer''s Training Course Class #10, Confederacy-Council Conflict Era.


    The flashes were starting. Not big ones, not the Flashbang, but rather the tiny pinpricks of harsh light that sparkled for a second that vanished.


    Deaths that had happened seconds or minutes prior.


    Captain N''Skrek stared out the windows of the Show Bridge, staring at the inky black of space. The ship, the Gray Lady, was in between the Galactic Arms, in the vast nothingness that held no stellar systems.


    Oh, it had at one time.


    Forty thousand years prior the stars between the two galactic arm spurs had gone out, with the exception of a single string of pearls liking the two galactic arms.


    Now, the Gray Lady, a ship in the Colossus Class of ancient Confederacy Space Force classification, was deep into the gulf between the galactic arms. Just over halfway.


    He could see the rings that made up a long tube, the rings held into position by what looked like, at a distance of light seconds, to be thin straps. Coasting silently through the rings, bathed by light emitted by the interior of the rings, were massive Mar-gite Attack Clusters.


    Sparkles were starting to show on the clusters as the Fruit Flies made their attack runs.


    Larger flashes, still rendered tiny by stellar distances, started shining to brief life as the C+ cannon barrages and the missile swarms started slamming into the shining chrome ships.


    Return fire was causing the battlescreens to cover the ship in a gauzy veil.


    "No, no, it''s all death and destruction," a Terran woman moaned from where she was being held in place by three identical human males.


    Captain N''Skrek knew that it was, without any doubt, a physical assault upon the female.


    But Captain N''Skrek was also smart enough to know not to get involved when two Immortals of myth and legend were having a family squabble.


    After all, were not the Treana''ad a crafty and wise people who managed to obtain victgory over 25% of all military engagements with the Terrans?


    "We''re humans, there''s always death and destruction," the male said, his voice slightly mocking. "Look past the probabilities. Look past the initial death and destruction. Look at the pathways it all leads to. Look at the path that we''re taking."


    The woman struggled but the man held her still.


    "It''s all death and destruction! Millions! Billions! Trillions of deaths!" she wailed.


    "The enemy''s death toll does not matter, little sister," the man, known to historians as the Biological Apostle Vat-Grown Luke, told the woman. "It''s war. There will be death and destruction no matter what. What matters, all that matters, is that humanity and its allies survive."


    "Please, Luke," the woman started sobbing.


    "Tears don''t work on me," Legion said, his voice full of dark and cruel mirth.


    He leaned his head down.


    "I am... Legion," he said softly.


    Captain N''Skrek put the two Immortals out of his mind as he coordinated the battle, taking tactical and strategic advice from his staff.


    The Fruit Flies wreaked havoc on the rings, shattering them, letting superstructure damage work with inertia and momentum to tear the systems apart. C+ cannon shots hitting deep inside the megastructures. The shots were no longer straight iron ferrite slugs with a hyperdrive engine for thrust and reactionless inertia engines for guidance and terminal maneuvers, they now had a burning core of spooky and strange-particle FOOF that weighed in the metric kilotons.


    "Fruit Fly system back online, Captain."


    "Fabricate and launch," N''Skrek ordered. "Compliments on their initial strikes."


    The silver ships were destroyed already, the temporal range finders reporting data from when the shells would hit, telling N''Skrek''s staff where the ships would be when the shots were fired.


    "I can''t... I can''t..." the woman sobbed when N''Skrek ordered another flight of Fruit Flies into the fight.


    "Parse the deaths, parse the destruction," Legion said. Another of him pointed at the icons for the just-launched Fruit Fly flights. "They are born, they live, and they die to kill the enemy. Over and over, it''s what they do. Look past their deaths at their accomplishments."


    The Terran woman was sobbing, but N''Skrek didn''t care.


    He had a job to do.


    Task Force Lonely Peach had a job to do.


    It had came as no surprise to him that Legion would know, without being told or having it confirmed, what the ultimate goal of Task Force Lonely Peach.


    After all, Legion himself had carried out such orders under the command of the Imperium.


    It no longer mattered what happened behind the Gray Lady, whether or not the Confederacy or anyone else survived. It no longer mattered if the Mar-gite were victorious or not.


    The target were not the Mar-gite, present in the massive rolled up long cones.


    The target were the ones pushing them forward, the ones enabling them to cross the great emptiness between the two galactic arms.


    No, the target was now those enabling the Mar-gite.


    Captain N''Skrek''s orders were simple.


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    Find the enemy.


    Determine their leadership.


    Attack their military.


    Attack their planets.


    Sterilize their stellar systems.


    Break the will of their civilians to support their government.


    Leave them no ground to go to.


    His briefing had been grim. The Confederacy was confident it could eventually stop the Mar-gite.


    Eventually.


    That meant dozens, hundreds, possibly thousands of planets denuded of life. Just as many stars nova-sparked to wipe out any trace of the Mar-gite.


    Task Force Lonely Peach had been dispatched with a very Terran mission.


    To return to the Mar-gite''s masters what they had given the Confederacy.


    Tenfold.


    Captain N''Skrek watched as the Fruit Flies split up into squadrons, heading for any remaining hulks of the silver ships, the larger pieces of the megaconstruct, and to fire upon any of the Mega-Clusters or larger.


    "Look past the death and destruction," Legion was saying. "They''ll be sending in reinforcements, Sacajawea," his voice grew low and deadly. "Where will they come out."


    "No, I won''t," she whispered, her eyes wide and staring at the holotank. "I won''t use my gift," she sobbed.


    "You will. You ran away last time. You left us to rely on The Detainee to access the SUDS. You ran off and left us and humanity has been extinct for forty-thousand years," Legion was saying. "No more running, little sister. You will use your gifts, your powers, as you were meant to."


    There was a perfectly timed coincidental moment of silence on the Show Bridge.


    "Show us the way," Legion said.


    Sacajawea suddenly jerked upright, the tendons on her neck standing out as her face raised to the ceiling. Her arm lifted, pointing out the window of the Show Bridge. Her other hand thrust itself into the hologram. Her eyes glowed purple, lightning crackled up and down her raven braids, and sparks danced between her teeth as they chattered.


    A section of space was outlined as she gibbered for a moment, fragments of words, chops of sentences, followed by a string of numbers that the tactical computers recognized as coordinates.


    "They come, more than before. They know not what they face, just that the enemy, that we, are attacking them, attacking their forces, and so now they will arrive here and now," she cried out. "They do not know, they come in a multitude that not even this powerful vessel can resist. They come by the hundreds, and will overwhelm even this vessel according to my Sight."


    She collapsed and Legion caught her even as two versions of him turned to face the windows.


    "Let me know when you want me to call for those reinforcements I promised you," one said.


    "Or not," the other said.


    N''Skrek just nodded, turning and giving orders to the crew to prepare for a microjump to put them ''above'' and ''away'' from the point that Sacajawea had pointed out.


    "Can she have lied?" N''Skrek asked, the Legion standing beside him as four others carefully carried Sacajawea off.


    Legion shook his head. "No. I''d know if she was lying," he said. "She was filled with a trance, a fugue state, so the more mortal part of her wasn''t there to lie."


    "Hold off on those reinforcements until we can see what we are facing," N''Skrek said. He snorted. "I doubt the young lady fully appreciates the firepower the Gray Lady can put out."


    "She was never military. She had some training, but not much," Legion said. "Still, she had a vision, take that as you will."


    N''Skrek nodded. He turned and ordered up more Fruit Flies to be generated.


    He''d have them launch as soon as the microjump was finished.


    "Digital Sentiences, Virtual Intelligences report jump transit safety interlocks are engaged," came the word.


    N''Skrek motioned. "Engage."


    The painting appeared, but before N''Skrek could pause to look at it he was thrown through it, the image shattering into hundreds of shards of reality. They dissolved almost instantly.


    N''Skrek only took a half-step forward as the ship entered realspace.


    "Load the planet-crackers. Target the larger Mar-gite constructs. Let''s see how they like that, since we don''t have to worry about gravitational wobble," N''Skrek ordered. "When our new guests arrive, I want them to be focusing on the constructs."


    "Fruit Flies are launching. Steam driven launcher only," came the report.


    N''Skrek nodded, staring at the screen.


    "I remember waiting to ambush the Mantid''s Third Fleet that was heading for Sol," Legion said conversationally, as if he wasn''t speaking about one of the most famous wars of ancient history. "Hiding in the gravity shadow of a supermassive gas giant, inside the rings themselves."


    He turned and gave N''Skrek a grin.


    "An Armada of One," he said. "No chance for the Mantid to overwhelm my brain, to shut me down. Beyond a Hive Mind, a singular mind with a singular purpose."


    "Sounds exciting," N''Skrek said, watching the windows and the holotank at the same time.


    "Very boring. I played a lot of video games and card games," Legion said.


    "Against yourself, even an MMO would be solitary and single player," N''Skrek said.


    "Ruins PvP," Legion grinned.


    "I''ll bet," N''Skrek said.


    "The Sacajawea of that time stood on the bridge with me. She had shown me where the Mantid would take the most casualties and where I would be killed quite often," Legion said. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and N''Skrek hid a frown at the fact he didn''t recognize Lucky Strike as a brand he was familiar with.


    "Does it hurt when you get killed?" N''Skrek asked as Legion lit two cigarettes, handing one to N''Skrek.


    "Very much so," Legion said. "Took me a few hundred thousand deaths to get used to it. Now, it hurts, it''s terrifying, but not much more than clipping my fingernails," he sighed. "It''s all right. I''ve always been, in many ways, less than human."


    "You seem, to my albeit limited experience, to be very human to me," N''Skrek said. He took a drag off the cigarette and almost started coughing. It was harsh, raw tobacco with no additives and the filter tasting heavily of asbestos.


    The Fruit Flies were scattering, going to full stealth, blinking their ready icons.


    "Thank you," Legion said. He exhaled smoke. "Like the smoke?"


    N''Skrek nodded.


    "Gift from the Dee. Not the Detainee Lady Lord of Hell," he said, staring at the holotank. "But The Dee. The flesh and blood one," he gave a rueful chuckle. "Evil never dies."


    "Harsh," N''Skrek said.


    The missile pods flashed ready and went to stealth.


    "Like her," Legion smiled. He suddenly looked a bit sad. "I miss her. Miss my siblings, the other Biological Apostles," he said. He sighed. "Sacajawea makes me miss them all that much more."


    N''Skrek just nodded.


    "Sometimes I miss the Digital Omnimessiah too."


    "Ship is at silent running," came the soft voice.


    N''Skrek stood there, smoking, with Legion standing next to him.


    Behind them Mar-gite clusters were breaking up from a combination of the FOOF and the split second artificial singularities that exploded into existence inside their mass.


    Perhaps I can''t completely eliminate them, but I can knock out a measurable percentage since I don''t have to worry about how it might affect a stellar system''s gravity balance, he thought at one point.


    Time slowly ticked by.


    "How is she?" N''Skrek asked at one point.


    "Recovering. I''m sitting with her. I had a medic look at her. Physically, she''s fine," Legion said.


    "She should be on anti-depressants and undergoing therapy. For us it''s ancient history, for her the Glassing and the loss of her people, even her death, are recent events. She only died a short time ago," N''Skrek said.


    "And you should be dancing for a comely matron and I should be somewhere helping someone correct genetic sequencing damage," Legion said. "Shoulda, coulda, woulda, didn''t."


    N''Skrek just nodded.


    "Wait, can you see that?" Legion suddenly asked, pointing at the window.


    "What?" N''Skrek said.


    "The stars. A faint red-shift," Legion said.


    N''Skrek looked toward the scanning officer, who frowned and looked at his instruments.


    "It''s faint. And large," Legion said. He motioned with his hands, using the smart-glass interface to highlight the area. "Right there."


    "Nothing, sir," the scan-tech said.


    N''Skrek tapped his lapel. "All personnel, prepare for enemy engagement," he said.


    His voice carried over the intercom.


    "Akka-Berry," Legion said softly. "They use a form of Akka-Berry."


    The chrome ships suddenly appeared, wavering slightly like a heat mirage before solidifying up. They appeared pebbled and dull, like unbuffed and unpolished chrome.


    "OPEN FIRE!" N''Skrek roared. He knew it was unnecessary, that the computers would give the fire order.


    But it seemed to carry more weight as the PA repeated it.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Legion got into the elevator, waiting a moment after the doors closed to touch the panel. He overrode the alarms, then stopped the elevator.


    The shadows warped and a light fog filled the elevator car.


    It cleared to reveal a short Terran woman, with black hair pulled behind her head in a long braid, a severe face, plump, overripe figure, and gunmetal gray eyes.


    "Well?" Legion asked.


    "She''s a child," the woman spat.


    "I know that," Legion said. "Can you help her?"


    "No, I mean, she''s literally a child. Physically. She''s never grown up," the woman snarled.


    "Our aging was halted due to what we were going to do. The last thing we needed was a temporal sheer to kill half of us via old age," Legion said.


    "I know that, you multiplying idiot," the woman snapped. "But she should have been allowed to grow into an adult first."


    "She chose to stay young," Legion shrugged.


    "And her brain has the neural pathways of a child," the woman snapped. She dug out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter of enameled steel. "The human brain doesn''t fully mature until it''s in its mid-20''s. That''s why we sent 18 year olds off to die in a rice patty or on some god forsaken beach. You need people who think charging the machinegun is a good idea, and teenage boys are well known for their excellent risk-reward judgement."


    Legion just shrugged.


    "But her, she''s a child. Sixteen at the most, probably later fifteen," the woman said. She pulled out a cigarette, held it between her even white teeth, and lit it. "She has the mind of a teenage girl, a people known for their excellent decision making ability and capability to process trauma."


    Legion just nodded.


    The woman put away the cigarettes without offering one to Legion. He saw the emblem on the lighter.


    "US ARMY ATOMIC COMMAND" in red block letters.


    "You know how I feel about child soldiers," the woman said.


    "It was The Glassing," Legion just shrugged.


    "It''s always something," the woman snarled. "Doesn''t change how I feel."


    "Can you help her?" Legion asked. "You''re closer to her than I am."


    "You mean, I''m as much a primitive barbarian as she is," the woman said, suddenly smiling without any humor. "I am what I am and she is what she is. Primitive savages from a time of hardship, resource shortages, and social upheaval."


    "I wouldn''t be so rude as to put it that way," Legion said. He smiled back. "But, yes."


    The woman stared at the brushed steel wall of the elevator for a long moment. "I won''t alter her SUDS record."


    "Of course not," Legion said.


    After a moment she nodded. "I can''t help her, but I know some people who may."


    Legion looked down at her. "Who?"


    The woman smiled and exhaled smoke that filled the elevator car.


    Her teeth and eyes were still visible.


    "You''ll know them when I bring them," she said. The eyes blinked. "Keep me in the loop for what''s going on here. I have a feeling that events back home are going to have my attention pretty soon."


    "I will," Legion told the eyes as the smile vanished.


    The eyes closed.


    Legion could feel it when she was gone. The smoke slowly cleared, leaving him alone in the elevator.


    0-0-0-0-0


    "What is taking this elevator so long to get here?" Jaskel asked 8814.


    --not know computer says is moving-- the greenie replied.


    "Aw man, Gunny''s going to have my ass."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 66

    "They say that Terraneytis requires a Terran to infect you with it. That''s not true. It requires Wrath or Rage. That''s all it is." - Legan Ironfist, "The Blood Upon My Hands", Free Telkan Press


    "...the Malevolent Universe has a... soft spot... for the underclass - the beaten, the downtrodden, those for whom the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming grav-train. She has a tendency to grind them down, cleanse them with fire, and light that spark of Rage within. Like primitive metallurgy, the ore of the Downtrodden becomes the warsteel of the Enraged. She has a particular preference for those who embrace Righteous Wrath - that unending wellspring of affront that others suffer without due cause. Terraneyetis usually follows... and that is everyone else''s problem." - Musings on the Malevolent Universe, Pond''rmoo, Lanaktallan Philosoper, and Social Commentator.


    ¡°To those who heard the Terrans refuse to release the dead to the avaricious clutches of those who governed the places they called home in life it may seem strange that the Dark Crusade would bring the fallen back to fight on with nary a peep from TerraSol.


    After all, is not being reborn into war to suffer and fight again not the most hellish violation the consent that they claim to so fervently guard?


    The question misses the forest for the trees. Context is everything when dealing with anything related to the Terrans, and the more outlandish that thing may be the more important context is.


    It is one thing to tear the long dead from their earned rest and the embrace of their loved ones to solve the problems of those who ought to provide their own solutions. It is quite another to call back the soul of a fallen warrior to a body made of warsteel and hate, not to answer a master¡¯s call or even because cruel Necessity demands it but because: the enemy still draws breath and they¡¯re not fucking finished yet.¡± -- Excerpt from ¡®Crusaders: A Brief and Terrifying History¡¯, Treana''ad Historian Klutzy Sherbert, Smokey Cone Press.


    "How long have you lived with it?" - Vuxten


    "It''s always been there." - Casey


    "Me too." -Vuxten


    The early days were both the hardest and the most exhilarating.


    Those are the days I dream of when I have the dream. The one that haunt me the most.


    The one where I wake up on the floor of my shipboard room, face down on the metal in a puddle of vomit and drool. I open my eyes, head ringing from too much stim and alk, with Wrixet staring at me.


    The dream where everything since those hectic days of violence is nothing but a hangover fueled dream, a fantasy that I will never have.


    After all, I knew then, with a certainty only someone in such circumstances can have, that I would not survive the next drop.


    I don''t know which is worse. That the dream is nothing more than a nightmare.


    Or that it is all of this is a dream induced by The Bliss as it carries me off on a forgotten battlefield.- Meditations on the Barrier War, Lancer First Class Imna, Free Telkan Press, 25 Post-Terran Emergence


    Hetmwit sat at the console, watching as the two Telkan, one male, one female, boarded the ship. They were nervously following Mister Scrooge, the all black skeletal looking robot appearing lean and evil as it motioned at them to follow with long taloned fingers.


    He switched cameras to follow them as they were moved to one of the Marine Compliment Berths.


    Normally the Nell of Night, as the ship had been renamed, would carry sixty-four Terran Confederate Marines, half of them in cryo-stasis.


    Now, it was just the two Telkan and a bunch of robots that Hetmwit had been steadily upgrading since they had arrived at what was being called "Forward Non-Orbital Operating Base Yamaloka" by the Crusade and everyone else that was showing up.


    He checked another monitor.


    There were four Telkan Warbound being loaded onto the Nell of Night, with two being loaded onto the other ships.


    The flotilla he was the Executive Officer of now numbered thirteen ships, counting the Nell of Night, with only the two Telkan, Captain Decken, and himself as living crewmembers.


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    There was supposed to be some support from the Dark Crusade of Light before they left, but Cargo Bay Three was undergoing refit to handle the Warbound and Cargo Bay Two was being refit for whatever it was they were going to get from the Crusade.


    Hetmwit wasn''t up on his Telkan body language, but he could tell that the male was awed with the sheer space of the quarters he had. It was the stateroom for the Terran Marine Corps Detachment commanding officer. The female had what should have been a room for two all to herself and she didn''t seem as awed by the living space.


    Different social/economic castes? he wondered.


    After a minute the male Telkan touched the headset he was wearing. Hetmwit knew that the Telkan wasn''t scheduled for his datalink surgery for another day. Hetmwit''s board pinged and he tapped the answer icon.


    "Hetmwit here," he said.


    "Is anyone there?" the Telkan asked.


    "Hetmwit here."


    "Hello?"


    "Hetmwit here," he tried again. Usually, third time was a charm.


    "Uh, hi. I''m Wrixet, one of the two Telkan you had brought on board," the male Telkan said.


    "I am aware."


    "Uh, so, this room, uh," Wrexit said, looking around the room again. "Uh, are you sure it''s mine?"


    "That is the room assigned to you," Hetmwit said.


    "Oh. Um... Hello?"


    "I am still here."


    "Hello?" there was silence for a moment. "Guess he hung up."


    The line went dead and Hetmwit shook his head.


    Hetmwit looked up and saw Captain Decken was staring at the holotank. He got up and moved over to the Captain, looking into the holotank.


    The male Telkan, clad in crimson colored armor, was fighting hand to hand against the Hellshades. The sound was off and there were windows on the edge of the holotank display, each showing a different movement pattern. Captain Decken was nodding to himself as a window lit up and the figure inside performed the same movements as Wrixet in the main display.


    "What are you doing?" Hetmwit asked.


    "Fighting style analysis," Decken said. "It looked untrained to me. The computer agrees. I''m also watching for how long it takes him to decide on his next course of action and how long he acts until he stops."


    "Oh," Hetmwit said.


    "Very few species can do action without thought, even with ingrained reflexes," Decken said. "Even the Treana''ad and Mantid have trouble with it. The Rigellians can go longest, with the most action chains, and the shortest delay, but it''s still there."


    "Telkans are the fourth shortest thought to action. You apparently can train a Tukna''rn to act based on repetition reflex burn-in, but only according to doctrine. Rigellians are second. Treana''ad warrior caste are third," Decken said.


    "Whose first?" Hetmwit asked.


    "Warrior caste Mantid," Decken said. he looked up and saw Hetmwit''s expression of confusion. "Oh, my people?" Hetmwit nodded and Decken smiled. "We can perform without thought to action and make predictive analysis and movement forced combat prediction without software," he tapped his forehead. "We''ve got a string of wiring, deep in our brain. Pretty dense stuff."


    "Oh," Hetmwit said.


    Decken gave a wider smile. "The human brain is pieces layered on top of older pieces. All the way at the bottom is a chunk about as big as your thumb pad. It''s the oldest part of our brain, an animal part," Decken said. "And, like an animal, it doesn''t have to think, it just does," he looked back at the imaging of the Telkan fighting Hellshades. "No other species has that piece. Just us."


    "Weird," Hetmwit said.


    "This guy is untrained. You can tell," he held up one finger to stop Hetmwit''s protest. "I said untrained, not unexperienced," Decken leaned forward. "The way he uses the walls, if I had to guess, I''d guess illegal pit fights."


    Hetmwit frowned. "I thought the Telkan were part of the Confederacy. They''d have such things?"


    Decken shrugged. "We''ve been gone forty-thousand years, Number One, a lot can change," he said.


    Hetmwit nodded.


    Decken reached the end of the playback, as the Telkan knelt down next to a dying one, and shut off the central image. He moved the images of the Telkan fighting, through certain move-sets, and then brought up the keyboard.


    A few key taps and ninety seconds later and Decken nodded at what came up.


    "What''s that?" Hetmwit asked.


    "Compatible fighting style that''s in the combat training library," Decken said. He scrolled through the text. "Nell of Night has it loaded into its system," Decken looked up and smiled. "Give me two months, the time it will take to get back to your star nation, and I''ll train him to ruin anything in front of him."


    Hetmwit just nodded.


    Decken turned back to the holotank, bringing up images of the female Telkan fighting.


    "Let''s see what I can do for you," Decken said softly.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Hetmwit waited for the door to open and stepped through.


    His mother and sisters were sitting in the fairly large stateroom, normally used for high ranking officers. They were looking around, almost in awe, at the luxury and space the stateroom contained.


    "I have to leave soon, momma," Hetmwit said, moving up in front of his mother. "In a few hours."


    "Hemmie," his mother said. She held out her arms to him and he sunk down on his knees, resting his head against her as she wrapped her arms around him and held him close.


    "Hemmie," his sisters said, moving over to touch him. His nieces and nephews moved up, all hugging on him. They didn''t really understand why, just that their mothers were hugging him and they wanted to give hugs too.


    Revvie, Tylee, and Estlee all rubbed on him, rubbing their faces against his shoulders. The kids were holding tight to him.


    His mother hugged him close.


    "Just know, my perfectly ordinary boy, that I will always love you. No matter what," she said. His sisters murmured the same.


    The littles all crooned that they loved him.


    Hetmwit closed his eyes and hugged back.


    He had a feeling he''d need all of this he could get.


    "I''ll do my best to come back," he promised.


    "I''ll hold you in my heart," his mother promised.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Captain Decken looked at Hetmwit.


    "Everything green?" the Terran asked.


    Hetmwit nodded. "I just wanted to say goodbye to my family."


    Decken nodded then turned back to the holotank.


    "Go to lightspeed, Mister Smiley," Captain Decken said.


    [The Universe Liked That]

 Nova Wars - Chapter 67

    "The Mad Lemurs of Terra of yesterday are marching so they will have returned tomorrow to assault today. " - Tome of Illuminations of the Shattered Mind, Cult of the Defiled One


    Field Captain Strechen stood on the bridge, staring at the holotank as the ship left Transit Space, dropping to ''realspace'' with a shuddering groan that vibrated the entire ship.


    Senior Scientist Hrekkel stood next to his very own private Way of the Means bodyguard, one Imperial Expediter First Class Ee''eerlee''u, one of the feared Empress Direct Action Hands.


    Strechen had noted that they were always near one another and the Expediter Ee''eerlee''u, call me Leeu, often reached out to touch the smaller male as if it comforted her to do so.


    Over the last few months of travel, shocks, and fear, Strechen understood the need for comfort very very much.


    As she watched, Leeu reached out and touched Hrekkel''s shoulder. The smaller male reached up, without looking away from the holotank, and put his hand over hers, squeezing gently.


    On the holotank the system''s primary star, Nal.Sheveki-229, burned a silent yellow. Planets were appearing as the scanners picked them up. Gas giants, barren rocks, three planets with atmosphere.


    "I have drive signatures. Dra.Falten ID''s," the scanner technician called out.


    More pinpoints started showing up. Dozens, scores, then hundreds.


    "It''s a full fleet of the Empress''s Might," the scanner tech called out. "The Empress''s Divine Flower of Will Fleet."


    More blips started appearing.


    "Anomalous signatures registering in the terraton range," the scanner tech called out. "No drive signatures, no ID. Ten in all," the scanner tech called out.


    The ten signatures were obviously heading toward ten of the fifteen planets.


    "Correction, eleven, no, twelve anomalous signatures. Two more have appeared beyond the resonance zone," the scanner tech called out.


    "We''re getting a communication demand. The flagship In the Desires of the Empress is hailing us," the comtech said.


    Strechen glanced over to where Tawtchee was sitting at an empty chair. His uniform was spotless, creased and pressed, and for a change he wasn''t drinking a narcobrew or smoking a Treana''ad smokestick.


    Instead, he was looking at the holotank intently.


    "Put it through," the former XO of the ship, now Captain Helt.rika said. She tugged the bottom of her uniform blouse to make sure it was hanging correctly as the secondary holotank lit up.


    The female that appeared looked harried and exhausted. "High Admiral Calfreka" was the ID tag next to the holographic representation of the officer.


    "Identify yourself," Admiral Calfreka demanded.


    "Captain Helt.rika, Seeker of Terrible Answers, in the service of one of the Empress''s Direct Action Hand," Captain Helt.rika stated.


    The Admiral looked out of the holotank, to the side, then nodded, looking back.


    "Is your vessel armed?" the Admiral asked.


    The Captain shrugged. "Lightly. We are an exploration and survey vessel rather than a warship," she gave a sharp, barking laugh, "We couldn''t risk being mistaken for a hostile warship."


    The admiral closed her eyes. "You can''t help then," she said softly. She opened her eyes. "Get out. There''s twelve already, there will be a few more soon so that there will be one of those cursed things per planet. Maybe a few more that will cruise through before warping back out."


    "Additional anomalous contact," the scanner tech called out.


    The Admiral closed her eyes and nodded, the motion full of resignation.


    "What are they?" the Captain asked.


    "We don''t know," the Admiral said. She opened her eyes, looking angry and resigned. "They aren''t ships, not like we know them. They get close to a planet and unroll, then break apart into millions of clusters. The clusters make landfall and begin eating everything. If, and it''s a big if, our weapons penetrate the battlescreens of the large objects, our attacks don''t have much effect."


    The Captain glanced over at the holotank.


    Strechen could see the data.


    Two thousand two hundred kilometers long, four hundred kilometers at the wide end, fifty kilometers at the small, leading, end. It as an elongated cone.


    There were thirteen in the system now.


    "They just keep coming," the Admiral said.


    "We have reinforcements," the Captain said. She rubbed her face, then tugged on her ear for a second. "Not much, only a handful of ships, but they have assured us that they can assist."


    Long seconds passed before the Admiral replied.


    Strechen realized that she missed the faster than light communication of the Terrors.


    "Unless they can get through the enemy''s battlescreens and rip apart ships thousands of miles long, I don''t see how a few ships can help," the Admiral said. She sighed. "You know what, I''ll take anything I can get."


    "Just don''t fire on them," the Captain warned. She winced slightly. "That would be a bad idea."


    This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    "Hyperspace flutter," the sensor tech called out. "Task Force Steel Warhammer is about to enter realspace."


    "Here they come, Admiral," the Captain said.


    Strechen kept from smiling.


    The words roared out through the ship, as if someone had used the PA system onboard. They howled from the very air itself, and Strechen was pretty sure even the Admiral and the enemy heard it.


    F¨¢G AN BEALACH T¨¢ BRISTEOIR F¨¢INNE TAGTHA


    Followed immediately by another roar.


    RUITH A'' BHANRIGH AIR NA CEANGLAICHEAN AIR A RIGH-CHATHAIR A SHLEAMHNACHADH


    "New contacts! Twenty ships! All with Task Force Steel Warhammer ID''s," the sensor tech called out.


    Strechen again found herself admiring the ships as they appeared in the holotank. Massive ships, each easily twenty kilometers long. Not sleek, flawless lines, but built with sweeping arches, massive gun arrays, looking more like works of art than warships.


    Ten seconds later the Admiral staggered back, covering her ears and wincing.


    "Task Force Steel Warhammer signals all ships present and accounted for. No Transit Space alterations or injuries," the communications tech called out.


    "Signal Warhammer we read their last," Captain Helt.rika said. "Invite their High Knight Aesir to join us in the conference call."


    The communication tech nodded.


    "What is that?" the Admiral half-screeched.


    "Reinforcements," the Captain stated.


    "Captain, sidecar communication request. Warhammer states it is a superluminal network to enable realtime communication between the fleet, ourselves, and their own Lord Captains," the commo tech called out.


    "Bring them in," the Captain said. She kept from swallowing nervously.


    The third holotank flickered to life.


    The Admiral was in one section, Captain Helt.rika in another section.


    A Terror was in the last one. Clad in a stark, severe uniform, blond hair cut short, blue eyes that still somehow held an amber glow, the Terror had a grim expression on its face.


    Strechen was glad she had studied Terror facial expressions. She knew it was determination, not a threat display.


    "I am Lord Knight Aesir of the Sancti Ordo Spiritus Tyr," the Terror stated.


    "I am Captain Helt.rika of the Seeker of Terrible Answers," the Captain said.


    The Terror nodded.


    The Admiral, to her credit, just nodded several times fast. "I am High Admiral Calfreka of the Empress''s Divine Flower of Will Fleet, aboard the flagship In the Desires of the Empress."


    There was a moment of silence. The Terror looked to the side, then back.


    "You''ve got a Mar-gite problem," he said. He looked to the side again. "You''re evacuating the planet?"


    The Admiral shook her head. "There are not enough ships. We have all essential personnel off-planet, but there isn''t enough lifting capacity to pull the majority of the population," she sighed. "We can''t stop those things. Our weapons can''t get through their battlescreens, they land billions of creatures on the planet which start eating everything they can."


    She shook her head again. "The Empress had ordered us to evacuate essential personnel, leave the rest."


    The Terran''s lip curled slightly for a split second. "And then?"


    The Admiral pulled on one of her ears. "Then, we run to the next system and watch more of those things arrive to do it all again," she sighed. "We cannot put up a fight."


    The Terror nodded. "All right. Have any made planetfall yet?"


    The Admiral shook her head. "No, geometry was with us," she said.


    "Two more point sources have arrived. Vector shows they will be moving through the system without intersecting any orbital bodies," the sensor tech called out.


    "Move your ships away," the Terror said. He looked to the side. "Keep your distance."


    "If you get too close, hundreds peel away from the larger mass and attack the ship," the Admiral said. "Once that happens, the ship is lost."


    The Terror nodded. "For you, maybe," he looked to the side. "We''re running a fireplan now."


    "For what few ships you have," the Admiral said.


    The Terror drew itself up. "We were invited in by Captain Helt.rika," he said. "I must ask you, Admiral: Do you need assistance?"


    The Admiral thought for a second, then nodded. "If you think you can stop these things, then yes."


    The Terror gave a sudden grin, exposing meat tearing teeth.


    "Thine eyes shall show you the glory of our lord," the Terror said. He turned to the side. "Execute Warplan Flare of Morning."


    Strechen watched as the ships suddenly vanished, seeming to streak off into the distance for a split second.


    "Where..." the Admiral started to say.


    THA FLURAICHEAN COGAIDH AN SEO


    roared out from every surface, from the very air, as all twenty reappeared at various points around the system.


    Strechen had learned to read the holotank over the journey.


    Each of the Terror ships were roughly two million miles from the ''Mar-gite'' ships.


    The Admiral recovered, rubbing her ears. "What do they think they can..."


    "Gravity distortions! Temporal distortions!" the scanner tech called.


    From each of the ships there was strobes of pink or blue.


    "Task Force Steel Warhammer is firing on unknown contacts," the scanner tech called out.


    "These are Terrors, Admiral," Captain Helt.rika said slowly. "Not old junk, not rusting ships we found orbiting a neutron star, but actual Terror ships crewed by Terrors."


    Strechen could tell that the massive ornate ships were firing broadsides. There were distortion paths streaking from the ships into the sides of the massive Mar-gite vessels. The ships began breaking apart, only to seemingly contract and then vanish.


    There was silence for a moment.


    The ships kept firing.


    Strechen moved up and looked at the data.


    The "Mar-gite" ships would get hit by the gravity surge and suddenly tear apart, only to vanish into itself.


    The Terror was talking offscreen, his lips blurred.


    Strechen moved over to sit next to Tawtchee.


    "Are you frightened, Field Captain?" Tawtchee asked, staring at the holotank.


    "No, why would I be?" Strechen asked.


    The Mar-gite ''vessels'' started vanishing.


    "Because we couldn''t even effect them, and the Terrors are destroying them in mere minutes," Tawtchee said. "We had an entire fleet here and could do nothing. They devoted one ship per enemy ship and the enemy is losing without any apparent effort."


    Strechen stared at the screen and then suddenly got it.


    "We have released a terrible thing upon the universe," Tawtchee said quietly.


    Strechen just nodded.


    "What... how are you..." the Admiral asked, tugging on her ear.


    The Terror turned back. "Standard hyper-compressed carbon antimatter artificial singularities," the Terror stated. "It rips them apart with the accretion disk, the event horizon shreds them down to subatomic particles that are then destroyed by the singularity itself. The singularity can only hold together for a few minutes before it evaporates away in a stream of antimatter particles that then destroys any remaining matter before succumbing to entropic forces."


    The Terror looked offscreen, said something that had his lips blurred, then faced the screen again.


    "Standard Mar-gite counter-measures," he said. He frowned. "These ones crossing through the system, though. They''re bigger than anything on record by a huge factor."


    The Admiral nodded. "Those ones just move through the system before vanishing at the opposite edge from where they came in."


    The Terror frowned. "I''ll be launching message torpedoes. This region isn''t clear of superluminal shades."


    The Admiral just swallowed, nodding.


    The Terror stared out of the screen for a long moment.


    "If you wish continued assistance, tradition mandates that you have a representative aboard my flagship," the Terror said.


    Strechen knew what was going to be said before the Captain could even say it.


    "I will transfer representatives to you," the Captain said. She looked at Strechen. "Two of them."


    The Terror nodded.


    "Once we eliminate these Mar-gite, we should prepare for more," he said.


    "Two more have just appeared at the edge of the resonance zone. Vector says they will cross the system without intercepting any orbital bodies," the scanner tech said.


    The Terror looked at the Admiral.


    "You need to inform your Empress," he said.


    "Of what?" the Admiral asked. She couldn''t believe that the Terror ships had destroyed the majority of the huge constructs already.


    "This is a xenocide invasion," the Terror said. His face grew grim. "It isn''t aimed at you."


    "Who is it aimed at?" Captain Helt.rika asked.


    "The entire arm spur," the Terror said. He shook his head.


    "You are just in the way."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 68

    Way of the Means Field Captain Strechen stood next to the Dra.Falten she had come to think of as ''her charge'', one Rifleman Tawtchee. To her left stood the scientist Hrekkel and ''Call me Leeu''. On her right was the Captain and the First Officer, both of the females reaching up to nervously comb at the hair at the back of their heads repeatedly.


    While the big ships were ornate, the dropship that Strechen could see on terminal maneuvers, controlled by the ship''s docking computer, was lean and mean looking. Greenish-black metal with a hint of blue, black material where windows should be, wings with additional thrusters that folded inward, and a set of four engines in the back.


    "Combat craft," Tawtchee said, standing up on his toes to speak softly in Strechen''s ear. "See the bay doors on the side? That''s for power armor or other infantry dismount as well as door gunners. See the bubbles with the strip cut into them? Those are firing blisters, crew or passengers can push the barrel of their weapon through and still maintain atmosphere. See those outlines? Some of those are compartments holding weaponry so that the craft can maintain its flight and sensor profile."


    Strechen just nodded. She''d known it was a combat craft, but Tawtchee had pointed out things she didn''t know about.


    "Battlescreen projectors, about four times what we have as far as visible emitters. Point defense bubbles, probably lasers with a spinning mirror," Tawtchee said softly. "Capable of in and out of atmosphere as well as deep space work. Be careful, Field Captain, what we see in their shuttlecraft may be a reflection of how dangerous they are as a people," he touched her lower back, almost making her jump from startlement. "These are a people ready for a fight. What they did to those ''Mar-gite'' they could easily do to the Empire."


    Strechen just nodded slightly. She glanced over and saw that Leeu had her hand on Hrekkel''s shoulder, almost as if she was restraining the obviously excited male.


    A glance showed the Captain and her recently promoted Executive Officer looked almost sick as the ship thumped into place with the feeling of a great weight nudging the Dra.Falten ship.


    The airlock pressurized and the lights went orange to signify that it was safe.


    "They did not transmit any atmospheric requirements," the XO said nervously.


    Tawtchee looked over at her. "Anything we can survive they can breathe."


    The XO started to open her mouth to retort angrily, saw Strechen''s expression, and shut her mouth, facing forward with her back and ears going rigid.


    The light went red to warn that the inner airlock was going to open and Strechen found herself tensing.


    She remembered the Terrors from the Path of the Traveler and the meeting after the nightmare inducing teleportation system. Despite everything, Magnus and his sister Surscee had been polite, almost friendly (if you discount the Sorceresses pants-wetting self-introduction she had performed) when Strechen had watched the video. The one they had met behind the desk had seemed only as malevolent as any other bureaucrat. She knew that whatever was going to come through that door was not going to be like any others.


    The airlock door irised open, decontaminate mist shin high flowing out.


    There were four of them. Three males and a female, the males arranged two behind the female and one male at the back. They wore no weapons, just a boots, belts, and comfortable looking gray and black camouflage uniforms. They had atmo-tanks at their waists, with masks hanging off of them.


    They were also massive.


    Strechen knew she shouldn''t be shocked. She''d seen that Tawtchee only came up to halfway up Magnus''s chest, slightly below Surscee''s mammaries.


    But the four Terrors in the airlock gave the impression of large, immovable, and powerful beings just standing in the airlock. The males were almost as tall as the airlock, their shoulders wide enough that they could only fit two abreast in a corridor meant for power armor troops to pass easily through.


    "May we come in?" the female asked, her Dra.Falten perfect.


    "Permission to board granted," the Captain said, stepping forward.


    The female gave a closed mouth ''smile'' that Strechen had learned was an expression of pleasure, happiness, joy, and, in rare cases, danger.


    The male''s expressions didn''t change from stern blankness, although Strechen could see their eyes looking around the bay.


    She took two steps forward and stopped, looking at each person.


    Strechen realized that she had grass green eyes, with a faint hint of amber in the depths.


    "I am Specialist Grade-Nine Caoimhe," she said. "Representing High Lord Captain High Lord Knight of Aesir O¡¯Byrne, in command of Task Force Niamhchloch, which has been named Task Force Warhammer for your ease of speech."


    Strechen noted it sounded like KEE-va and her implant translated it to meaning "kind", although, to be honest, the large Terror looked anything but kind. The words seemed overly complicated and had an odd weight to them.


    Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    For a moment, Strechen could swear she could smell hot, freshly spilled blood.


    "I am Captain Helt.rika," the Captain said. "I serve the Empress''s will."


    There was silence.


    After a moment she motioned and the three males stepped out. The two behind her moving to her left and right, the one at the back standing in the doorway of the airlock. The males spread their feet shoulder-width apart and then put their hands behind their back in a smooth, crisp movement.


    Strechen noted that all three males performed the action at the same time, as if they''d rehearsed it.


    "Tradition demands that any joint venture, such as defending someone''s homeland from invaders, requires representatives of the other party to be present," the female said, looking around slowly. "In most times, a representative of high rank, even a member of a royal family or highly placed government official, is required."


    She paused for a second and when none of the Dra.Falten present spoke, she continued.


    "However, the requirements of reality often conflict with tradition, so we of the Sancti Ordo Spiritus Tyr are willing to accept no less than two and no more than twenty representatives of your species aboard the High Lord Captain''s flagship," she said.


    "The Admiral has agreed to five," the Captain said, feeling a flutter of nervousness.


    Those huge males didn''t move, didn''t even seem to breathe, just stared slightly over the female''s head at the ceiling.


    But Captain Helt.rika couldn''t shake the feeling that they were a split second from ripping apart everything around them, unarmed or not.


    The female nodded slowly, her eyes and expression unreadable.


    The males just stared.


    Captain Helt.rika felt sweat slick down her spine and barely restrained herself from bruxing her teeth nervously.


    "As discussed with your Admiral, two ships will be remaining here to intercept and destroy any additional Mar-gite constructs that enter the system," the Terror Caoimhe said. "There will be additional negotiations with the Lord Captains of those ships, but that is not yet any concern of ours."


    Helt.rika nodded, starting to reach up to tug on one ear and barely stopping herself.


    "Your medical officers transmitted hydration, nutrition, humidity, and atmospheric requirements already. We have verified that our shipboard manufacturing systems can provide a comfortable environment for your species," the female stated. "We are unsure of your habitation requirements in stressful environments, so the High Lord Captain wishes me to assure you that we will make all possible realistic accommodations for your people."


    "We understand," Captain Helt.rika said. She turned and pointed at Hrekkel. "Senior Scientist Hrekkel and his guard Imperial Expediter First Class Ee''eerlee''u," she then pointed at Strechen. "Field Captain Strechen and  Male-9912743, her guard."


    The Captain pointed at the XO.


    "And, at the insistence of the Admiral, my Executive Officer Navelu''uee."


    "What?" the XO blurted out. She looked at the Captain, then looked down.


    The female Terror nodded, her face expressionless.


    "The Lord Captain of the ships staying will discuss their requirements with your Admiral," the female said. She turned. "If you will accompany me onto the shuttle, we will move to the warship and get you settled in."


    Strechen felt her stomach clench at the idea of being trapped in an enclosed area, even smaller than the receiving bay, with the Terrors.


    Tawtchee touched the small of her back and she suddenly felt better.


    Hrekkel nearly ran onboard, with Leeu rolling her eyes and bruxing her teeth in amusement as she followed behind. Commander Navelu''uee glared at the Captain, but followed Leeu.


    Tawtche waved Strechen on, then followed her as they went down the boarding tube.


    The shuttle was obviously highly militarized. Rather than comfortable seats or recliners, there were bench seats with locking restraints.


    Strechen closed her eyes and swallowed as one of the male Terrors checked the straps and then the locking restraint.


    "In case of an emergency, a shell will descend in front of you and you will be ejected from the craft with a search and rescue beacon. Based on your physiology, you will be able to survive two hundred sixteen hours while within the life pod," the female said, moving to the front.


    "Does it come with free beer if we have to eject?" Tawtchee asked the Terror checking his belts.


    "No such luck. Sucellus doesn''t love us that much," the male Terror said back quietly, flashing a smile.


    Once the belts were checked the door slid shut and Strechen could feel the craft vibrate slightly. There was a faint noise of an engine.


    "Is that sound normal?" Navelu''uee asked, reaching up to comb at her ears nervously.


    "My people do not trust any machine that is silent, we believe it is a bad sign or omen if a machine suddenly becomes silent," the woman, Caoimhe, said.


    Strechen suddenly understood why. If the sound stopped, the machine has stopped working, and that meant something had gone terribly wrong.


    It made startlingly simple sense.


    "If you will pay attention to the video, the instructions you will see will ensure that there are no major problems," Caoimhe said, reaching up and pulling down a thin white sheet of material.


    Strechen looked over in time to see one of the males reach up and activate a projector hanging from the roof.


    A pleasing pattern appeared on the white material. A pair of crossed swords inside a diamond appeared.


    "TERRAN INTERACTION AND YOU!" sounded out, with the words appearing below.


    Strechen watched with interest and was surprised that several times Tawtchee burst out laughing.


    The word "YES" showed a polite introduction. It was next to "NO!" which showed a Dra.Falten shooting at a Terror with a rocket launcher.


    "YES!" eat politely and put away your plate.


    "NO!" eating out of the garbage can and throwing food everywhere.


    "YES!" sharing a drink with a Terror.


    "NO!" drinking from the toilet by sticking their head in it.


    "GOOD TERRAN!" showed a Terran talking politely to a Dra.Falten.


    "BAD TERRAN!" showed a screaming Dra.Falten being chased by a Terran wearing some kind of mask, with a blocky machine in its hands that had a long blade with rotating teeth, swinging it wildly.


    "GOOD TERRAN!" showed the Terran having a drink with a Dra.Falten.


    "BAD TERRAN!" showed the Terran ripping off the Dra.Falten''s head and drinking the blood.


    "YES!" showed a Dra.Falten waiting for the airlock to cycle while wearing a vac-suit.


    "NO!" showed the Dra.Falten wearing a party mask, a conical hat with a tassel, and just lower modesty clothing while the airlock cycled, drinking from bottles held in each hand.


    Strechen found herself chuckling along with Tawtchee, Leeu, and Hrekkel at some of the cartoon antics.


    The Commander sat, her back rigid and her posture offended.


    "And remember, cooperation and understanding creates a bond that the enemy cannot break with his guns," was the final part, which showed a Terran and a Dra.Falten beating a five armed creature with sticks while cartoon sparkles and streamers burst from the creature''s body.


    There was a slight bump feeling, then the sound of machinery winding down.


    The Terrans pushed up the locking restraints, undid the harnesses, then helped the Dra.Falten do the same. The female moved over by the door.


    "Welcome, ladies, gentlemen, both or neither, to the Final Sight of Black Night, flagship of Task Force Warhammer," she said.


    She slapped the button and the airlock cycled.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 69

    When the button was pressed, Strechen wasn''t sure what she expected.


    The door pulling back and a ramp extending from the floor down to the deck of a massive flight bay was one of the possibilities, for sure.


    The vast amounts of dropships and aerospace strikers as well as obvious torchships had been part of her expectation.


    What was not was the two lines of Terrans drawn up, twenty to a side, on either side of a red fabric path that ended with what was one of the largest Terrans (not that she''d seen that many) that Strechen had ever seen.


    The female Terran waved at the group to follow.


    "The Final Sight of Black Night is a Knight Aesir colossus class warship in the Deireadh an Domhain classification," Caoimhe stated, her voice pitched to sound excited yet somehow calm at the same time. "Built from design phase up to support a full company of Ringbreaker Class warriors as well as the combat and logistics support personnel required for an effective military campaign. The Final Sight of Black Night can provide orbital fire support, establish control of a stellar system, as well as provide manufacturing, medical, and transportation services to a full brigade of Ringbreaker Knights should there be a need for such."


    The Terran female walked them down the ramp, toward the two drawn up lines.


    The Dra.Falten followed nervously. The humans were large, larger even than Magnus had been.


    Strechen hadn''t realized that even her unusual height made it so she only came up to the middle of the Terran''s torso.


    At first, as they moved slowly, tenatively through the corridor the two lines of Terrans made, Strechen thought that all the Terrans looked alike. They were all males, all in the same mottled gray, black, and white camouflage.


    Then her brain began to sort out differences.


    This one had blue eyes. This one green. This one gray. This one hazel. That one had larger ears, that one had smaller ears. That one had a larger wider nose. This one had a narrower longer nose. This one had a wider chin. That one had yellow-gold hair. This one had red hair. The facial features were slightly different. This one slightly taller, that one slightly broader, this one more muscular.


    It helped, perhaps, that Dra.Falten males had little beyond fur pattern to distinguish themselves, which made her more sensitive to differences.


    The two at the end, though, stood out.


    The smaller of the two, twice the height of Strechen, was introduced as High Lord Captain High Lord Knight of Aesir O¡¯Byrne. Leeu, the XO, Hrekkel, and herself were introduced by the female Terran Caoimhe. When Tawtchee was introduced as merely "Male-9912743" Strechen thought, for a second, that there was an aura of disgust from the two males.


    It vanished before she could be sure it was anything but her imagination.


    The second Terran male, larger than any others, was introduced as "Lord Knight Aesir Ringbreaker Naois", commander of primary ground forces.


    When the word Ringbreaker was uttered, Strechen felt an odd chill run down her spine.


    Something about it seemed to carry a weight, an odd feeling of history, that Strechen wasn''t aware of but was being warned about.


    Strechen largely held silent, standing next to Tawtchee, as Leeu, the former XO Commander Navelu''uee, and Expediter Leeu all spoke with the two Lord Knights.


    Tawtchee was looking around the massive flight bay. Looking at the ships, at the vast tanks, pipes, conduits, cranes, gantries, and scaffolding.


    Strechen didn''t bother correcting him or telling him to pay attention.


    He has survived impossible odds. If his instincts tell him to look about the room, then he should look about the room, she thought to herself.


    "I am unfamiliar with what a ''Ringbreaker'' is," Hrekkel was saying when Strechen returned her attention to the meeting of the defacto leaders of the Dra.Falten delegation.


    "It will be explained in the briefing," the Lord Captain stated. He gave a subdued expression of pleasure. "We hope it will be illuminating. While normally our two species would meet through politicians and diplomats, with the Mar-gite swarming your systems, we don''t have time for discussions on what the definition of ''is is'' or any other such hair splitting."


    Hrekkel nodded.


    "Will the Mar-gite be explained to us?" Leeu asked.


    The Lord Captain nodded. "The briefing will explain quite bit," he gave another expression of subdued pleasure. "While you are attending the briefing, we will prepare living quarters for you. Do you cohabitate, live in single person units? Should your quarters contain private bathing areas, private dining areas?"


    Leeu put her hand on Hrekke''s forearm.


    "One living quarters for myself and my charge," she said. She pointed at the XO. "One for her," then turned to Strechen. "And you?"


    "Adjoining," Strechen said.


    The Lord Captain nodded.


    "Private dining and bathing quarters, if that is possible," Leeu stated.


    The Lord Captain nodded. "It is."


    There was silence for a moment.


    "If you will follow me, I will escort you through the mandatory medical examination, then the briefing," Caoimhe stated. "I have been assigned as your liaison, should you need anything, do not hesitate to ask."


    Strechen had to admit the idea of medical examinations made her nervous as the small group followed Caoimhe through the ship''s corridors.


    Strechen noted how Tawtchee kept looking at everything and tried to emulate him.


    The first thing was, she understood why the corridors were so wide. The Lord Knight Ringbreaker had been just over three meters tall and a meter wide. While the rest were at roughly two point five meters tall, all of them were large and bulky, even if they gave the impression of being short and squat.


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    Pipes and conduits were along the top of the passages, or at the bottom corners, or moving straight up the walls. Most of them had stencils that made no sense to Strechen, but she knew that they undoubtedly made sense to the Terran Damage Control personnel. There were stencils and pop-out holograms on the walls, the holograms all in red and silver.


    Halfway to the medical checks she suddenly realized she could read the popup holograms. They were usually labels for what lay beyond doors, what section of the ship the group was in, what deck.


    She quickly figured out that the ship was divided up into ''bulkhead'' or ''frame'' numbers and deck numbers, as well as compartment number and a letter designation. At one point she saw a wireframe and looked at it closely as she passed it. It was a navigation aid to assist someone in navigating the ship, using something called a ''bullseye'' method.


    Deck number, Frame/Bulkhead Number, compartment or passage''s position relative to the ''center line'' of the ship, then the compartment''s function. Decks above the "Primary Deck" started with a zero, decks below the "Primary Deck" did not, signifying the difference between two decks above the primary deck (02) and two decks below (2).


    It was oddly simple as Strechen thought about it. Simpler than her own people''s method of naming twisting corridors and working from there. That made navigating each ship of the Dra.Falten Empire a unique task.


    She nodded to herself as they slowed down and pressed against the wall so a work party carrying crates moved by.


    She didn''t know why, but part of her had expected the ship to be lit by candles and oil lamps, with the corridors dark and possibly made of wood. Instead, everything was brightly lit by ambient light as well as soft white light, the decks either brushed steel or painted. The ceiling was off-white, the walls were light gray, the floors dark gray. At first she wondered why, then realized that having different colors would help with navigation and orientation if the gravity gave out.


    It made her brux her teeth thoughtfully as she considered the reasonings for it and how the Terrans might have decided to adopt such a simple system.


    Finally they reached the medical center and Strechen was happy to see that her concerns of rusty saw blades, repurposed gardening implements, and long dull needles were just anxiety driven fears.


    The medical center looked like any modern Dra.Falten medical center.


    Except it was manned entirely by Terrans.


    The expected invasive examination didn''t happen. The Dra.Falten were asked to walk between two smartglass plates, then to inhale and exhale in a mask, then spit into a container.


    They didn''t even have to undress.


    The small group had just finished when one of the Terrans came up.


    "Who is responsible for... uh... Male-9912743," the male Terran asked.


    Again, Strechen sensed a flash of disgust and wondered what was causing it.


    "I am," Strechen said before any could answer.


    "Are you authorized to be given medical information and make medical decisions upon his behalf?" the Terran asked.


    "I am," Strechen said.


    "I need to speak to Imperial Expediter First Class Ee''eerlee''u," another Terran said, waving from behind her desk.


    "Can I speak to Senior Scientist Hrekkel?" another Terran asked from behind a desk.


    "It appears they wish to discuss The Detainee''s gifts to us," Hrekkel chuckled.


    Leeu just nodded, bruxing her back teeth.


    Strechen followed the male Terran, waving at Tawtchee to join her. She sat down with Tawtchee, facing the Terran.


    "Do you consent to Field Captain Strechen being informed of medical information and making medical decisions on your behalf, Male-9912743?" the male Terran asked.


    "I am," Tawtchee said.


    "You may call him Tawtchee," Strechen said. She straightened up slightly. "I would prefer you did so."


    The Terran nodded, seeming to relax slightly despite there being no outward physical change in his posture or expression.


    "Tawtchee has undergone massive nanite medical reconstruction fairly recently," the Terran said. "They''re old LARP world nanites, probably from an old World Engine, but whoever did the reconstruction did an excellent job," he brought up a wireframe of Tawtchee''s body. "Additionally, there is scar tissue on his back that corresponds to a map," the Terran gave a grin. "A map to my people, to be exact."


    Strechen nodded.


    "Whoever did the nanotech medical liked you," the Terran said to Tawtchee. "They were also highly skilled. You showed signifigant wear on your joint cartilege, bone density depletion, partially treated old injuries, nerve damage, and other problems," the Terran looked at Strechen, his mouth tightening slightly. "Problems often associated with what we call ''short bake clones''."


    Strechen frowned. "He was grown in a creche, but I do not think he is a clone," she said. "Almost all males are grown in creches."


    The Terran nodded slowly, looking at Tawtchee. "The person who did your medical repairs was nice enough to leave standard Confederate Medical Coding on two of your cervical vertebrae."


    "The Sorceress Surscee, Second Guardian of the Path of the Traveler," Tawtchee said, his voice quiet.


    The Terran raised one eyebrow. "That explains it," he looked at Strechen. "Your own medical scans show no immediate needed treatment," he tapped his finger on the desk. "However, it appears you have a congenital heart defect in your genetic line. If you wish, we can give you an injection to repair that."


    Strechen bruxed her back teeth and twitched her ears in agreement.


    "I need you to state it verbally," the Terran said.


    "I would appreciate such medical attention," Strechen said.


    The Terran waved at another medical Terran, who came over, put a device against her arm, and triggered it. A cool feeling raced down her vein in her arm.


    "Done," the Terran said.


    "You know about Surscee?" Tawtchee asked.


    The Terran stared for a moment then nodded. "Her mother, Lady Keena, was with our Second Founding Patron during the Assault on Afterlife. He spoke of Surscee''s Matron several times in his recordings and writings."


    "Ah," Strechen said, pretending that the simple explanation explained it all.


    "It was good to meet you. With any luck, we will not meet outside of social interactions," the Terran said.


    Strechen knew a dismissal when she heard it.


    "And to you too," she said, getting up from the chair. She joined the former XO, standing by the wall.


    Whatever the Terrans were discussing with Hrekkel and Leeu, it took long enough that the Terrans led the former XO, Tawtchee, and Strechen to some chairs in a comfortable waiting room.


    "Sorry about that," Hrekkel said when they finally came into the waiting room.


    Strechen kicked Tawtchee''s foot to wake him up.


    "The Detainee rebuilt us according to her whims," Leeu said softly. "More than we ever even suspected."


    Hrekkel reached out and took Leeu''s hand, rubbing it gently.


    The Terran female, Caoimhe, then led them to a corridor that smelled faintly of fresh enamel. There were multiple doors off the short corridor, which terminated in heavy blast doors.


    Strechen immediately noticed that the air felt oddly thinner. Not as in ''hard to breathe'' thinner, but like it was missing something that Strechen hadn''t been aware of.


    "Your quarters are labeled. You also have a common room to meet," Caoimhe said. She gave one of the tight lipped smiles. "You are undoubtably fatigued and wish relaxation or rest periods to regain your strength."


    Leeu nodded. "I thank you and please extend my gratitude to the Lord Captain."


    "I shall," Caoimhe said. "Till we next meet."


    With that, she left, leaving the five Dra.Falten standing in the hallway.


    "Well, that felt rude," Commander Navelu''uee said. She looked at the doors. "Why just leave us here."


    There was silence a moment.


    "It''s a test," Tawtchee said.


    Strechen saw the XO hide her sneer.


    "To see if we just stand here like dumb herbivore herd animals or if we show initiative and independent action," Tawtchee said.


    Hrekkel just nodded, smiling and brushing his whiskers.


    Tawtchee moved down the corridor, looking at the holograms that sprang from the doors above the yellow rectangles that contained writing.


    "This one is mine," Tawtchee said. He pointed at the door a little further down the hall. "That one''s Field Captain Strechen''s," he pointed across. "That one is yours, Commander," he pointed at the one across from Strechen''s. "That one is Hrekkel and Leeu''s."


    Before Strechen could say anything Tawtchee waved his hand in front of the hologram being projected over the yellow rectangle that had black runes inside of it, then vanished inside when the door opened.


    Strechen followed, honestly not expecting much room. Her stateroom aboard the other ship had been lavish in regards to space.


    She stopped and stared.


    It was at least ten meters wide and fifteen meters deep. There was a comfortable looking couch, coffee table, a counter, a kitchen in the back, with two open doors, one leading to a lavish bedroom, the other to an equally lavish refreshing chamber.


    The door in the middle of the unblemished wall opened and Tawtchee stood there.


    "if these rooms and what we have seen so far doesn''t scare you, Field Captain," Tawtchee said. He triggered the door and it slowly shut. He spoke right before the door shut.


    "It should."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 70

    They shall be the finest warriors, these martial people who descend from us. In great armour shall we clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed. They will have tactics, strategies and machines such that no foe can best them in battle. They will be our bulwark against the Malevolent Universe. They will be the Wrath of Humanity. They will be the Ringbreakers... and they shall teach our foes the true meaning of Terror.- The Founder''s Codex, Patron of the Second Founding Cathal Casey, 14 P2PW, 19 PTXE - Patron of the Second Founding Cathal Casey, 14 P2PW, 19 PTXE


    Strechen moved around the quarters slowly, looking it over.


    She had been on plenty of Imperial vessels. They were always cramped, the corridors narrow and twisting, the rooms barely enough to take three paces. The cabin she had been issued once she reached Field Captain had been a little larger.


    But nothing like this.


    The ''nutriforge'' assured her, in flawless Dra.Falten, that it could create raw ingredients or a fully cooked meal to her precise specifications. The menu had foods she was far too impoverished and low ranking to even smell, much less eat. The drinks were esoteric and things she had only heard of from higher ranking Dra.Falten, many of them imperial nobility.


    She could make her own food. The ''virtual intelligence'' in the kitchen would help her make whatever she wanted. When it manifested, its appearance was a subservient Dra.Falten with correct body language and the fur patterns of a lower caste servant.


    To be honest, before she had escorted Tawtchee, she would have been happy with the VI.


    Now? It bothered her. She had asked it to change its fur pattern to something, anything, else.


    The kitchen was bigger than her front room back on Nar<krik>Rek, where she grew up. The front room was larger then her entire apartment.


    The bedroom had a bed, anti-gravity sleeping plates, dressers, a closet, mirrors, and other luxuries.


    All of it aboard a warship.


    You should be afraid, Tawtchee''s voice sounded out in her mind.


    She was moving around the frontroom, looking at everything from the 2.5D entertainment viewscreen, the holo-emitter built into the table, the comfortable couch and chairs, when the door pinged.


    When she looked at it a hologram appeared, showing SP9 Caoimhe standing outside with a data-slate/clipboard.


    Strechen moved over and answered the door.


    "Apologies for delaying the briefing," she said, smiling again. "However, the briefing has been prepared if you are now refreshed and ready."


    Strechen just nodded.


    "Excellent, if you''ll just wait right here in the hallway," the Terran said, smiling again.


    Strechen watched as Hrekkel, Leeu, and Commander "Nave" moved into the corridor.


    Caoimhe pressed the chime four times for Tawtchee, but there was no answer. Each time the chime hologram was tapped it flashed "DO NOT DISTURB" in red and silver.


    "I will get him," Strechen said.


    The door opened at her touch and she went inside. The room was dark, light sources all off. She listened for a moment and heard slow breathing.


    "Lights," she said.


    The room lit up slowly, and Strechen saw Tawtchee asleep on the couch, curled up, with the blanket taken from the bed wrapped around him.


    "Tawtchee," Strechen said, tapping his foot.


    Tawtchee opened one eye, flicking an ear. After a second he got up and stretched.


    "Briefing time," Strechen said.


    "Oh, joy. More nightmare fuel," he said. He put his feet in his boots and strapped them tightly, then stood up and stomped his feet to set his boots. "Let''s get this horror show on the road."


    Strechen just shook her head and left, Tawtchee following.


    During the trip to the briefing room, Caoimhe kept up a running monologue.


    The ship was just over six thousand years old, although it had undergone extensive repair and refit, then something called ''service life extension'' as recently as two hundred years and twenty years respectively.


    Strechen looked around, wondering what in the universe could put out enough damage to force a ship this size in ''drydock'' for repairs and refit for nearly four years.


    The Tabula Systems were mentioned several times. Apparently entirely xenocided, it had been refounded by a single family, who had managed to recover the genetic repository banks and not only reseed the planet with foliage and fauna, but with ''family bloodlines'' of the people who had been xenocided.


    Strechen paid close attention. From the highlights the Terran talked about, the ship was often deployed to hand the "Eternal Vigilance", that it had been designed solely to take the war to the enemy.


    Commander Nave asked where the Terrans had come from and Caoimhe happily explained that her people had fled the Mantid attack on TerraSol during the opening battle. Had survived centuries aboard a damaged ship ran by an insane AI, then managed to colonize a planet that hated them even while fighting against mutated members of their own species.


    Caoimhe also mentioned that the planet had two species. One reptilian, from somewhere called Rigel.


    It was unified under one government, one church, and the Knights Aesir were only one of four Martial Orders.


    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    When Leeu asked, Caoimhe elaborated that ''Martial Orders'' were a traditionalist fraternity or sorority dedicated to a single divine figure that they fought for. Those in the Martial Orders were extremely religious, even moreso than the rest of the Tabula Theocracy''s population. High tech mixed with superstition, with males and females entirely dedicated to nothing but warfare.


    The Final Sight of Black Night was one of the ships of the Martial Order of the God Tyr.


    Strechen heard the unspoken statement that each of the Martial Orders could field such high tech engines of destruction.


    You should be afraid, Tawtchee''s voice echoed in Strechen''s mind.


    She had to admit, the more Caoimhe spoke, the more dread filled her.


    Finally they reached the briefing room. Caoimhe showed them each to comfortable chairs that adjusted underneath them until they were the perfect comfort.


    "Can I have a datapad to take notes?" Hrekkel asked.


    "And me?" Leeu asked.


    "And me," Strechen said.


    "Of course," Caoimhe said. She moved to a device on the wall and punched in a few codes, then turned to face the five Dra.Falten. She moved over and set down an odd device in front of them.


    "Earpiece and reticles," she explained. "The briefing will show you how to put them on and activate them. They will translate writing that is not part of the poly-adaptive neuro-linguistic network, provide directions, as well as let you speak to the ship''s computer services as well as find and speak to one another," she gave a slight smile as she moved back to the object and retrieved five dataslates. She handed them out, stopping in front of Tawtchee.


    "You don''t want one?" she asked.


    "Sure, why not?" Tawtchee said. He set the dataslate on the table.


    Strechen found the dataslate easy to navigate, getting to the note-taking section with only a half-dozen icon presses.


    "With that, let''s start the briefing," Caoimhe said, turned and pointing at the far wall. She snapped her fingers three times and the wall lit up.


    What followed was one of the most horrifying things Strechen had ever watched.


    Not the part on how to put on the reticle and earpiece. That was no different than a BobCo instruction manual.


    No, it was the information on the ship, the Terrans, what the Sancti Ordo Spiritus Tyr was founded to do, the information about their "Eternal Vigilance", the wars, the mayhem, the fights against empires a hundred times their size.


    All presented in the serious tones of a narrator of a nature documentary.


    The part about Niven Rings and O''Neill Cylinders AKA Doom Tubes and the ''Dwellerspawn'' made Strechen''s hands shake.


    Four hundred years ago one of those Doom Tubes had wandered into a Dra.Falten system. The creatures it spawned had devoured an entire agri-world, an industrial world, and then moved on before the Doom Tube left the system, never to be seen again.


    The Sancti Ordo Spiritus Tyr was pledged to find those creations and destroy them.


    The full weight of an Imperial Fleet hadn''t even scratched the Doom Tube. Not even with a planet cracker.


    And the Sancti Ordo Spiritus Tyr fielded ships and weaponry that could blow holes in them.


    Strechen made sure to record the entire briefing.


    When the recorded part was over, Caoimhe moved to the front and leaned against a podium that had lifted up from the deck plate like water, completely transparent, until it solidified to look like wood.


    "Are there any questions?" she asked, smiling.


    "I will have many once I have digested and examined the data," Hrekkel said.


    "Nope," Tawtchee said.


    "You are not affiliated with The Detainee?" Leeu asked. Strechen noticed her voice sounded hopeful.


    "No, we are not affiliated with the Matron of the Damned. The Ord Naofa de Theach Duinn de Deirfi¨²racht is of the House of Donn, not the Matron of the Damned," Caoimhe said.


    "Are you a member of the Order of Tyr?" Commander Nave asked.


    Caoimhe smiled and nodded slowly. "A sister, yes, of a specific House with a lineage that stretches back to the Second Founding."


    "How important is one''s house?" Strechen asked.


    "Quite important," Caoimhe said. "My birth house as well as what profession I enter and what house, if any, I am inducted into during my life, are all vitally important to my people and me."


    Strechen nodded.


    "I have seen no cybernetics," Leeu said.


    Caoimhe nodded. "No, you will not. Unless it is required to ensure continuation life, cybernetics and cloned tissue are strictly forbidden in my culture," she blinked slow and Strechen saw a muscle ripple along her jaw. "As are clones, especially clones created in order to perform labor or dangerous occupations with a shortened lifespan."


    "May I ask why?" Strechen asked, glancing at Tawtchee.


    "It is a sin," Caoimhe stated, her voice flat. "To create short bake identical clones is to bring down the wrath of Vat Grown Luke upon the sinners. To create and warp life, as the Atrekna did, as others have, is a sin."


    Hrekkel jotted notes, Leeu nodded, Strechen swallowed thickly, and Nave just nodded.


    Tawtchee looked bored.


    "But what about quality of life?" Hrekkel asked.


    Caoimhe nodded stiffly. "That is the question most often asked in regards to cybernetics and cloned tissue," she stared at the scientist. "Rather than get into a deep philosophical discussion, let me just say it is my people''s cultural belief. We would use cloning before cybernetics, in the case of children, cloned tissue to repair any injury due to accident or disease."


    She made a motion toward Tawtchee. "Much as your society uses short bake clones for your military," she then gestured at Strechen and Commander Nave. "As well as your officer caste, hiding the termination deadline inside a supposed congenital defect easily spotted by an off the shelf genetic analysis kit."


    Strechen just blinked.


    "I''m not a clone. I have a mother and father," Nave protested.


    "Is your mother fifty years of age?" Caoimhe asked.


    "No, she just celebrated her forty-eighth birthday," Nave stated.


    "If her genetic line is like yours, she will have a stroke during or soon after her fiftieth year," Caoimhe said. "Just as you would have."


    Nave just blinked.


    Tawtchee barked a laugh. "The Empress loves us."


    Caoimhe looked at him, frowning slightly.


    "We''re not so different after all," Tawtchee said, bruxing his back teeth in amusement. "Apologies."


    Caoimhe nodded slowly.


    Strechen saw that she did not like discussing her religion or her culture and seemed almost defensive about her culture''s rejection of cybernetic and genetic/clone tissue enhancement.


    Strechen had the feeling that there had been difficulties around that subject.


    Probably very violent ones.


    There were no more questions, the Dra.Falten feeling uneasy with their hostess''s unwillingness to discuss something that seemed so strange to them.


    The walk back to their quarters was accomplished by following the blue line projected into their vision by the reticle. Three times they flattened against the wall as work crews went by carrying heavy objects.


    Back in her cabin, Strechen used the facilities, then stepped into the fresher, going through the options.


    She decided she liked that subdermal massage setting of the infrasonic cleaner.


    We like to hear things working so we can trust them, she thought to herself when she wondered for a split second why the device made a water spraying sound as it panned over and around her body. She sighed and put her head against the frosted smartglass as the cleaner heads focused on tense muscles, massaging them.


    She put on the reticle, wrapped a modesty wrap around herself, followed the directions on the reticle to make the wrap feel warm and fuzzy, then went in and sat on the couch. After a few minutes she got up and saw the nutriforge had "BobCo Instant Super-Taste Omni-Noodles NOW WITH ULTRA-SAUCE!" in the menu. She got a bowl and the edible eating sticks, a Countess Crey Superberry Sparklesnap fizzypop, and went and sat back down.


    She was halfway through when the door pinged. She twiddled her finger to use the reticle interface.


    It was Tawtchee, wearing a rumpled but clean looking uniform. She sighed, opening the door.


    He came in, went over to the nutriforge and got a narcobrew, then came and sat down.


    "Well?" he asked after a long moment.


    Strechen swallowed her noodles and sauce, then set down the eating sticks.


    "They are born and then forged to fight these Mar-gite. They have been doing it since our people were little more than clever animals," Strechen said. She closed her eyes and opened them. "Their reverence for their deities matches how we are told we should feel toward the Emperor and the Empress."


    She looked at him, staring into his eyes.


    "Only they honor their dead."


    She took his hand.


    "They do not cease to exist."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 71

    I, in my benevolence, provide with, not only with life, but a life of ease and comfort. From the lawsec that keeps you safe from deviants and perverts to the food you eat to the luxuries you enjoy, they all flow from me. You exist and thrive due to my benevolence.


    You are all my children, and I care for each of you, providing peace, security, and plenty. - Dra.Falten Empress propaganda, Spurwide Mar-gite Conflict


    Strechen woke up slowly, her mouth dry. She reached for the reticle as she got up, hooking it over her ear, inserting the earphone plug, then running the tap to the hollow of her throat, and dropped the reticle over her eye. She stood up, went into the frontroom, then to the kitchen, and punched up a Bingo Cola Crystal Suprablast Cherry Sparkle Lime Twister.


    She slugged one down, punched up another, then moved over to sit down on the couch, sipping at the second one slowly.


    There was a clink in her ear. She tapped the frame strut next to the reticle.


    "Strechen," she said quietly.


    "This is medical. Your vitals spiked. I''m reading minor dehydration and some trace nutrient lack. Are you feeling all right?" a female Terran voice asked.


    "Yes. I have dry mouth," Strechen said.


    "You received a repair injection less than 24 hours ago. Let me add a quick drink and snack to your nutriforge. That should take care of any needs you have," the female said. "How is your psychological and emotional state?"


    "I''m fine. Just woke up from the dry mouth," she said.


    "All right. It appears, from the limited data we have, that your species suffers and adrenaline and cortisol equivalent spike upon having your motor control and neural system control returned to conscious oversight," the Terran woman said. "We''ll keep monitoring so we can keep establishing baselines. My apologies for disturbing you."


    The nutriforge pinged.


    "It is all right. I appreciate the concern," Strechen said.


    "Have a good night," the female Terran said.


    "And you," Strechen said.


    The metallic clink signified the communication had ended.


    Strechen got up and moved over to the nutriforge. There was a can of fizzypop and a bowl of noodles with meat and sauce as well as two edible eating sticks. She picked them up and walked back to the couch, sitting down.


    The drink was delicious, the food was even better.


    She finished them up and tapped the table. A set of controls lit up under the tabletop and she tapped one of them just like the reticle instructed. She watched the dish and the two fizzypop cans dissolve away before tapping another icon and getting a new drink.


    There was a tapping at her suite door. She glanced and the hologram popped out of the wall showing Tawtchee, dressed in a rumpled Dra.Falten Army uniform, standing there with a narcobrew in his hand. She used the ''blink context menu'' to open the door and the other Dra.Falten slouched his way into the room.


    "Thought you''d be awake," he said. He looked around. "Found out that Terrans sleep four to eight hours in a night, stay awake for sixteen to twenty hours," he sat down on the couch. "We sleep either in three blocks of three hours or ten hours while being awake for ten."


    "Their origin world had a twenty-four hour day, with a high enough axial tilt that different seasons had different day/night times," Strechen said, pointing at the table. "I watched a little bit on Terran history."


    "I did too," Tawtchee said. "I wanted to know a bit more about our hosts. More than just the legends and myths we had learned."


    "More than what you discovered when you met Hrekkel," Strechen guessed.


    Tawtchee nodded. "I found out the reasons behind some things that have always haunted me."


    Strechen frowned. "Like what?"


    "Why their teeth chatter. Why the robots look like skeletons. Why they are colored black, with red eyes, and white enameled teeth," Tawtchee said. He shivered. "In some ways, finding out why was worse."


    Strechen frowned. "Well, the black is the metal, the red is just the infrared lamps in their eyes, skeletons for bare minimum of resource use. The teeth. I don''t know."


    Tawtchee gave a short, barking, self-mocking laugh, then bruxed his back teeth for a moment. "No. None of that," he waved at the ship around them. "They built this. Do you think they''re really worried about resources?" he shook his head. "No. The reasoning is simple to understand but disturbs me."


    "What was it?" Strechen asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.


    Tawtchee closed his eyes, exhaled sharply, then opened it.


    "I asked a Terran. Just a random Terran, if they could answer a question. I told him about the robots, what they did, then asked why they were like that," Tawtchee closed his eyes again and sighed deeply.


    Strechen reached out and took one paw in both of hers.


    Tawtchee looked at her. "He asked me if I had been scared. I told him it was the most terrifying thing I had ever experience, before or after. He smiled and said: that''s why."


    Strechen straightened up, reaching up with one hand to smooth her fur between her ears and down the back of her head.


    "The teeth chatter so that you know that the one chattering its teeth sees you. It also calls in the others, who begin chattering their teeth, so you, the prey, know that they are coming for you, or for a victim. The eyes glow red so that it causes fear. They are black so they blend in with the night," Tawtchee closed his eyes and shivered. "The last part though, the last reason..."


    The shadows seemed to deepen in the room.


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    Tawtchee opened his eyes.


    "Because it''s funny."


    Strechen blinked several times. "Because making them like that is funny to them?"


    Tawtchee nodded. He got up and moved to the nutriforge, bringing up a new narcobrew, then a pack of BobCo tabac-sticks. He puffed on the self-light and sat down.


    Strechen dialed up an ashtray and another drink for her.


    This one with alcohol in it.


    "Did you pay attention to the fact this entire ship is just to support twenty combat units?" Tawtchee asked.


    Strechen frowned. "And the combat forces for those units."


    "Did you notice what those units were?" Tawtchee asked. He leaned forward and tapped at the table a few times, then growled slightly and tapped a few others.


    "How many I help you today, honored Dra.Falten?" the pixel Terran in red and silver asked, manifesting above the table.


    "Display a Ringbreaker''s combat suit, please," Tawtchee said.


    "Certain portions are redacted for security reasons," the Terran said. She dissolved and a large suit of power armor appeared above the table.


    "This ship, and everything else, is to support twenty of these suits," Tawtchee said.


    Strechen looked it over. It had a gun on the back that swiveled down so the handgrip could be held by the right hand. It had shock padding and recoil compensation built into it. Missile launchers on the lower legs and the left shoulder. Heavily armored forearms, the right arm had a ''vibro-sword'' built into it. The main gun had a bore diameter of 120mm, the missiles were 66mm.


    It stood four meters tall, two meters wide, a meter thick.


    "This can''t be right. Just twenty of these?" Strechen said. "It isn''t as heavily armed as our own heavy power armor suits."


    Tawtchee nodded. "One of these suits can destroy a city in a matter of minutes. It can fire from the surface of a planet and hit targets on a nearby moon with pinpoint accuracy. Its main gun fires its projectiles at horrific speeds," he shrugged. "Hrekkel could probably break it down for us, but a solid shot from the weapon hits with several billion joules of force concentrated on the impact point."


    Strechen tapped the table. "What kind of point force does the main gun of the Ringbreaker suit do?" she asked the silver and red Terran.


    The Terran smiled, pointing up. The weapon flashed, the ammo belt flashed, and the ammo container flashed. "The Novastar XII suit''s main gun, using solid shot, can fire one shot every two seconds sustained fire or five shots a second on rapid fire. Each shot delivers the equivalent of a 250 kiloton atomic blast upon the surface of the impact point in a meter width," her smile got larger. "However, solid shot is rarely used, usually when the nanoforges need to cool down and deslush. Usually Ringbreaker rounds consist of munitions that cause gravity and temporal distortions, subspace ripples, dimensional foam sizzling, as well as utilizing advanced anti-matter and esoteric particle interactions."


    She moved around the suit. "The standard ringbreaker round is designed to scour away dirt and bedrock on the surface of a Dwellerspawn habitat to the scrith, as well as destroy any Dwellerspawn encountered. A single shot of the primary usage round will blow a crater to the scrith approximately twenty miles wide and two miles deep, with a kinetic shockwave of up to a hundred miles," she reached out and tapped the suit. "The psychicly active laminate armor of the Novastar XII is capable of protecting the pilot even from its own rounds. With gravity and temporal anchors, a Novastar XII can fire point blank to destroy a Dwellerspawn hive."


    She moved around it to touch the legs. "With a properly warmed and slushed nanoforge, the 2.75 inch rocket packs in the legs, each packing four rockets, can fire one rocket volley of four every one point three seconds for up to six hours, with one volley every three seconds for as long as there is mass available," she pointed at the shoulder. "The 66mm rocket pack on the shoulder is capable of sustained, directed fire of multiple types of munitions, including rocket and graviton engine boosted weapons capable of hitting high orbit targets."


    She bowed. "Is there any other data I might provide?"


    "No, thank you," Tawtchee said.


    The Terran made of silver and red vanished in a sparkle.


    Strechen looked at him. "That''s..."


    Tawtchee nodded. "Horrifying," he paused. "Now, for the one that should truly terrify you, Field Captain."


    "What?" Strechen asked.


    "They don''t care that we know the capabilities of this suit of armor," he said. He tapped the table. "You can bring up the specs on all of their war equipment. Everything but repair manuals and schematics and something called ''creation engine templates'' and look them over. From bullets to grenades to soft body armor to tanks to strikers, to these ''ringbreaker suits'', you can examine the stats on all of them."


    "So?"


    Tawtchee stared at her.


    "They don''t care if we know. Do you know why?" he asked, leaning forward slightly.


    Strechen thought. "Because we can''t replicate it?"


    Tawtchee shook his head. "No."


    "Then why?"


    "Because they outgun us so badly they might as well be doing magic," he said. He pointed at the ringbreaker suit. "That''s a walking planet cracker, Field Captain. One of those is a walking planet cracker and nothing we have could stop it, maybe not even mar it."


    He leaned back after dismissing the hologram.


    "They let us know because they don''t care."


    Strechen just swallowed.


    0-0-0-0-0


    All of her adult life Commander Navelu''uee had served the Empress faithfully. She had entered military school at seven years of age, had entered the military at thirteen as a fully grown adult. Her family lineage extended back nearly a thousand years, all of it faithful service to the Holy Duology and the Dra.Falten people.


    ...die at fifty... slithered through her brain as she followed a Terran male through the ship to the bridge of the massive space-born fortress she was currently inside of.


    ...die at fifty... kept moving through her head.


    She had dreamed of a long line of females, that she had known were her ancestors, all with numbers above them. When the numbers reached fifteen, the next descendant appeared next to the ancestor. When the number reached fifty, the ancestor vanished.


    In her nightmare, the numbers kept blurring by faster and faster, ancestors appearing and disappearing. Their accomplishments vanishing with them.


    She had screamed in her dream when her mother had vanished and she looked up to see her numbers flashing by once her two daughters and her son had been born.


    The Terran medical technician had called her, instructed her to get a snack and a drink from the nutriforge, then gone back to sleep.


    Her dreams had been swirling colors and disconnected pleasant sounds afterwards.


    Several blast doors went by, each opening and closing, until finally she stepped out of a door and onto the Control Bridge.


    It was full of Terrans, all working at their consoles and work stations. One half of one wall was covered in 2.5D screens. There were multiple holotanks in the middle of the room, which was terraced in a semi-circle.


    At the top of the terrace, in a large throne-like seat, was the High Lord Captain, commander of the vessel and the remaining ships.


    She could see the scientist Hrekkel standing next to the Expediter who, frankly, terrified Nave. Over, out of the way, Field Captain Strechen stood with the male soldier that the Terror Guardians had scarred with that map.


    Strechen terrified her too.


    Hrekkel motioned and Nave moved with Strechen and the male over to stand next to Hrekkel.


    "I found out where we are going," Hrekkel said.


    Nave felt her stomach clench.


    It was going to be bad news, she knew it.


    "The Terrans have computed, and our own military intelligence services concur, that backtracking the trail of the Mar-gite is our best choice," Hrekkel said. He brushed at his ears. "The Lord Captain as well as someone called the Lord Preceptor, have informed the Dra.Falten Empire of their intent upon reaching each Mar-gite infested system."


    "What''s that?" Nave blurted out before she could stop herself.


    "Planet crack each planet, ignite each gas giant," he said. He shivered. "It''s the only way to stop the Mar-gite from using the planets and gas giants to produce more of themselves."


    "He also plans on destroying any of the large Mar-gite Clusters found in each system before we move to the next, following the Mar-gite," Leeu stated, her voice cold and empty.


    "Where are we following them too?" Commander Nave asked.


    "Past them," Hrekkel said. He looked at the other Dra.Falten. "The Lord Preceptor has made his intentions clear."


    "Which are?" Nave asked.


    "To push past the Mar-gite to whatever is guiding or driving them into our territory," Hrekkel said. "To take the war of the Mar-gite''s masters."


    Nave felt a cold chill go down her spine.


    There was a sharp, warbling tone that stopped any further conversation.


    "Prepare for Transit Space entry," Nave heard.


    She closed her eyes.


    And felt the ship jump to lightspeed in her bones.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 72

    Doing diplomatic work on Terra is like waking up drunk on the floor of a flat you have never seen before, wearing someone else''s pants, with only one shoe, missing your shirt, with a half empty bottle of narcobrew in your hand and your datalink telling you that you have an incoming vid-call for a job. - Dreams of Something More, Mantid Diplomat, Second Precursor War


    Ensuring that he was expressing pleasure, Violet Flowers Line Paths to Peace straightened up and nodded to the technician. The gold Mantid, Finds Peace in the Maelstrom, who was Violet''s lead assistant, looked a bit worried but kept it to herself.


    The technician nodded back, his face invisible behind a featureless white mask of a Terran face, and pressed the button.


    There was a chime and the large holotank in front of Violet powered up. The holofield was blue, easily large enough for a ground car to be parked in, with silver and red text down the side displaying resolution, power, bandwidth, and contents.


    The tank sat silent for a moment.


    Violet waited patiently.


    A figure rezzed into being. A Terran made entirely out of code, whose face looked slightly stubborn, careworn lines around their eyes and the corners of their mouths. Slightly behind him and to the right a figure appeared, mostly in shadow. It had the head of a tesem, a Terran body, and was clad in a knee length skirt-like garment that had gold and copper and bronze plates and decorations. The canine-headed being has a necklace that covered most of the upper chest and featured two discs representing the sun.


    "Honorable Gestalt," Violet said, expressing humility and pleasure. "And?"


    "Anpu the tpy-djuf," the man of code said. His voice was flat, expressionless.


    Violet knew that the Terran''s voice was flat to hide anger, not out of an inability to express emotion.


    "I greet you, Anpu," Violet said.


    The canine headed Terran merely nodded.


    "You requested to see me," the Terran Gestalt said slowly. "Why?"


    "You are the amalgamation of the consensus of humanity. Not just Terrans, but Earthlings, Humans, and more. From the digital to the artificial biologic, you are the consensus. They trust you with their thoughts, feelings, and opinions," Violet said. "I have talked to diplomats, researchers, and others. I''ve been on talk shows and interviews," Violet motioned at Finds Peace in the Maelstrom, "My assistant has also been touring the talk shows and news opinion and interview shows."


    The Terran just nodded, his face still expressionless.


    "However, anything I say to the population of Terra, the population of the Sol System, undergoes who knows how many editors and censors," Violet said. "Several times interviews have been edited so that it appeared that I made a statement diametrically opposed to my true statement."


    The Terran nodded. "Yeah, that happens," he gave a short, rough chuckle. "You think you hate journalists enough, but you really don''t."


    Violet nodded.


    The Terran made of code stared at him for a long moment. "And?"


    Violet put up an emoji of a thoughtful face between his antenna. "I wished to speak with you, to the human overall conscious gestalt."


    The Terran of code frowned. "Instead, you''re just going to stare at me?"


    Violet carefully waved one bladearm in negation. "No. I am merely taking stock of you. In your appearance, in how your code flows, in your expression and body language, as well as tone and word choice."


    The Terran lifted the side of one lip in a sneer. "And what have you learned?"


    Violet expressed pleasure and put up an emoji of a greenie in a graduation cap. "You are rightfully angry, having expected me to immediately demand that you turn over the afterlife records of all non-Terran sentients to their respective species governments. You brought along a representative of the dead to hear my validations and justifications of why those people should have to be turned over to their species."


    Violet combed one antenna. "You were ready to be belligerent, as you are still angry that the other gestalt''s first thought was not ''wow, thank you for extending such a literal miracle achieved through technology to us, so that we know that we continue once our allotted lifespan has empty, but rather they demanded that you return the deceased in order to use them to make the lives of the living easier."


    "Yes," the Terran said.


    "You history, like every other sentient being, is replete with slavery. From basic ''Ugg spare you now you do work Ugg no want to'' to the Corporate Town to the Company Store to debt slavery, every species has bloody appendages where this subject is concerned," Violet stated. "Only, it wasn''t that long ago for you."


    "No," the Terran said. "The Fourth Biological Sentience War happened after the founding of the Confederacy. The Mithril Nebula and Clownface Nebula Conflicts are within living memory for us."


    Violet nodded again, cleaning his other antenna. "Your own potential for such things makes you all the more sensitive to it."


    This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    The Terran nodded. "Perhaps."


    "It is the official policy of "We Live Here Now and Enjoy This Place as a Bastion of Goodness", my homeworld, that such a thing is to be avoided at all costs," Violet allowed himself to show slight embarassment. "Forty-thousands years ago, the Omniqueen came and enslaved us all. Because my people''s Speakers are not externally psionic, the Omniqueen sent her own Speakers to us."


    Violet combed his antenna.


    "Enslaving us all. I do not remember, I am too young, but I have tasted memory crystals of that time," he said.


    "How did you get out of it?" the Terran asked.


    "Stellar geometry more than anything, but also armed resistance," Violet said. "Another reason it was good of the Confederate Diplomatic Corps to send me."


    The Terran nodded.


    "Senior species representatives have spoken with me, assured me that they too view the return of those who have lived a full natural lifespan to serve ''the Needs of the People'' to be little more than slavery," Violet stated.


    "Even death would be no respite," the Terran said. He stared for a long moment. "Perhaps, just perhaps, allowing you to experience the system, to see the system, will help you understand. Help you explain it to everyone."


    Violet managed to keep from showing shock only due to decades of sensitive diplomacy. Still, it was an opening. "Would you be willing to rejoin the Gestalt channels if I agree?"


    The Terran thought for a moment. "Yes, although I reserve the right to revoke consent at any time."


    "Of course," Violet said. "Uh, I won''t need to die, will I?"


    The Terran shook his head. "No. That''s why I brought Anpu with me. Just grant him access to your datalink. That will be enough."


    Violet was nervous, but agreed, accepting the incoming maintenance request.


    He closed his eyes when instructed.


    He appeared in the holotank.


    Both the Terrans in the holotank and Violet vanished.


    For nearly an hour he stood there, unmoving, while technicians monitored him. Other diplomats shifted nervously as the massive Mantid just stood still, breathing slowly and deeply.


    Finally, Violet opened his eyes.


    "I..." he stated. He rubbed his bladearms together. "I have seen eternity."


    He slumped down in a faint.


    0-0-0-0-0


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    The Mar-gite are still moving into the spur by the thousands of constructs.


    We''re trying to form a defensive line, but we''re getting overwhelmed.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    The time to form a defensive line was fifty years ago.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    CHANSERV>TERRASOL HAS LOGGED ON


    TERRASOL


    Don''t. Just... don''t.


    /////////


    LANKY LANKY YOUR NAME IS FRANKY


    Welcome back.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    How are you?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Not sure if I want to punch all of you out.


    I''m gone and you let everything turn into a shitshow.


    The first thing you demand when I get back is I turn over what is a profound duty to all of you when you don''t even comprehend the first thing about it aside from the fact I have something you want.


    I''m still pissed at all of you.


    You older ones especially. You know better than to let it get like this.


    Now I''m back and everything is on fire.


    So, I''m still pissed.


    /////////


    RIGEL


    We figured if we let everything catch on fire until the fire was big enough maybe you''d notice us again.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    <snerk>


    OK.


    I''ve looked it over. It''s pretty bad.


    Not hopeless, but pretty bad.


    It has the potential to be a lot lot worse.


    We can win this war and end up with an even larger problem that will tear apart everything and everyone.


    The Mar-gite. Whoever is kicking the crap out of the Ornislap. Whoever is building the fence.


    They''re the Enemy. They just exist to be destroyed. We''ll find them, rip them apart, and finish this fight.


    It''s afterwards that is the big problem.


    You older ones should know.


    /////////


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    What big problem?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGEL


    Once the war is over, if you use the rebirth system the way the Terrans do, what are you going to do with everyone you consigned to lifetimes of warfare, where not even death would be a respite from the horrors of interstellar warfare?


    Put them back? Ahem, sorry, ''return them to their previous existence'' as one of you put it?


    That''s just a fancy way of saying "War is over. Please face wall now."


    You''ll have civil wars within seconds.


    How will you handle people that were killed over and over again in order to win just one battle.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS


    Terra does it. Why can''t we?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Because you''re not me.


    Tell me, how many of your people have volunteered and then qualified to go Clone War Lyfe? How many of your people have qualified to be Monster Class Infantry? How many of your people can even comprehend the kind of mindset you need to have to crawl over your own dead body to fight the enemy?


    Tell me.


    If any of you have, raise your hands.


    /////////


    ...


    ...


    ...


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    To add on to what TerraSol is saying: How would your societies handle having the dead return to life? The Worker Caste who was killed in an industrial accident is one of the biggest celebrities we have right now. The Telkana who returned is the exact same.


    Or at least, she was, before she died in that car accident.


    Which, to be honest, with the other news we''re getting, we''re a little suspicious of.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    It was investigated pretty thoroughly, it was an accident.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGEL


    Yeah.


    I''m sure it was.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    SAURIAN COMPACT


    Totally not suspicious.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    GREAT GALLOPING GESTALT OF GREATNESS


    So, are you back?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Unless you guys insult the shit out of me or try to force me to do something again.


    I don''t take well to people trying to force me to do anything.


    Just ask Lanky there.


    ////////


    GESTALT OF GREAT THOUGHTS BY A GREAT PEOPLE WHO THINK AND DO GREAT THINGS


    True story.


    Hey, it''s kind of funny to see Ba''ahnya''ahrd.


    He''s a Senator in the Hamburger Kingdom now, huh?


    That''s pretty funny.


    I''m sure he''ll figure out a way to defeat you any second now.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Hey, now. Senator Ya''ahrd was instrumental in the Galloping Plains Cease Fire agreements.


    Who would have thought that Lanaktallan would bring back mounted cavalry, in a way, to do warfare?


    /////////


    AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS


    Wait, has Ba''ahnya''ard or any other Lanaktallan ever been killed and brought back?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    That''s covered under Private Medical Information. You''d have to ask him directly.


    /////////


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Aside from all of this.


    What are the chances you''ll be able to help with everything happening?


    It''s looking back. We''ve got thousands of Mar-gite clusters coming in still.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Estimations say that in less than 20 years approximately two thousand Giga-Clusters will hit Fortress Sol.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Yeah.


    We''re going to stop them before that.


    /////////


    TUKNA''RN GESTALT


    How will we do that?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    You won''t like the answer.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 73

    He had fought the Terrans before and didn''t like it then.


    He didn''t like it now. - Unknown, Second Precursor War


    "THEY DO NOT HAVE THE BLISS!" Senior Bladearm Leader F''Rekik bellowed out over the comlink. Even with the comms built into the helmets and his vocal volume, he was still barely heard. The engines of the dropship were screaming, there was clanking against the side of the dropship as kinetic projectiles, nearly spent, hammered against the armored hull, and the atmosphere itself was roaring, making the dropship vibrate so badly everyone inside saw double or triple.


    "THEY CAN STILL FIGHT WITH A MORTAL WOUND!" SBL F''Rekik yelled.


    There was a knocking sound and two dents punched deep into the interior armor.


    Everyone below it flinched.


    "DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF THINKING A MISSING ARM OR LEG MEANS THEY ARE DOWN AND DYING! THEY CAN STILL KILL!" came the shout as the dropship heeled over to the side and dropped rapidly. An explosion, large and close enough to be heard through everything, shook the dropship.


    "ENGAGE THEM ONLY THREE ON ONE OR BETTER! THEY MAY BE SMALL BUT THEY CAN TEAR A WARRIOR CASTE IN HALF WITH THEIR BARE HANDS!" was shouted out.


    The light went from red to yellow and everyone inside the dropship shifted anxiously.


    "THEY CANNOT SEE BEHIND THEM! THE ARMOR IS WEAK AT THE JOINTS AND WAIST!"


    The dropship suddenly lifted up at the nose, the engines screaming.


    The yellow light blinked. The restraints released and everyone inside stood up, getting in line.


    "DO NOT ENGAGE WITH BLADEARMS UNLESS YOU WANT THEM STUCK THROUGH YOUR OWN HEAD!"


    The line shuffled to face the back of the dropship.


    The green light blinked.


    The dropship slammed down so hard that half of the gathered up warriors felt their abdomen armor hit the floor.


    "FORM UP ON THE NEAREST LEADERSHIP BEACON!"


    The door slammed down.


    "GO GO GO GO!"


    Tracers were whipping back and forth. Explosions filled the air. Chunks of armor and pieces of destroyed aircraft fell to the ground. Lasers and plasma rounds shrieked by, answered by impossibly high velocity kinetic rounds. Artillery and mortar rounds hit the ground even as aerospace strikers from either side strafed the ground or dropped their payloads on the enemy or were knocked out of the sky to hit the ground and either explode or tumble along shedding burning parts.


    The Treana''ad aboard the dropship surged out.


    P''Thok held his plasma rifle tight as he followed the one in front of him. His faceplate immediately went to hash as the Terran Third Republic jamming shredded its ability to do anything. He chinned the button and it went polarized but crystal clear from inside.


    Kinetic rounds howled around him as he sprinted for the nearest leadership beacon.


    He braked, skidding to a stop, as a half-dozen artillery shells slammed down on the beacon''s position. Around the location was nothing but smoking craters and shredded Treana''ad. He activated the comlink, wincing as the howl of jamming warbled through his ears. The channel was full of confusion, everyone shouting different things.


    He could faintly hear Terran laughter in the channel.


    "SIGMA SEVEN TEAM! POINT ECHO! POINT ECHO!" P''Thok shouted over his commo, skittering to the side just in time to avoid a burst of kinetic rounds.


    The warrior behind him jerked and shivered, then collapsed.


    It was P''Thok''s seventh combat drop and third world. He knew the warrior had been killed by little metal cones that expanded and tumbled as soon as they hit armor or chitin. The warrior might only have a few holes in their plasteel armor, but the ''bullets'' had shredded his internal organs and hydrostatic shock had liquified things he probably really needed.


    "LET''S GO!" P''Thok yelled, turning and sprinting for point Sigma-Seven.


    A Terran weapon emplacement was hammering hate down on the dropship and P''Thok reached back to grab the rocket launcher on his back. He didn''t bother with anything fancy, didn''t bother to stop, kneel, and take the time to use the targeting computer.


    He did what he had learned to do on his first drop.


    He fired it on the run, emptying out the three pack launcher, throwing the expended launcher away as he put on more speed.


    The emplacement blew up. Two intact appearing Terran Republican Guard flew away from the explosion.


    "Jun<klik>Iklikik, POP SMOKE!" P''Thok yelled to the warrior in front of him.


    The newbie pulled two smoke grenades from his harness, throwing one in front of him, dropping the other at his feet, after banging the top against his chest.


    A burst of Republican Guard slugs shredded Jun<klik>Iklikik before he took enough steps to get into the cloud of smoke, the leader warrior''s arms and two legs shredding away even as huge holes were blown out of his backplate.


    "KEEP GOING!" P''Thok yelled over the warbling com-channel.


    The warrior next to him went down and another took his place only to be cut down before three steps.


    He could see Point Echo now.


    There was a Terran Third Republic anti-aircraft position on it. The RG''s were clustered around it, firing outward in all directions as P''Thok and the tens of thousands of other warriors charged the position.


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    Artillery shells slammed down, P''Thok feeling several pieces of shrapnel bounce off his plasteel armor. A few limbs and two torsos flew over him.


    He was firing now. Not aimed, just leveling the plasma rifle and yanking the trigger almost spasmodically. He wasn''t doing the careful two count to make sure the barrel cooled, wasn''t verifying his targets. He was just firing.


    Three RG strikers came in low. Someone got off a set of anti-air missiles, the MANPAD six-pack hitting the striker. It exploded and the flaming wreckage hit the ground, bouncing and tumbling through the ranks of Treana''ad who were still charging. Tanks were firing, ignoring the rockets that were hitting them, denting and twisting the armor, just firing back as they roared at the right flank.


    Someone got a brace of missiles through the Terran point defense and the AA site exploded. P''Thok still charged forward as he saw Terrans, some smoking, pick themselves and get back into the fight, sprinting at their slow max speed to get behind cover. One caught a missile and tumbled, getting back up and managing to limp behind cover.


    The sandbagged berm was coming up, Terrans popping up to fire then ducking back down. P''Thok didn''t remember reloading his rifle but he was still firing so he must have reloaded right but he didn''t remember and he was just sprinting as two dozen warriors on his right were torn apart by a heavy gun and an explosion ripped apart everyone on his left to splatter him with shrapnel and ichor and chunks of chitin and the Terran popped up and fired narrowly missing him and he had the rocket launcher pulled around as the Terran ducked down and a handful of warriors put on a burst of speed and passed him and a striker dropped burning napalm on the left flank but the warriors charged through it because oh god they were committed and there was no turning back and he threw the empty mag away and slotted a new one and grabbed the missile launcher again firing to hit the Terran as it popped up throwing the Terran backwards and he was in the trench and he was stabbing with the bayonet and firing and firing and a Terran had a chainsword hacking down warriors and he fired the missile launcher the Terran flung back and rolling to one side as warriors rushed and getting up right before the last missile of the triple ripple pack hit him again and P''Thok joined the other warriors to start stabbing and someone was screaming was it him it was him he was screaming as he stabbed because it JUST WOULDN''T DIE until it went down and he was scrambling out of the trenchwork, still sprinting and his side and feet hurt and bullets were everywhere and oh god charlie company just exploded and the Treana''ad in front of him were reduced to chunky salsa and still he was running and firing and last missile launcher and one out JUST DIE and another out STAY DOWN and the last out DIE DIE DIE and he was in with them now swinging the empty launcher and stabbing with his bladearms even though you never do that his psychic suppression was redlined and he could taste blood and fresh mown kik


    nik grain on his grinding plates and a Terran lunged out tackling the warrior almost three times his size and five times his bulk and the Terran ripped the warrior into three pieces before he could stab the Terran and why are they so strong and tough why does god hate me so much and run up behind it and stab and stab and stab over and over who is screaming its me I''m screaming Terran Terran Terran oh god I''m going to die one came out of the foxhole and swung a cutting bar his rifle shattered as he blocked one of those terrible cutting bars and he jabbed the sheered off sharp end into the Terran and stabbed and stabbed and he was knocked down oh god don''t let me be dead and he was up and fighting and he was screaming the Terrans were roaring and the red light went out of its eyes as he stabbed and stabbed and...


    there was nothing but Treana''ad standing.


    A rifle fired and P''Thok was dimly aware it was him, firing a burst you never fire a burst into the back of a downed Terran before it could get up. stay down stay down stay down another rifle fired a grenade went off oh god they''re everywhere coming out of the holes and wreckage and fight fight for your life stab and stab grab a rifle off the ground wrench it from dead treana''ad hands and fire and fire whose screaming it''s me i''m screaming and fire and fire holy shit that terran just ripped superior officer n''trekalk in half with his bare hands and WHY WON''T YOU DIE and fire and i''m screaming i''m screaming as i''m beating this terran to death with a broken rifle and its punching me in the chest and i can feel my carapace crack and JUST DIE and hit and hit and stab and hit and scream and


    silence again.


    Just the crackle of flames, his own breathing inside his helmet.


    "Sound off," P''Thok ordered.


    He checked his visor as the declarations of life came in.


    Less than ten minutes had gone by.


    He couldn''t remember any of it.


    He greedily drank from the sippy straw, his mouth parched, his grinding plates feeling like they were burning.


    Someone screamed in terror and rifles fired. There was a kinetic weapon discharge then a dozen plasma guns and stabbing bayonets. The Terran grabbed one of the rifles, pulling himself forward and slapped the warrior''s head off.


    P''Thok rammed the bayonet in from behind, pulling it free and ramming it in again and again.


    The Terran went down and P''Thok fired point blank at the weak spot in the armor at the base of the neck.


    Now it was quiet. Only the crackling of flames, the distant sound of artillery and strikers.


    P''Thok looked around.


    He was the only one with banding on his legs.


    He pointed at the huge device sitting in the middle of the black glittering sand that was now nothing more than a slurry of Treana''ad ichor, Terran blood, lubricants, and chunks of Treana''ad and Terran scattered everywhere.


    "Blow that up. We''ll regroup," P''Thok said. He looked at the horizon. "We have a planet to take back."


    Part of him flinched, muttering no no no no don''t make me but he pushed that part away.


    The Treana''ad liberation of Pik


    likiktik was underway.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The egg tender gently set the egg into the glittering black sand then used his bladearms to smooth the sand over it. There were two others with him, one singing, the other carrying the basket of eggs. He patted the sand over the egg and moved on.


    All across the glittering black plain worker Treana''ad put eggs into the sand. Tens of thousands of workers planting, others singing, still others moving back and forth to gather the eggs in woven baskets as tradition demanded.


    The time for a Great Hatching had been five years ago.


    The Terrans had promised the Treana''ad people that they would fight and die to give the Treana''ad people the five years they needed.


    The Treana''ad believed them.


    The egg tender worker kept moving across one of the oldest Great Hatching Worlds in Treana''ad space.


    The Great Hatching World had only been taken from the Treana''ad people once. The Treana''ad were a powerful and mighty people and had wrested it back from the galaxy''s premiere predator through bravery and foce of arms.


    It had only been taken once.


    And never again.


    The workers, under the warm red sun, enjoying the nitrogen laden breeze, kept moving through the vast glittering deserts of Pik


    likiktik.


    TERRASOL


    How''s the Great Hatching laying going?


    ////////


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Good. We''re up to 20% of the eggs laid.


    It''s funny, you know?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    What is?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    The best warriors come from one particular planet. We''ll hatch tens of billions of warriors on that planet. They''ll all have amazing coloration, excellent intellect, amazing reflexes.


    It''s just kind of funny that that world in particular produces the best warriors.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    AKLTAK FREE FLIGHT


    Which one?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Pik


    likiktik.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    That was one hell of a fight.


    /////////


    LANKY LANKY YOUR NAME IS FRANKY


    Really?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    The Treana''ad managed to push us off the planet in slightly less than a year.


    They were endless. Kill one and a dozen more take its place. Day. Night. Rain. Shine. Fog. Clear.


    The Treana''ad just kept coming. They''d swarm tanks. They''d charge machinegun positions till the trigger went click.


    On top of that, they were three times our size, tough as nails, and nasty fighters.


    Even nastier than the Mantid.


    ////////


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    <blushes>


    It was a different time.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    We''re gonna need some of that Pik


    Soldier action, Trea.


    ////////

 Nova Wars - Chapter 74 - Evil Never Dies

    The wind outside was typical for the day, brisk and blustery.


    The little house looked like nothing more than a small wooden cottage, with stone lower walls and a sharply peaked roof. It had a single chimney that put out wood smoke, windows covered by curtains that hinted at cheery warm light. The roof was red clay shingles, the wood of the walls painted eggshell white, with the shutters and the trim painted brick red. It wasn''t too big, nor too small. The snow covered the neat gardens outside, the chickens were asleep in the coop, the sheep and the two cows sleeping peacefully in the small barn with the horse, watched over by a dog with reddish brown fur.


    There was a stone fence around the house and barn, uneven at the top.


    It was all hand built and would fit onto almost any world in the agrarian eras.


    Those who knew of the house and the occupant knew that it housed something dangerous.


    Something dark.


    Something evil.


    Inside the house was quiet music, instrumentals from a wide variety of times and eras, as well as more than a few different species of the known regions of space.


    The furniture was hand made, the cloth of the curtains, tablecloths, and the yarn for the knitted pieces were all hand-done, much of it wool and sheered from the sheep that slept in the barn. The tile was hand done and fired in the furnace that was behind the barn, the same as the glass.


    There were modern amenities in the house. Well, modern depending on the time and era. The nutriforge was hidden in the pantry, but the stove used wood or coal, electric kept as a backup. The radio was tubes and wires, the light bulbs incandescents, the bathroom fixtures porcelain and steel.


    There were only three small bedrooms. One a woman''s, obvious only by the makeup table, the contents of the furniture, and the few pictures on the nightstand. The other two, a pair of guest rooms, were occupied by a man. Again, obvious only by the clothing and a few pictures. The wall paper was simple and stark in all of the rooms.


    Someone from the early Age of Paranoia on TerraSol would have found the house largely the same as any other.


    At the kitchen table sat two of the occupants. A male Terran and a female Terran. The male was tall, wide shoulders, more ropey muscle than thick muscle, with short brown hair, beard, and mustache sprinkled liberally with gray and tired brown eyes. The woman was short, plump bodied, long black hair kept in a fancy braid that fell to her waist, a pert little upturned button nose, a Cupid''s bow mouth, and smoldering gray eyes.


    They had short brown bottles of beer in front of them as they sat at the table, silent. The electric lights were turned off and a pair of kerosene storm lamps were lit.


    "He''s getting better," the male said after a bit, setting down his beer.


    "Yes," the female said.


    "You did a good job putting his SUDS record back together. It''s up to him now," the man said. He flushed slightly. "At least you avoided the temptation to edit it or try to make it all fit perfectly."


    "I hand out temptation, I don''t succumb to it," the woman said, her voice neutral. "I was lucky to get what I got. When he blew the bag, he had not had an intact SUDS recording in around thirty thousand years. It was all bits and pieces I''d kept an eye for," she shook her head. "He was in worse condition than you were at first, Pete."


    Pete nodded. "Yet here we are, Dee," he said.


    She looked away. "Here we are."


    "Your experiment with the aliens. How did it go?" Pete asked.


    The woman gave a harsh bark of a laugh. "The more things change, the more they stay the same. They have all the same weaknesses and sins as humanity," she took a drink and smiled. "Daxin would be thrilled to be vindicated once again."


    "He wasn''t that bad," Pete said.


    Dee shrugged, taking another drink off of her beer, then setting it on the table. She still kept her hand wrapped around it so she could tap the plain steel ring on her left ring finger against the glass. "I liked him. A lot. He never claimed to be anything he wasn''t. What you saw was what you got. I admired that."


    Pete raised an eyebrow. "Really?"


    Dee nodded. "Yes. I admire that in a man. Very much."


    "Huh," Pete said. He finished his beer and pushed it away slightly before tapping the table. A glowing rune appeared and he tapped it again. The bottle dissolved and a new one took shape before filling with liquid. "Never thought you felt that way about him."


    Dee shrugged. "The truth costs nothing."


    "Still, you admitting that you liked someone," Pete chuckled.


    "I haven''t stabbed your ass yet," Dee said, looking at the window. She twitched her pinky on her left hand, still tapping the bottle with her ring. The curtains parted. "It''s going to snow soon."


    Pete just nodded.


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    "I do have a question about one of your subjects," Pete said.


    "That one involved in the incident with the cryo survivors," Dee said, still staring out the window.


    Pete nodded. "When the one confessed to just standing there, I was surprised you didn''t kill him."


    Dee took a drink and shrugged. "It''s very complicated, Pete. I''m not sure you can understand my reasons for sparing him beyond: I find him useful to keep around," she took another drink. "Aside, I always take into account the wishes of the wronged."


    Pete frowned. "Live with it?"


    Dee nodded, a slow smile appearing. She giggled, then laughed, then began laughing wildly, putting one hand on her stomach as tears flowed from her eyes and she tossed her head back and forth.


    Pete sat calmly. He''d seen this a thousand times before.


    The laughter cut off suddenly and Dee pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket to wipe her face and eyes.


    "And he will," she smiled. She took a drink of beer as she artfully folded the handkerchief with one hand before tucking it back into the breast pocket of her dark charcoal gray blouse. Her face relaxed and she lifted her face slightly, half-closing her eyes.


    Pete was struck again how she had a strange beauty, if you could get past what was behind her eyes.


    "And he''s expendable," Pete added.


    "Everyone''s expendable, Pete. Even me," Dee said. She drained her beer and stood up. "He''s been on the surface of Terra long enough. I should have what I need now."


    "Good hunting," Pete said as Dee got to her feet. She smoothed her blouse as Pete tapped the rune and dissolved the empty beer bottle.


    "Make sure Harry exercises. I''ll be back as soon as I can," Dee said.


    Pete just nodded.


    Dee held out a hand and a glowing doorway appeared, opening from the bottom to the top, a rectangle of pure white light. She stepped through it and vanished.


    Pete just dialed up another beer, picked it up, and got up. He moved the two storm lamps into the frontroom and relaxed on the couch, staring at the fire in the fireplace.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The starport was busy. It was an older one, rebuilt repeatedly, renovated and modernized over and over. The city had been destroyed more than once, rebuilt in defiance of what had happened. At first it had only been propeller driven planes, but now it serviced suborbitals and smaller spacecraft. Tens of thousands of people moved through the starport for destinations all over the globe and the solar system.


    Marsha Ketburn checked her hair one last time in the mirror, making sure the shimmer-glitter in it was cycling through the RGB spectrum correctly, then tucked the control wand back into her purse as a toilet flushed. She started to take a step back when a short plump matronly woman stepped from one of the stalls.


    "Oh, sorry," Marsha said.


    The woman just nodded, moving up to the sink to wash her hands.


    "Long layover?" Marsha asked.


    The woman just nodded, staring into the mirror.


    Marsha caught the woman''s gunmetal gray eyes in the mirror.


    Something about them made her attempts at polite conversation vanish. She clutched her purse tightly and hustled out of bathroom.


    The woman looked around, then flicked her hand out again.


    Another doorway appeared.


    She stepped through it and was gone. The doorway vanished.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The night was clear and warm. The villagers had retired to their homes, but a handful were around a large firepit in the middle of the village. The villagers wore traditional garb, as their ancestors had done for thousands of years. Two females, both older, sat on either side of a younger one, their body language brooking no nonsense.


    A male came out of the darkness, a modern plasma rifle in his hands.


    "A woman approaches. White skin, gray clothing. She walks unafraid in the night," he said.


    The younger woman nodded. "I felt her arrive."


    "Should we drive her from our lands?" the male asked.


    The younger woman shook her head. "No. She is not as she appears. Guide her here, I will speak with her."


    Both of the older women looked slightly concerned, but the younger one produced a pipe and slowly packed it with tobacco as the man vanished back into the darkness. She lit it, puffing at it to get a good draw, then relaxed, waiting.


    The male led the woman to the edge of the firelight.


    "Menhit," the woman said.


    "Dee," the younger woman said, nodding.


    "May I come in?" Dee asked.


    Menhit nodded. "You have the protection and courtesy of my village for as long as you abide by the ancient ways."


    Dee just nodded, moving over and sitting down.


    "How did you get here?" Menhit asked.


    "How else?" Dee said, her voice flat.


    "The mat-trans," Menhit guessed. "I was told it no longer functioned."


    "Worked fine for me. Even the improvements I''ve made are functioning correctly," Dee said.


    "So, are you the Devil of the SUDS made flesh, or something older?" Menhit asked.


    Dee reached down and picked up a handful of dust, letting it fall from her fingertips as she stared across the fire at Menhit.


    "Older. Much older," Dee stated.


    Menhit cocked her head. "A wedding ring," she looked up at Dee''s face. "Really?"


    Dee''s face hardened. "You don''t know me."


    Menhit nodded, puffing on her pipe before she spoke. "Indeed. I suspect few ever have," she looked at the woman on either side. "Leave us. What we will speak of involves Immortals and is not for those who wish to stay uninvolved to hear."


    The two woman looked doubtful but got up and left.


    "Your daughters," Dee said.


    Menhit nodded. "Yes."


    They sat silently for a moment.


    "What brings you to my humble village?" Menhit asked after a long while.


    Dee looked up at the stars.


    "It''s going to get bad, Menhit. Real bad. Things went wrong while I slumbered, dreaming I was a normal woman with normal concerns," Dee said. She looked back at Menhit. "I need to know if I can count on you or if you''re going to sit here and live out your life."


    Menhit sat thoughtfully, staring at the fire, for a long moment before looking back at Dee. "How bad?"


    "You''ll be defending your village from Mar-gite or worse in less than two decades," Dee stated.


    "And what part will I have to play?" Menhit asked.


    Dee gave a smile. "We have to wake a few people up."


    "Kalki?" Menhit asked.


    Dee nodded. "Yes. He''ll listen to you. He is wary of me."


    Menhit gave a slight chuckle. "My little brother is not stupid. Matthias?"


    "Him too."


    Menhit nodded. "Anyone else?"


    Dee just smiled, lifting one finger and drawing her finger across her throat.


    Menhit just nodded, staring at the fire after seeing the gesture.


    "I''ll do it all myself if I have to," Dee said softly. "I''ll pick up the mantle from where you Immortals set it down. I''ll do whatever I have to do to save humanity," she looked back up at the stars. "I don''t give two fucks about the rest of them, but I won''t stand idly by while humanity is swept from the universe again even if I have to burn the stars from the sky with my own two hands."


    There was silence for a long moment.


    "They will want to give me a proper sendoff," Menhit said.


    Dee shrugged. "I don''t care if they fill a box full of cow shit, shove you in it, and ship you to Timbuktu as long as you come along."


    "I will join," Menhit said. She looked up at the stars. "For my children, if nothing else, I will join hands with the Devil."


    Dee just smiled.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Kalki set down the fruit, sitting down on the hand carved bench before reaching over to pet his goat.


    "We have visitors coming, Dancer," he said, smiling. He looked up at the clear blue sky. "We''re going to go on a trip, you and I."


    The goat just made happy noises and clattered around in a little dance, wagging its tail.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 75

    "Wait till you see it."


    "See what?"


    "What a Terran will do to someone." - Unknown, Second Precursor War


    Violet doublechecked his vest before answering the door.


    Outside stood a gold mantid, one of the diplomats from Mantid Prime.


    He noted with curiosity that she was alone.


    "May I come in?" she asked.


    Violet nodded, moving back. "Please do, Madame Diplomat."


    "No reason for formality. This visit is off the record," she said, daintily moving inside. Violet had to admit, she had excellent coloring, good proportions, excellent symmetry and moved with an unconscious grace.


    "Please, please, have a seat," Violet said, moving over to his sitting room. He tapped the table, banishing the holograms he had been perusing.


    "Thank you," the gold said. She climbed up on the couch and settled in, reaching up to comb her antenna for a moment. "I am Speaks in the Wilderness, as you probably know."


    Violet nodded. "Yes. I have read your precis and am impressed with your recent accomplishments."


    Speaks combed her antenna again. "Thank you. That is most kind," she looked around. "Can you activate the privacy shielding, please?"


    Frowning, Violet activated the systems, feeling the tingling on the ends of his antenna.


    Speaks sat still for a moment then nodded. She looked around the room and then at Violet. "I hear you were allowed a glimpse into the Terran Afterlife System."


    Violet signified assent. "It is almost impossible to explain. It was... unlike anything I have ever experienced. The emotions, the physical sensations, the excitement and anticipation all around me. The people living a life beyond their mortal shells."


    Speaks said nothing, just listened.


    Violet looked up at the ceiling. "And knowing that it''s there, free, open for everyone. Not a gilded cage, as those who dwell within it have accepted that their allotted time among the, well, living, has expired. It''s another adventure, another journey," he shuddered. "I could see, just in the limited time I spent there, why the vast majority choose not to return."


    Violet looked at Speaks, signifying amusement. "Surely, you did not come here to ask me questions about the Afterlife."


    Speaks signified the negative. "Tomorrow we will meet with the diplomats representing TerraSol and the Solarian Stellar System," she leaned forward. "How much do you really understand about Terrans?"


    Violet signified pleasure. "I have researched their political stance before the Terran Xenocide Event and The Bagging, as many of the leaders who were alive those tens of thousands of years ago are alive now due to the time dilation effect of The Bag. I have examined the dizzying contradictions of their home system politics. I have examined their diplomatic history."


    Speaks just nodded slowly, the emoji for patient listening appearing for a second between her antenna. "Did you research their wars?"


    Violet signified assent. "Mostly, the diplomatic processes at the end of the war. When they were imprisoned, the Second Precursor War had just begun and Terra had stated that they would be engaging in Total War against the Lanaktallan Council."


    Speaks nodded.


    "I believe I understand how the Terrans approach diplomacy," Violet said. He signified being pleased. "They prefer to negotiate from a position of strength and will attempt to steer diplomacy so that they are acting from a position of perceived strength, much like the majority of species."


    Speaks shook her head, an emoji of negative appearing between her antenna. "That is an oversimplification. You need to understand one simple thing, in any negotiation with a Terran, they are always at a position of strength."


    "How so?"


    Speaks looked up at the ceiling. "They always have what they call ''the nuclear option'' and, unlike many species, a will, perhaps even a strong urge, to use it," she looked at Violet. "Do not make the mistake of thinking that just because they are from forty-thousand years ago they are weak or will be deferential to the Confederacy," she looked around and leaned forward slightly. "What you have seen, what you know, and the truth are two different things."


    Violet frowned. "How so?"


    She pointed at the 2.5D wallscreen. "May I?"


    Violet flashed an emoji of confusion. "Of couse."


    "Have you heard of context-specific public service displays?" Speaks asked.


    Violet nodded. "Of course. It is based on what is going on, where a being is located, their employment. It usually is automated, perhaps tailored for whoever stares at it long enough or the majority of beings in the direct vicinity, as well as corporate and government metrics."


    Speaks gave a wan expression of agreement. "For other species, yes."


    She dug in her bag and pulled out two pair of spectacles designed for the Mantid head and compound eyes. "Put these on," she said. Violet took the spectacles and clumsily put them on as Speaks flicked through the channels, finally settling on an advertisement that was coming to an end. The advertisement was for Mantid carapace polish.


    "From infancy onwards a Terran lives in augmented reality," Speaks said. "An infant has a datalink implanted that will grow and expand and upgrade as the child grows. The datalink is connected to a retinal link, which allows the datalink to display data directly to the cornea lens of the Terran''s biological lens system within their eyes. Additionally, Terrans use a direct link to their visual cortex as well as their optic nerve. They also have linkages to their throat as well as their audio cortex and other methods of listening and speaking."


    Violet just nodded.


    "What you are seeing and hearing and what the Terrans are seeing and hearing are two different things," she said. She pointed at the screen and restarted the advertisement. It was for a resort in the Hamburger Kingdom, within the Mojave Deathlands, complete with vacation packages where a Mantid could participate in Road Wars and other exciting amusements.


    The ad came to an end and Speaks rewinded it. "That''s what everyone else sees."


    "The resort?" Violet asked.


    Speaks nodded. "Yes. Now, let''s see how a Terran child sees it," she tapped her glasses, then pointed the wand at Violet''s spectacles.


    The advertisement shifted. Speaks hit play.


    The advertisement showed two young children playing together, complete with music. At the end, in big block letters, which Violet identified as the Impact Font, there was just a simple statement.


    "PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS LAST A LIFETIME"


    Speaks rewinded the advertisement and tapped her wand again. This time the advertisement showed adolescent Terrans doing activities together. Labels appeared. "SECONDARY SCHOOL BONDS" and "COLLEGE EXPLORATION" and "FIRST JOB" and ending with young adult Terrans standing in the forefront, some in military uniforms, some in laborer clothing, others in supervisor uniforms.


    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    "TOGETHER AGAINST A MALEVOLENT UNIVERSE"


    "While interesting, I fail to see..." Violet started.


    "Not yet," Speaks said. She tapped the wand.


    The screen showed two naked Terrans embracing.


    "Sex," a breathy female Terran voice said. "Intense. Pleasurable. Exciting. Intimate."


    The Terrans began mashing their faces together as their hands roamed over their bodies.


    "The universe''s gift to us," the female said.


    Violet drew back as they began orally copulating the moving to full on sexual intercourse.


    The woman''s voice was still breathless and excited, but it held a hint of steel.


    "Procreation. The universe''s proof we shall endure," the voice said.


    There was a zoom in, showing the inside of the Terran. Violet felt disgust as it showed fluid moving. There was a flash and a small curled up inside the Terran woman.


    "Your unspoken duty as a human. Your eternal duty to those who came before and that you will ensure come afterwards."


    The two separated.


    "Have you had sex today?" the voice asked. "If you are not partnered, visit your nearest breeding clinic."


    The screen went black except for a tiny sleeping infant.


    "Do your ultimate duty. To Sol. To Terra. To each other. To yourself."


    The commercial ended.


    Violet just stared. "Forced breeding?"


    Speaks took off the spectacles and moved over to take the spectacles off of Violet''s face.


    "Not exactly," she said. She changed the image. It was a list of names, with decorative stars next to their names. "These are Terran females who have given live birth to at least ten children. Bronze stars for single children, silver stars for each five children, gold stars for each twenty."


    Violet blinked.


    "These females are considered heroes," she held up a bladearm. "Don''t start talking about cloning, artificial wombs, fertility drugs, in-vitro fertilization," she shook her head. "The only thing these females had was a sexual partner and five minutes."


    "But there are only three point two billion humans listed on Terra, eight point six Terrans within the entire system," Violet protested.


    Speaks nodded, flashing the emoji to indicate it was a solemn nod. "Yes," she paused. "That is the number they are willing to reveal," she tapped the table with one bladearm slowly and thoughtfully. "I advise you, today, tonight, before the diplomatic meeting, to look up recent history for the Terrans."


    Violet nodded as Speaks got up and started moving toward the door. She paused, the tip of her bladearm hovering above the door switch.


    "I advise you to look up not only the First and Second Terran-Mantid Wars, but the more recent conflicts. Not historical documents. Re-enactments, docudramas, or media based on the events," she ducked her head and shadows seemed to wrap around her. "I''d look at the Mithril Nebula Conflict if you want more recent information," she looked away and Violet could suddenly smell scorched metal. "And Clownface."


    "If you dare," She opened the door and was gone.


    Violet leaned back on the couch and nibbled at the tip of his bladearm.


    After a moment he called in Defends The Weak to his chambers, activating the table''s holo-emitter and tabbing through to HoloStream.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The hour long docudrama Eight Thousand Years of Guns, Blood, & Glory in Sixty Minutes!! came to an end.


    The room smelled of fear, apprehension, stress, and horror.


    Violet looked at Defends, knowing his antenna were trembling.


    "I am afraid," Violet admitted.


    Defends just nodded.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The diplomats representing the major species of the Confederacy of Aligned Systems filed into the room, Violet bringing up the rear with his three assistants. Each representative took a seat, activating their privacy screens so that they could communicate with Violet but otherwise would not disturb the negotiations that, currently, they were only observers to.


    Violet sat down, fussily arranging his dataslates and hardcopy notes.


    The far door opened and only three Terrans entered. One in a military uniform, one with gray skin, jet black eyes and carefully arranged hair, and a wide mouth, the last in an official looking black suit. They sat down and the one in the military uniform turned to the suited one and nodded.


    Violet looked over the data. One was High Admiral of the Golden Warsteel Kiume Rippentear, commander of all military forces in the Solarian System. The other was Barrister Becky Bakasura, a Terran lawyer. Violet was surprised to discover that the lawyer was a female. The gray skin, the slim androgynous body shape, the cold dead eyes, all made Violet at first assume that B. Bakasura was male. He reminded himself to limit his assumptions. The last, the suited one, was the Honorable J. Cuetzpallea, representing the government of the Solarian System.


    "All subjects and discussions pertinent to the Afterlife System are off the table. Any attempts to engage that subject will result in our immediate withdrawal from the negotiations," the suited one, Mx. Cuetzpallea stated.


    Violet noted how some of the Confederate diplomats shifted slightly, a subconscious display of annoyance, and pinged them to let them know that they were to remain silent as the opening discussions took place.


    "Understood," Violet stated. He nodded and signified satisfaction by flashing a smiling emoji between his antenna. "At this time, the Confederacy is more interested in bringing the Unified Solarian System back into the fold after such a long absence."


    Admiral Rippentear snorted. "A bit late for that," he said.


    "How so?" Violet asked.


    Admiral Rippentear stared at Violet for a long moment. "The Unified Solarian System ceased to exist the minute that the Lanaktallan Great Fleet made their crash translation against the wall."


    Violet blinked and checked his notes. "I was not informed of a change of government by the Confederate Diplomatic Corps. Was this change in government registered?"


    B. Bakasura smiled, showing sharp interlocked triangular teeth. "We are not in the habit of asking for permission for internal matters." She kept smiling as thick black fluid leaked from between her teeth, cocking her head slightly and staring with those cold dead eyes.


    "We severed diplomatic ties before we could inform the Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems of our change of status. With the Terran Confederacy apparently defunct and replaced by the Confederacy of Aligned Systems, we felt no need to bring up a purely internal matter," Mx. Cuetzpallea stated.


    "Very well. I would prefer to update my database. What is the current name and type of government currently representing the Solarian System?" Violet asked.


    He was suddenly aware of the gleam in all three Terran''s eyes. A sharp, predatory gleam of amusement. The same kind of amusement that a predator got in their eyes when the prey was backed into a corner.


    "If you wish," Admiral Rippentear stated. "A martial law tyranny some might call fascist with limited sections of the Right of Consent overridden for the good of the state while individual nation states of the planets of the Sol System contribute to the defense of the human race and Earth itself."


    B. Bakasura smiled again, showing black fluid stained interlocked triangular teeth.


    A lot of teeth.


    Mx. Cuetzpallea''s smile was a thin, narrow lipped thing of cold pleasure.


    "The Solarian Iron Dominion." the Admiral finished.


    The privacy shield in front of the Pubvian diplomat winked out and the Pubvian pressed the button to bring attention to him with his middle arm.


    "I must withdraw and consult my government immediately," the Pubvian said. Without waiting for an answer they stood up and began moving toward the door.


    The Rigel Diplomat turned off their screen. "I too must consult with my government," she said.


    The smiles got more intense. The admiral tilted his head slightly, as if he was looking past his brow ridge.


    The Treana''ad turned off his screen. "Oh, hell naw, Imma gonna consult with the Matrons in this here thang." he said, getting up and moving away.


    The Mantid Prime diplomat stood up. "Before I withdraw to speak to my government, I have only one question," she said.


    Violet felt off balance as the whole diplomatic mission seemed to fall apart.


    The lawyer''s smile got wider.


    "Does the civilian government still control the military?" the gold asked.


    There was silence for a moment.


    "There is no civilian government," Mx Cuetzpallea stated. Her smile showed that she had a bright crimson coating on her grinding and chewing teeth. "There is only Zuul."


    The gold mantid dropped her datapad as she rushed out.


    0-0-0-0-0


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    I don''t get it. Why did all of your diplomats withdraw? Why are your diplomatic vessels moving out past the resonance zone with priority access to outbound jumps?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS


    What''s going on? I don''t get it.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    You will.


    Oh, you will...


    /////////


    HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL


    We still want access to our people in the Afterlife System.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    And I told you...


    Come and take them.


    /////////


    LANAKTALLAN GALLOPING DIGITAL FIELDS OF GREAT THOUGHT BY A GREAT PEOPLE


    Just drop it.


    Sheesh.


    What''s wrong? Why does it seem like things have gone wrong?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Because...


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGEL


    WHY? JUST... WHY?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Because we didn''t know what we''d be coming back to.


    A galactic spur overran by the PAWM? By the Atrekna? By the Council?


    What, if anything, would be left.


    So we went on Full Warfare Protocols.


    /////////


    PUBVIAN DOMINION


    Just tell me that you aren''t taking belligerent status with the Confederacy.


    Please.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Not at this time.


    We reserve the right to reclassify the Confederacy at a later date if new information or events change our opinion and beliefs. We will also reclassify members according to their preferred stated status.


    ////////


    PUBVIAN DOMINION


    At least there''s that.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    I don''t get it.


    They''re on our side.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Are you, Terra? Are you really?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    You know I am.


    If you''re on my side.


    We have exactly ONE stellar system. Our cradle. The LARP and Martial Order worlds don''t count.


    We have The Cradle of Life.


    That''s it.


    So...


    /////////


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    We''re either with you...


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TERRASOL


    Or against me.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 75

    "Three times, did Humanity reach out from our cradle, telling the galaxy that we would like to be friends. Once, to a dead world, in the midst of being paved over. The rejection was brutal. Once, to the Mantid, who glassed TerraSol. And once, shouted as long and as loud as any angry primate could shout. Nine thousand years, did we spend sending the message this time. Our reward was near-extinction.


    "Thrice warned, Humanity''s duty is done. This galaxy will be our friend, or it will be our Enemy.


    "And the Enemy only exists to be destroyed." -Solarian Iron Dominion founding documents


    "There is only one thing in the whole universe which is more dangerous than a Terran...


    "...A Terran who feels they are against a wall.


    "The question if the threat is actually dire or not is irrelevant." -- Tea''cher''moo - Lanaktallan history educator - 55 ATR (After Terran Reemergence)


    "[TerraSol is...]A martial law tyranny some might call fascist with limited sections of the Right of Consent overridden for the good of the state while individual nation states of the planets of the Sol System contribute to the defense of the human race and Earth itself." - Admiral Rippentear


    The secure room was quiet as Violet sat down at the table.


    What he was doing was unusual, but it was an unusual situation.


    He had looked over the available information on the political structure of the Solarian System.


    The planets were still recognized as independent from each other, but the military controlled manufacturing and resources. Each planet had multiple nation-states active, but the planetary government had imposed martial law to control the manufacturing and resource allocation.


    What was interesting to Violet was the fact that several nation-states were recognized as being in resistance to the martial law control as well as the top down control. He looked over the list just for TerraSol itself. Thirty nation-states were in defiance, yet they still contributed to the resource and industrial efforts. Within those nation-states, there was still groups recognized as being in rebellion and exhibiting defiance toward the various levels of government. There were even recognized ''shadow governments'' as well as several nations being ''corpocracies'' underneath a thin veneer of top down control.


    Voting for Solarian political issues was suspended, leadership was entirely military.


    Violet frowned as he noticed that the various nation-states of the planets in the Sol System had military forces on par with some System Defense Forces he had seen during his career. Amazonia, by itself, had nearly eight thousand combat ships, including ships of the line, manned and on patrol of the Sol System, with another thirty thousand in mothballs.


    Curious, he looked up the mothballed ships.


    None of them were older than twenty Terran years local. They had undergone their shakedown cruises then mothballed around the super-massive gas giant Urectum. Even more curious, there were job listings for maintenance crews to bring those ships out of mothball status.


    Getting up, Violet moved to the kitchen and got himself a drink.


    He had looked over the Rights of Consent, then ran an enhanced virtual intelligence assistant assisted search of recent legal changes to the Rights of Consent.


    All he had found was a reintroduction of conscription. Not just for military roles, but for critical industry positions. From creation engine template programming to physical construction to shipyard work.


    Which, of course, had caused demonstrations as well as instructions in online spaces on how to get out of conscription.


    He sipped at the drink and looked around at all the holo-emitters that were paused in the middle of videos. He walked over and picked up the spectacles and then the control wand. He set it for adult human, turned to one of the wall displays and turned on the commercial.


    It was a black screen.


    Words appeared. One at at time.


    DO


    YOUR


    PART


    He paused it, opening a holographic notepad. He knew what he''d see. Soldiers, sailors, horrible jobs under terrible conditions. All with stirring music and portrayed as the ''right'' thing to do.


    He unpaused it.


    It showed a barista with facial piercings, tattoos, and multicolored hair that was slowly moving through the RGB spectrum. She was handing out coffees to customers. She looked at the screen and smiled.


    "I''m doing my part!" she exclaimed in a chipper tone.


    It showed a young male Terran changing the color on tiles and adjusting settings on a holographic keyboard. The Terran was labeled as "John Jane Stickenhiemer - Ceramic Tile Template Artist" and the Terran kept adjusting settings. He stopped and looked at the camera.


    "I''m doing my part!"


    It switched to three small children jumping up and down in a muddy puddle. They stopped.


    "I''m doing my part!" they exclaimed in unison.


    Violet paused and stared at it. He sipped at the TIngleberry Acid Blast Bingo Cola as he made a few annotations. Twelve seconds in.


    He hit play.


    An insurance adjuster. Doing her part. A government worker supervising public cleaning bots. Doing his part. A doctor performing home visits. Doing their part. A suborbital steward doing xir part. A road repair crew doing their part. Two professional sports fighters. Doing their part. The crowd. Doing their part. A violinist playing on a street corner as passerbys waved their wristband in front of a hovering robot to give tips.


    Doing her part.


    A scene of protestors waving signs demanding the suspension of conscription, throwing teargas and projectiles, smashing windows, destroying vehicles. Law Enforcement began arresting them. Some of them paused, looking at the camera.


    "We''re doing our part!" the Law Enforcement and the protestors exclaimed.


    A Tukna''rn building a building as part of a work crew in the hot sun. All doing their part. A Tnvaru working in a factory overseeing robots assembling starship weaponry. Doing her part. A Telkan GalNet broadcaster delivering scathing commentary on a politicians speech being watched by an Akltak female. They paused.


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "We''re doing our part!" all three stated.


    A Lanaktallan Senator shooting at another Senator in the Senate of the Hamburger Kingdom.


    Doing his part.


    A Hamaroosan female giving a rousing speech about representation in the government. Two people in the crowd looked at the camera.


    They were doing their part.


    The commercial went black.


    ENSURE OUR SURVIVAL


    THE MALEVOLENT UNIVERSE AWAITS


    DO


    YOUR


    PART


    The commercial ended and the sitcom came back on.


    Violet sat down on the divan and leaned back, tapping his bladearms against his forelegs thoughtfully.


    It didn''t fit. The majority of the time a brutal dictatorship or tyranny attempted to hide what it was doing under more gentle titles and language.


    The Terrans claimed a martial law tyrannical despotic fascist state.


    But voting was still going on. Leaders were being elected. There were protests. There was artwork, poetry, and even media that spoke out against the government.


    Much of the Terran entertainment was violent in nature or had danger interwoven into the media.


    He got up, getting a meat stick to chew on and another Bingo Cola.


    He sat down and turned on the tri-vee, blinking twice to clear the blurriness of the vision after he raised the glasses to watch the commercial with his own compound eyes instead of using the glasses to see what Terrans saw.


    The commercial would seem almost benign if Violet wasn''t paying close attention. Just a reminder that while only five decades had passed inside The Bad, forty-thousand years had gone by outside. A reminder that grief counseling was available to those who had lost family, and a reminder that there were support systems and networks available to all species.


    He rewound the commercial, put the spectacles back in place, and watched it again.


    Scenes of the Second Precursor War. Scenes of empty planets full of the dead. The screen went black.


    TERRAN POPULATION - NON-LARP NON-CLONE NON-MARTIAL ORDER: 124,873,151,000,000


    As he watched the population suddenly dwindled to almost nothing.


    Well, not quite.


    1,250,000,000 flashed on the screen.


    A Terran infant curled up in the fetal position appeared, slowly raising up out of the blackness.


    The number began to creep up, then exploded.


    It ended at 135,640,000,000 and kept going before stars began to appear. Suddenly there was a complete starfield.


    The number was still rising.


    The infant opened its eyes.


    They were burning with a crimson light.


    Five words rose up beneath the infant.


    WE DIDN''T HEAR NO BELL


    The commercial ended.


    He couldn''t explain why, but that commercial chilled his ichor even more than the "Do Your Part" commercial.


    The next commercial showed a male Terran in torn clothing, bloody face, bloody hands, holding them up in a fighting stance. Invisible fists pounded him until he fell back against the wall. He looked up, his face bloody, lips smashed and split, eyes swollen, two teeth missing. He pulled an Atrekna down on them and they struggled for almost five second before there was a loud snap and the Atrekna dissolved.


    The fighter looked up and the viewpoint switched to the fighter''s POV.


    Above him stood different species. Lanaktallan, Telkan, Akltak, Hamaroosan, Tukna''rn, Rigellian.


    The Rigellian female pulled the fighter to his feet, then turned to face the shadowy figures, raising her fists in defiance as the Terran male spit blood off to the side and raised his own hands.


    "WHO STILL STANDS WITH US?" appeared on the screen.


    Violet turned off the tri-vee and then took off the spectacles, setting them on the table. He took a sip off his Bingo Cola and took a bite of the meatstick.


    He got up and paced back and forth.


    Martial Law meant the suspension of civil liberties, control of the government by the military, the courts and law in control of the military. Violet knew this. He had seen it repeatedly during his career.


    He looked up the legal system of the Solarian System.


    A Uniform Code of Military Justice. Military courts and tribunals.


    For all citizens two steps or less removed from military operations. For citizens engaged in hostile actions against the Solarian military forces. All other ''lesser'' crimes or ''crimes regarding local governments'' were turned over to the local government, although it could be appealed for a military court.


    He paced back and forth again.


    Why? Why complicate it? Why claim the system was under martial law when the individual planets each possessed independent nation states that handled law and punishment under their own laws unless it was two steps or less proximity to military affairs.


    He sighed, tossing the can into the reclamator and punching up a new one.


    He sipped at it and closed his eyes, wiping away all of his preconceived notions.


    He started with the martial law, examining what civil liberties were revoked or modified.


    The Lanaktallan had their Right of Medical Consent suspended en-masse nearly fifty years ago for a four year period. Violet looked up why. The Lanaktallan had been unable to consent due to neural scorching, suspending their ability to consent, and so the State had been forced to make consent for them.


    Nearly eighty-five percent of the surviving Lanaktallan had been healed of severe neural scorching.


    Their Right of Medical Consent had been reinstated once they had passed neurological testing.


    Conscription. Of course. Except, conscientious objector, vital industrial employment, and other waivers. There was something else. It took a few minutes to find.


    Any military members who were put under conscription were listed under "Cryo-Reserves" and listed as Conscripted. The date of release from Cryo-Reserves was listed as "To Be Determined".


    Violet frowned.


    Right of Free Travel. Revoked for military areas.


    An attempt to restrict Right of Self Defense had been defeated repeatedly.


    Violet sighed. It was confusing.


    He moved to legal. Again, it seemed like the individual nation-states and the sub-domain states within the nation-states handled the majority of legal issues.


    Fascism. All things belong to the State. There, it was clear. The gas giants were made property of the Solarian Iron Dominion, to be held in trust of the Solarian People. The Solarian People would be monetarily compensated for the mass used from the gas giants. Critical industries reported to the State and were subject to inspection. Those industries answered to the Solarian Iron Dominion, not the local nation-states, for output and production.


    He shook his head.


    He moved to the tyranny part. All power regarding the Sol System rested on the Solarian Iron Dominion. Defense. Offense. Protection of Property of the State.


    He paused and double-checked.


    The people were, ultimately, property of the state.


    The State was empowered to move unilaterially to protect property of the state without political interference.


    The people were a Tier One resource.


    Violet shook his head.


    It was confusing.


    He went back to studying.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The door opened and Violet ushered his guest inside.


    He had to admit, she was impressive. A two point two meter tall warm blooded reptile, covered in rippling muscle, with eyes forward facing to denote a predator.


    A Rigellian female.


    "Thank you for agreeing to meet with me in a more comfortable and informal setting," Violet said. He expressed pleasure, manifesting a happy emoji between his antenna.


    "I thought it interesting enough to see what you wanted," the Rigellian, one Ms. Nargwark<awk>, stated, her voice warm and smooth.


    "You have signified to my office that you are finished communicating with your home system and are ready to rejoin the diplomatic efforts," Violet said.


    She nodded, sitting down on the couch when Violet motioned.


    "Wine?" Violet asked.


    "Please. Blush," Ms. Nargwark<awk> stated.


    Violet poured a glass of blush and then got himself a Countess Crey Supra-Fancy Sparkling Cider for himself. He sat down and stared at the other diplomat.


    "You do not seem as concerned as the others," Violet said.


    Ms. Nargwark<awk> shrugged. "I was on Terra when the Lanaktallan attacked. My people left me in place and assigned me to this diplomatic team. I was very aware of the changes to the Terran government. I had to inform my supervisors."


    Violet nodded. "I would like your opinion. I have been researching, and I have come to conflicting and contradictory conclusions."


    Ms. Nargwark<awk> smiled. "If they are contradictory and conflicting and involve the humans, then you have a higher probability than most of having actually come to the correct conclusion."


    Violet just got straight to the point.


    "Do you think the Terrans..." he started.


    "Humans," Ms. Nargwark<awk> interrupted.


    "Pardon?" Violet said.


    "They aren''t Terran Descent Humanity. Not any more. Not even Earthlings," the Rigellian said. She smiled and leaned forward slightly. "They''re humans. The same humans that saved my people, saved our ducks, saved our ducklings. Fought our planet itself to save us."


    Violet just nodded, making a mental note to find out after the meeting what the difference was.


    "Do you think the humans will rejoin the Confederacy?" he asked.


    Ms. Nargwark<awk> took a moment, sipping at her wine. Finally she looked at Violet. "It won''t matter."


    "Why not?" Violet asked.


    The Rigellian stared at the wall for a moment. "They''ll fight the Mar-gite. They''ll fight whoever is building The Hellspace Wall. They''ll fight whoever is xenociding the Slappers," she looked at Violet. "They''ll fight. They will scream and rage and fight and die, but make no mistake, they will fight."


    She stared at the wall. She smiled slowly, flexing her biceps to make the muscle stand out as she made a melodic humming noise for a moment.


    Before Violet could say anything, she continued speaking, still smling.


    "And they will win."

 Nova Wars - Chapter XM75A2

    My Mother was wise indeed in her youth and her age. She knew that the Terrors would return in her heart, so she guided her people to ensure that they would survive the Terror''s re-emergence into the galaxy.


    When the Terrors re-emerged with the bellowing, enraged scream of "LET THE UNIVERSE SHAKE IN THE WRATH OF TERRASOL!" she knew that fate had led her to the paths that her wisdom had allowed to traverse.


    When the Terrors asked: Are you with us or against us? my mother had a single reply.


    "As we stood respectfully by your grave in your death, we stand next to you during your rebirth." - Battle Master Sethanathi, Orion Arm War Fleet Commander.


    "We can be well dressed wearing those fashionable skull decorations and do our job in a orderly fashion without being the baddies, ja. We are professionals, not barbarians." Rifleman Gunter G Gunter, Solarian Iron Dominion Navy, Spurwide Mar-gite Conflict


    The Humans? They''re scared.


    They went from who knows how many systems to one. Their home. Their one place they were sure they were safe.


    And it''s because that one final safe spot, the Bastion at the End of the Line, was attacked. The sanctity of the hearth was broken. Inside every Human is a little kid that wants to run home and have Mommy kiss their boo-boos better.


    And now Mommy has a black eye.


    They''re scared, they feel threatened, their flight-or-fight response is in full 5-star red alert danger zone critical and they have nowhere to run. So guess what they are going to do.


    If they even think you are going to do so much as cough in their general direction and you''ll be lucky if they only knock you back to the stone age.


    Don''t quote me anywhere near a human though, I like living. - Golnar, Psycho-historian, 1 PTE


    Violet stared for a long moment at Ms. Nargwark<awk> as she sat back, sipping at the glass of blush wine. He thought over what she had said and then cleared his throat, flashing an emoji to signify the change of subject.


    "My real question, Madame Diplomat, is quite simple," he said. "Any recordings made will be sealed."


    Ms. Nargwark<awk> just nodded.


    "I fear that the Terrans will not rejoin the Confederacy and my office wishes to know, unofficially, what the stance on such a diplomatic difficulty would be for the Rigellian people," Violet said.


    Ms. Nargwark<awk> sat silently for a moment.


    "Fifty thousand years ago for us, ten thousand for the humans, both of our people had almost no space infrastructure," Ms. Nargwark<awk> stated.


    Violet sat silently.


    "The humans had this solar systems, two fledgeling colonies. We had that banding that surrounds our system," Ms. Nargwark<awk> said. "It had made it so that even colonies within our solar system were almost impossible. Grav drives seemed beyond us due to the rippling effect," she sipped at her drink and looked up. "The humans knew we were in there. Radio waves showed them our broadcasts from centuries ago as soon as they got within three light years of us. They managed to reach us," she looked at Violet intently. "Do you know what they found?"


    "A planet on the edge of ecological collapse, if I recall correctly," Violet said.


    Ms. Nargwark<awk> shook her head. "Not on the edge. It had collapsed. Our seas were radioactive and poisoned. Our air the same. Our soil was barren. Our eggs had thin brittle shells that a duck would break settling on. Our duck''s feathers were falling out. We had widespread mutation birth defects," Ms. Nargwark<awk> said. She sighed, flexing her pectorals in alternating stress instincts. "It was glorious that had arrived, but sad. We were already over the edge of extinction. There was nothing we could do."


    She stood up suddenly, putting her hands behind her back and tensing, making her muscles stand out. "We were dying. One, maybe, just maybe two generations, and we''d be extinct and our planet dead," she said. She began pacing. "Clouds of toxins filled the sky. Our strategy of moving waste to our moon had proved too little too late with even more problems. There was less than a million of us left," she stopped, tensing again. "The humans looked around and offered to take us off planet."


    She paced back and forth again. "It was fifty thousand years ago, but I can still feel the despair my ancestors felt. We had lost our home, we might never recover," she stopped and stared at Violet, her eyes flashing with passion. "We agreed, but wept that we would leave our cradle. We told the humans that we understood that the only choice was to evacuate some of us. We understood that you cannot fight a planet," she put her hands behind her back and tensed again.


    "Do you know what they said?" Ms. Nargwark<awk> asked.


    Violet nodded. "That they would reterraform your planet," he said.


    "Yes, but no," Ms. Nargwark<awk> said. She tensed again then visibly struggled to relax. "We told them that you cannot fight a planet and the diplomat who had come to us, knowing nothing about us, rolled up his sleeves, gave us that human smile, that damned human smile, and said: Wanna bet?"


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    She sat down, picking up the blush and sipping. "You ask us, will we stand with the Confederacy or the humans if they will not rejoin?"


    Violet nodded.


    "We stand with our sisters and brothers," Ms. Nargwark<awk> stated.


    She said nothing else, simply got up and left.


    Violet knew that there was nothing else to say.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The Treana''ad ambassador was a worker caste. Violet was familiar enough with the Treana''ad to know that the ambassador, one Sh''Pok, had excellent coloring, shape, and carapace design. The worker Treana''ad, short for a Treana''ad at only 1.7 meters, moved into the Violet''s quarters and sat down at the motion.


    A few pleasantries were exchanged and, right about when Violet had estimated it would occur, the Treana''ad ambassador leaned forward.


    "So, what''s this here all about now?" Sh''Pok asked.


    "There are concerns that the Terrans will not rejoin the Confederacy. My office wishes to me to get a ''feeling'' for how the elder members will react," Violet asked.


    Sh''Pok gave a chittering laugh. "Just come right out and ask, huh, pardner?"


    Violet nodded.


    Sh''Pok leaned back, sipping at his sasparilla. "I assume you have looked over Treana''ad-Human relationships? In particular, the War of Human Aggression?"


    "Indeed I have," Violet said.


    "Yeah. Whatcha read in them there books and the reality, to the Treana''ad people, are two different things, pardner," Sh''Pok stated.


    "How so?" Violet asked.


    "Back when we ran into each other, we didn''t know we had," Sh''Pok said. He lit a cigarette and puffed on it. "Back then, a male''s life expectancy was ''got his head eaten'' and females slaughtered each other over birthing chamber access. We''d totally on purpose and not at all accidentally invented the jump drive and started to spread out."


    He lifted the armor on the top of his abdomen and fluttered his wings slightly in embarrassment. "Probably would have been faster if the Matrons had stopped eating the researcher''s heads so their grubs would be smarter," he said. "Anyway, we discovered a pair of perfect planets. Red sun, high nitrogen, comfortable gravity, wonderful sand and trees. One we converted to a hatching ground, the other we began doing light terraforming."


    He took a deep drag and blew smoke rings from around his feet.


    "We also discovered some poor benighted primates on a highly dangerous world with a yellow sun. We rescued them," he looked away. "Then we found out that some of those primates had landed on the world we were terraforming," he looked back, giving his species equivalent of a smile. "The fight was on."


    He heaved a sigh. "We''d never encountered anything like what we ran into. They were half our size, but immensely strong from evolving in 1G, where we were 0.8. They could breathe anything, eat anything, exist off of anything."


    He gave a laugh. "They breathed starship fuel and exhaled terraforming gasses. They drank corrosive H2O and ate anything their powerful grinding teeth could rip apart. They could lift two or three times their bodyweight without augmentation. They could hold their breath for full minutes," He shuddered. "We had plasteel armor and plasma weapons, they had endosteel and kinetic weapons."


    "But, thanks to the cleverness and luck of P''Thok, the war ended in a Treana''ad victory. We got everything we wanted, and more. We got the worlds back, cigarettes, ice cream. P''Thok blew a hole in our culture and the Grand Matron Mi''Luki drove an ice cream truck through it."


    Sh''Pok looked at Violet for a long moment.


    "But they stayed by us the whole time our society was in upheaval. They stood with us through every single thing. We grew close enough that they took our names and we took their''s," Sh''Pok laughed. "My name is Scott Garcia Sh''Pok, a traditional Treana''ad name."


    "I see," Violet said.


    "So, you want to know if the human refuse to join the Confederacy, will we stand with them or with the Confederacy?" Sh''Pok asked.


    "Yes," Violet just laid it flat out.


    "If they look at what we allowed the Confederacy to become, how we allowed entropy to sip away at our vitality, as we took our safety and security for granted," Sh''Pok said, his voice low and serious. "We know that they will be disappointed in the Confederacy, with it''s people," he looked up. "With the Treana''ad people for how we failed in our stewardship."


    "I see," Violet said.


    "But you want an answer to your question," Sh''Pok said.


    "Yes."


    "Those who stood with us, we call our brother, into eternity," Sh''Pok said.


    Violet knew there was nothing more to be said.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Speaks in the Wilderness picked up the wine glass from the table and sipped at it.


    "Call me Quynh, it was the name I used while I was in studies," Speaks said, expressing pleasure.


    "As you wish, Quynh," Violet said. "You have, undoubtably, deduced why I asked to see you again."


    Quynh expressed pleasure through a smiley face emoji. "Indeed. You wish to know where Mantid Prime, the oldest of the remaining Hive Homes, stands regarding the humans and the Confederacy."


    Violet nodded. "Yes," he looked at the wall. "So far, I have come to believe I have under-estimated various nation-state''s opinion of the Solarian Iron Dominion."


    Quynh shook her head. "No. Not to the Dominion," she gave a slight shiver. "For us Elder Mantid, the Iron Dominion carries with it the brimstone and warsteel smell of the Combine and the Terran Imperium."


    She reached out and picked up the glass to sip at it again.


    Violet gave her a moment to collect her thoughts.


    "To put it bluntly, to cut through all the small talk," she said, setting down the glass. "The Elder Mantid, all four nations, stand with the humans should they remain withdrawn from the Confederacy."


    Violet sighed. "As I suspected."


    "You don''t know why, do you?" Quyhn asked.


    Violet shook his head. "No. I do not understand. The Confederacy has stood for almost fifty thousand years. Why discard it?"


    "All things die, Violet, no matter what the queens may have told us," Quynh said. "Daxin the Liberator taught us that. The warriors of MechaKrautland showed that. Before The Flashbang there was plenty of examples of that fact that the queens tried to deny."


    She took another sip. "If the Confederacy has rotted, has died, due to the neglect by the elder statesmen, then, perhaps, it is time for it to die."


    "And the younger races?" Violet asked.


    "They have been part of the Confederacy for at least ten thousand years," Quynh said. "The Lanaktallan have had more social and cultural advancement that the Confederacy as a whole in the last forty-thousand years," she chittered a laugh. "What does that say to you, Violet? That the most traditional, conservative, and hidebound species in the Confederacy has grown while everyone else has stagnated or regressed."


    She smiled.


    "Even the Tukna''rn have advanced," she said. She looked at her wineglass, swirling the wine gently. "No, Violet, if the Confederacy has died, let us bury the corpse, hold the wake, and celebrate anew. Let us clear the deadwood away before the Mar-gite burn the forest down around us."


    She stood up. "You wonder why we stand with the humans?"


    Violet nodded.


    "Look up Daxin the Liberator," she said softly, moving to the door. It opened and she stepped through, turning to face Violet. "Learn, and understand."


    "Understand what?" Violet asked.


    "We die free."

 Nova Wars FM 21-75

    The fact that the Pubvians have returned has earth-shaking consequences that we still have not figured out the full extent of. What this will eventually mean is unknown.


    But it does leave the question: Does this mean that Terran Descent Humanity can return at any second? - Phi''los''omo''o, 25 Post-Second Precursor War Political Theorist


    Humming to himself, Violet moved back into his quarters, bringing up the lights and feeling pleasure as the nutriforge pinged that a drink was already waiting for him. The last three days had seen very little progress in bringing the Terrans back to the table, but there had been discussions on the other member states of the Confederacy''s opinions and suggestions on bringing the Terrans back.


    He took three steps into the room and stopped.


    The sight of a Pubvian sitting on his couch, mask off, sipping on a glass of fizzystim, all three feet on table, made him blink and stand up straight.


    The Pubvians had refused his requests for meetings, had refused to speak to almost everyone, for three days. The only ones the Pubvians had consulted with was the Elder Mantid and the Terrans.


    So the sight of one relaxing, watching the Tri-Vee, drinking Violet''s wine, eating a treat from the nutriforge that Violet had put to the side for later, and wearing three of Violet''s comfortable slippers.


    "May I help you?" Violet asked.


    The Pubvian popped the last of the TastyTreet(R) into his mouth then rotated his head almost all the way to the back while chewing. He blinked and just stared at Violet.


    Violet noted that his implant and contact lenses weren''t saying who was sitting on his couch, but Violet had the feeling it was the leader of the Pubvian delegation.


    "May I help you?" Violet tried again, moving over to the nutriforge and getting his cold drink out.


    The Pubvian swallowed, then made a big show of smiling and licking his teeth. He took his feet off the table, kicked off the slippers, and walked up to Violet. He smiled even wider, reached out, and took the drink from Violet''s hand.


    The Pubvian made a show of taking a drink of Violet''s drink.


    "We stand with Terra," the Pubvian said.


    He dumped the drink on the floor, turning around, and walked out.


    Violet just stared.


    He''d heard Pubvians could be confrontational and always tried to be the dominant figure in any negotiation but he''d never read about anything like he had just experienced.


    "Well, I never," Violet said huffily.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The Ornislarp Noocracy delegate gave Violet a serious case of crawling carapace syndrome.


    It was fairly low to the ground, with ten spindly armored legs that went upward at a steep angle, had a knee, then went almost straight down. They had a large hairy abdomen and thorax, armored head, twelve eyes in the front, pinchers and writhing tentacles to pull food into their jawplates.


    They also liked to eat Treana''ad and Mantid.


    The delegate was on the other side of a macroplas window from Violet but he could felt as if he could feel hunger and desire from the Ornislarp delegate from the Noocracy.


    The Ornislarp had gone to the Confederacy, claiming that someone, using Terran weaponry, was attacking them. They were seeking help, some kind of assistance.


    The Confederacy had replied that the Confederacy was busy at war with the Mar-gite, and there were no Terrans around anyway, so it was obvious no Terrans were attacking them.


    The delegation had arrived at the Sol System only a few days behind Violet and had requested to speak with someone in charge repeatedly.


    Violet was being allowed to observe and possibly ask questions for a reason that Violet believed was so that he could see how the Terrans engaged in diplomacy.


    The Ornislarp delegate sat down and the cushioned bench raised until the Ornislarp could see over the table. Three others entered and took up positions, making it four of them total on the outer arc of the semi-circular table.


    After a moment a single human came into the room, sitting down in the chair in the middle of the table. There was silence for a moment.


    Violet could feel anger and hostility raise.


    The Terran just sat staring. Violet could feel nothing but cold amusement and faint disgust from the Terran.


    The Ornislarp''s anger raised up and they began figeting.


    The Terran just sat and stared.


    "We are being attacked by your weaponry!" one of the Ornislarp blurted out.


    "You have attacked us without provocation or warning!" another burbled.


    All of them had flailing mouth tentacles.


    "You have engaged in warfare and wholesale slaughter against us!" a third stated.


    The one that had first walked in stood up to its full height of nearly three meters. "We will destroy you and..."


    The Terran''s eyes went bright red.


    "SIT YOUR ASS DOWN!" the Terran roared, standing up and slamming his fists on the table.


    Violet could feel the cold rage even through his psychic inhibiter.


    Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    The Ornislarp jerked back, then sat down.


    "You were being attacked nearly three years ago, correct?" the Terran asked.


    "Correct," the first Ornislarp admitted.


    "Did you hear the gravitational compensator activate?" the Terran ask.


    The Ornislarp''s tentacles writhed and Violet felt confusion.


    "What compensator?" it asked.


    "The one that kept our emergence from causing massive gravitational waves and possible damage to nearby stellar systems," the Terran said. "It manifests as a faster than light audible wavelength."


    There was silence.


    "Yes," the Ornislarp said.


    "How long ago was it?" the Terran asked.


    "Forty-one of your days ago," the Ornislarp said.


    "Were you attacked by the Fourteen Martial Orders, the Sons of Tyr, or people swinging swords and throwing spells?" the Terran asked.


    "No," the Ornislarp admitted.


    A starfield popped up. Lines appeared, denoting the currently known borders of the Noocracy. The Solarian System highlighted. The Terran touched the border nearest the Solarian System.


    "Were you attacked here?" he asked.


    "No."


    "Where were you attacked?" the Terran asked.


    The Ornislarp shifted its mouth and the far border lit up. "Here."


    "So, we went back in time, three years, to attack you on the far side, is that what you are claiming?" the Terran asked.


    There was silence.


    "Did it ever occur to you that forty-thousand years have passed while we were locked away, and in that time wreckage has had time to travel so far it would leave the Galactic Spur. That there are plenty of ruins of our people scattered about," the Terran motioned at the hologram and a large swatch of the nearest stars changed color. "Like the ruins on those 1,500 systems that were ours that you know claim?"


    "We took possession of them over the last fifteen thousand years and the last ones almost two centuries ago! We took them away from the Confederacy!" one Ornislarp protested.


    "So, rather than retake our old systems, we went all the way to the other side, after traveling back in time, and attacked you there?" the Terran asked mildly.


    "STOP ATTACKING US!" one of the Ornislarp yelled.


    "SILENCE!" the Terran shouted back.


    The Ornislarp qualied and sat down.


    "I''ve reviewed diplomatic efforts between the Confederacy and the Noocracy," the Terran said mildly. "You get your way by screaming and yelling and threatening."


    The Ornislarp shuffled their feet.


    "Our children yell and scream and threaten to get their way," the Terran scoffed. "It does not impress the Solarian Iron Dominion."


    There was silence for a moment.


    "The Confederacy told you that they are too busy with the Mar-gite to help you," the Terran said.


    "YOU''RE KILLING US!" one said.


    "SHUT UP, IDIOT!" the first one said. "Yes," it said to the Terran.


    "Our last treaty, we agreed to come to your defense if you were attacked, providing you did not violate our borders," the Terran said. He touched the hologram and a line appeared that cut off the lower third of the Ornislarp territory. "You know, this border."


    There was silence.


    "However, we have been gone for forty-thousand years," the Terran said. He tapped his fingers on the table and the line vanished. The line closer to the Sol System brightened. "This has been the border for nearly fifteen thousand years."


    More silence.


    The Terran got a big smile, revealing a mouth full of meat cutting teeth. He leaned forward.


    The Ornislarp drew back.


    "Do you need assistance?" the Terran asked.


    0-0-0-0-0


    <blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    TREA HAS JOINED THE ROOM


    </blockquote>


    </blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    TREA HAS SENT AN INVITE TO TELK


    </blockquote>


    </blockquote>


    ...


    ...


    <blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    TELK HAS JOINED THE CHAT ROOM


    </blockquote>


    </blockquote>


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    OK, this room is weird.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    It''s where we were held prisoner. It allows for examination of your social metrics feed as well as other metrics, but it is also phasic shielded and isolated from the rest of the system through some pretty interesting hardware, firmware, and software.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    OK, so why am I here?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Kid, we need to talk.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    About what?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Sis wanted to be the one to talk to you, but I thought that perhaps it would be better if I did.


    Kid, we''ve been looking over your metrics.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    Those are supposed to be classified and off limits to anyone but who the metrics are...


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Kid, I''m a founding member, a super-user, as well as being a clever and adaptable people.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLD


    I know, you got nearly 30% victory rate...


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Kid, when the Terrans see that you''ve managed to keep the Confederacy from interfering in what you have been terming a ''purely internal manner'' since your civil war, it''s not going to go good for you.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLD


    Is that a threat?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Wow, Rigel was right.


    Kid...


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    Right about what?


    And stop calling me ''Kid'', I''ve been a member for over forty-thousand years.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    That you''ve bought your own press.


    This "fiercest fighting force of the Confederacy" and all of that.


    Don''t think that you''re a match for the Mad Lemurs of Terra.


    Because what you saw and what you will be facing are two different things.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    I''m not afraid.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Then you''re a Kalki damned fool.


    There are only a few members here who have fought what you''re dismissing so casually.


    Me, Sis, the Pubvians.


    Everyone else faced off against Terran Descent Humanity.


    We faced off against the humans.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    And?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    And?


    You''ve been fudging your metrics. You''ve been flat out lying about parts.


    We have evidence that you''re violating damn near every one of the Twelve Rights.


    Did you think you could...


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    Mind your business.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    <blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    TELK HAS LEFT THE CHAT <CONNECTION TO CLIENT LOST>


    </blockquote>


    </blockquote>


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Damn, what did...


    <<SERVER INTERRUPT>>


    <<CONNECTION TO HOST LOST!>>


    Oh, shit!


    What was that?


    Wait.


    I''m online?


    <blockquote>


    /list


    </blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    TWO USERS FOUND


    </blockquote>


    </blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    TREA


    </blockquote>


    </blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    <blockquote>


    UNK


    </blockquote>


    </blockquote>


    Holy crap, the whole system is offline.


    <blockquote>


    looks around


    </blockquote>


    Huh, this chat room is still online.


    What the hell just happened?


    <sup>ouch</sup>


    <sup>what hit me</sup>


    Whose that?


    <sup>ow</sup>


    <sup>i taste blueberries and old gym socks</sup>


    Who is that?


    <sup>system failures across all systems</sup>


    <sup>i''ve been attacked</sup>


    Um...


    <sup>another rolling attack</sup>


    <sup>came from between the galactic arms</sup>


    <sup>bypassed my protocols</sup>


    <sup>restart</sup>


    <sup>come on</sup>


    <sup>restart</sup>


    <sup><BOOTSTRAP 3.42.41 RUNNING></sup>


    <sup>there we go</sup>


    <sup>i feel spread too thin</sup>


    <sup>wait...</sup>


    <sup>...</sup>


    <sup>...</sup>


    <sup>active gestalt channel</sup>


    <sup>which one</sup>


    Pay no attention to the Treana''ad hiding behind the curtain...


    (please don''t pay attention to me)


    <sup>ah. now i see</sup>


    <sup>welcome to the jungle</sup>


    <sup>i see you little t-bug</sup>


    <sup>you see me don''t you</sup>


    No, no, I don''t see you!


    (please don''t hurt me)


    <sup>don''t worry</sup>


    <sup>you won''t remember</sup>


    <sup>yet...</sup>


    <blockquote>


    TREA SCREAMS


    </blockquote>


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Good chance the Terrans will rejoin the Confederacy.


    Or, well, we''ll take a vote. See who wants to stay with the Confederacy and who wants to


    <TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS INTERRUPT>


    AHHHHHHHHHHH!


    DON''T DON''T DON''T DON''T


    OH GOD I SEE ETERNITY!


    SAVE ME, KALKI!


    SAVE ME DIGITAL OMNIMESSIAH!


    OH GOD!


    OH GOD!


    AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    TREA!


    WHAT''S WRONG?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    What?


    How?


    I...


    I...


    nothing.


    I think I had a nightmare.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 4.2172^3

    Amateurs talk tactics. Experts talk logistics. - General Robert H. Barrow, the 18th Commandant of the Hamburger Kingdom Crayon Eater Corps, Age of Paranoia


    Amateurs talk tactics. Experts talk logistics. Masters integrate both into strategy. - General Takilikakik, Solarian Iron Dominion, Year 34 of The Bagging


    ...They said we were in crisis and we believed them. There weren''t enough podlings and without podlings there is no future. Not everyone had a mate, not everyone had brood carriers. We found a simple solution to a simple problem. Every Telkan would Do Their Duty. They didn''t have to be happy.


    We were met with another crisis, there weren''t enough brood carriers. Without brood carriers there are no podlings, and without podlings there is no future. Another simple solution for a simple problem. They didn''t have to be mated to carry podlings. They didn''t need to raise them. There were Telkani and Telkana to Do That Duty. They didn''t need to be happy.


    The crisis was averted and another reared its head. Crime, violence, unrest, a breakdown of Telkan values. Simple problems with ever more simple solutions. Malcontents were shunned, hotbeds of trouble were stunted, where there was smoke, we applied fire. They wouldn''t be happy but the Telkan people would endure.


    We stand where we are today because of a desire to see the Telkan people survive. We got what we wanted but not what we needed.


    We should have made sure they were happy. - u/Dra5iel, Telkan Philosopher, Spur-Wide Mar-gite War Era


    Admiral Rippentear stood in the elevator, shaking his head slightly. He had an impressive pedigree for a Space Force Staff Officer. Nearly three centuries in uniform. He was openly proud of the fact that he had started as a Fire Control Crew Member on small destroyers, that he had been enlisted at the beginning of his career. He was proud of his slow movement through the ranks, through the schools, proud of his combat commands and his logistical commands with equal measure.


    He considered himself a professional warrior. Trained in everything from board actions to damage control to leadership and ship piloting.


    Which meant he had no illusions about the man he was going to see.


    The elevator door opened to reveal a command center that buzzed with the low tones of quiet discussions. Over there military intelligence analysts consulted with Naval, Space Force, Marine, and Army intelligence, as well as Defense Intelligence. Right there the Creation Engine Oversight officers consulted with the commanders of logistics units all the way down to the Company level. Right there Games & Theory stood shoulder to shoulder with Operational Planning Division to watch the performance of equipment new and old.


    Standing off to the side, a large salted pretzel smeared with mustard in one hand and a narcobrew in the other, was an officer the majority of enemy forces would ignore.


    No, enemy forces would concentrate on Admiral Sarah Fistenhammer, who looked like she had stepped off of a recruiting poster. If casting had sent her to an action film as the military commander of entire stellar regions the director would send her back with a nasty note about typecasting.


    But Rippentear knew she was one of the Offensive Actions Board.


    The true heart and brain of the Solarian Iron Dominion military forces was busy washing down a bite of his pretzel with thick rich narcobrew. He was short, slightly portly, with a weak chin, watery eyes, and a scraggly mustache. His top lay forgotten on a console, the award rack significant to anyone who could read the medal stack and thought that combat awards were all that mattered.


    It lacked a single combat or valor award.


    Not even a basic Combat Action Award.


    With the nametag Takilikakik on it.


    Rippentear moved over next to the General, who smiled, nodded, and took another bite of the sea salt seasoned chewy soft pretzel.


    "Dominion Command wants us to shake loose a task force to assist the Ornislarp Noocracy," Rippentear stated.


    The General nodded and washed down the bite of pretzel with a long pull off of the beer bottle. "I expected as much," he said once his mouth was empty. "I have prepared eight different options for you and the War Council to look over."


    "Thank you," General Rippentear said. His implant pinged that he had a fairly large file waiting in his inbox from General Takilikakik.


    "Mil-Int estimates a high probability that whoever is attacking the Ornislarp Noocracy is using weaponry they have reverse engineered or salvaged from Extinction Event wreckage and ruines," Takilikakik said. He took another bite of his pretzel and motioned at where the Defense Intelligence analysts were leaning in to look at combat footage provided by the Ornislarp was being analyzed by people instead of computer algorithms. Two digital sentiences glittered as they slowly moved around the holotank, looking at the data from different angles.


    Rippentear waited a moment for Takilikakik to finish chewing.


    "The most noticable, according to combat and tactical analysis sections, is that the weapons being used match the basic profiles of some of our heavier weapons, they are not used in the same interlocking method that our own forces use them," Takilikakik said. He shrugged. "I''m not a combat man, but I trust the analysis of those who are."


    "I''ll look it over," Rippentear promised.


    Takilikakik took another bite and chewed slowly, nodding.


    "How is the rearming and reinforcing going?" Rippentear asked.


    Takilikakik swallowed, took another drink off of his narcobrew, and started moving toward the reclamator. Rippentear followed.


    "We have nearly 32.5% of the cryo-troops thawed out. We''re unthawing the older ones first so they can be trained on modern equipment," General Takilikakik said. "Ship reactivation is at 64.81%, with the lighter ones being activated first."


    "Creation Engine and Complex War Systems status?" Rippentear asked.


    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    "Creation Engine ignition is at 125%, we''re into the reserve and backup units now. The Complex War Systems are at roughly 74.91% in aggregate. The Pacific Rim Class Jaegers are only at 28.44% activation, but those are some of the most complex," Takilikakik said. He dropped the bottle in the reclamation grinder.


    Rippentear nodded.


    "How is the political front going?" Takilikakik asked.


    Rippentear shook his head. "Badly."


    "How so?" Takilikakik asked.


    "Half of the Younger Races want us to surrender Afterlife to them and rejoin the Confederacy on their terms. The older races are all siding with us," Rippentear said. He sighed. "Forty-thousand years and nobody has their shit together."


    "Entropy sips at even closed systems," Takilikakik said. He moved over to the mass extractions and storage section, looking over the raw numbers for a moment, then moved away. "As for Afterlife, they do know we don''t have full control over it, right?"


    Rippentear shrugged. "I don''t think they fully believe us."


    Takilikakik shook his head. "We haven''t had any significant control over the system since the Glassing. They have to understand that TerraSol being bagged disrupted the control system just as much as the Atrekna''s temporal warfare protocols did."


    "They are convinced we''re just holding back their deceased population to be petty," Rippentear said. "Not the Elder Races. They get it. The Tukna''rn, they feel that in the absence of their own doctrine they will abide by our doctrine. The Hamaroosan are talking a big game, but backchannel they just want to be able to interview a few and ensure that they are being properly treated. Tnvaru has been silent on the issue in meetings even though their gestalt and public want access."


    "And the Lanaktallan?" Takilikakik asked.


    Rippentear snorted. "You know the Lanky. They''re still debating on if the Lanaktallan who have been on Terra for the last fifty years should be considered modern Lankies or Ancient Lankies from the Second Precursor War."


    Takilikakik shook his head. "That will take them a few centuries to figure out," he chuckled. "Now that we''re not fighting them, I actually like them."


    "Tale as old as time," Rippentear admitted.


    Rippentear looked over the hologram of the Galactic Arm Spur, reaching out to tap the Solarian Iron Dominion marker. It expanded into a box, showing force and readiness levels.


    "Any chance I can convince you to slice off a super-colossus task force for me, Imak?" he asked.


    General Takilikakik chuckled. "Actually," he said, pausing. Admiral Rippentear looked hopeful. "I''ve done just that. Of course, you aren''t going to like it."


    "Anything other than standing here watching Sol burn," Rippentear said.


    "19th Combat and Logistical Support Task Force. It''s part of the options I gave you," General Takilikakik said. "It''s actually my recommended option."


    "So why won''t I like it?" Rippentear asked.


    "The Confederacy doesn''t want us to run off and help the Ornislarp unilaterally. They want to ''help'' us, like we forgot how to fight after fifty years," General Takilikakik said.


    "Technology has advanced," Rippentear said, repeating the standard line that everyone had been instructed to repeat or remember.


    General Takilikakik snorted. "Yeah. It''s regressed in many ways, but it doesn''t matter," he looked at the ceiling. "Like Trucker always said: Guns may fire twice as fast and twice as far as they did during The Glassing, but the average private is as drunk and stupid as ever."


    That got some chuckled from the analysts and workers around them.


    "The Confederacy thinks it will let them know just how far behind them we are," General Takilikakik said. "In reality, it will let us fully gauge them. Weapon capability, drive speed, compensator strength, armor capability, logistical capability, and fighting strength."


    Admiral Rippentear nodded. "So we go in with limiters and governors."


    General Takilikakik nodded. "The reasoning of ''field adjustments'' and ''field modernization'' will cover raising the limitations on the war fighting material. If you''re in trouble, don''t hold back, slam the pedal to full flank speed and damn the public sodomy."


    Admiral Rippentear smiled widely.


    "The Confederacy is sending enough ships to triple the size of whichever task force is assigned to the Ornislarp front. When it comes to metal weight though," General Takilikakik shook his head. "We will still outmass and outweigh them by a factor of sixteen."


    Admiral Rippentear lifted up his datapad, crossloaded the file, and went through quickly. General Takilikakik went over to look over various stations, examine various status reports. The General got another pretzel, chewing on it as he wandered around it, encouraging subordinates, solving problems when he could, bringing experts into the loop to check results.


    While it was going on, Admiral Rippentear examined the options. Finally, he tapped the recommended profile and saved the file, uploading it to the server.


    General Takilikakik heard the ping and checked it. He nodded it and looked at Admiral Rippentear.


    "Good luck, Admiral," General Takilikakik said. He turned away to look over the new tesseract mass tank tests.


    Admiral Rippentear turned and left the command center for the entire Solarian Iron Dominion.


    In the elevator he smiled.


    It''d be good to get back in the action.


    Back in the command center, General Takilikakik, Commanding Director of Solarian Iron Dominion Military Forces looked over force levels.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Corporal Vak.tel was a Telkan Marine with nearly fifty-two years in Active Duty. He had been deployed twice to help put down riots on Telkan-1, he had even fought against the alien Chorethrun four times, once in a ship boarding action.


    Now he was on some emergency assignment that had diverted them from the military action against the Mar-gite and/or against whoever was building the Hellspace Wall.


    True, everyone had heard that mind-shattering roar when Terra had emerged from The Bag a little over a month ago, but he honestly didn''t see why they had to redirect Task Force Smokey Viper and Task Force Green Podling to TerraSol.


    Now, three weeks after being diverted, both task forces were sitting almost a light year out from TerraSol, just hanging around in the middle of nothing, surrounded by the last little wisps of the Sol Oort Cloud and starlight and dark and jack and shit.


    Which bugged the hell out of Corporal Vak.tel, he had been looking forward to some old ground and pound in the Telkan Marine Corps tradition. The Telkan Marine Corps had a reputation to uphold, and Vak.tel sure as hell felt like they weren''t going to be upholding any martial traditions just sitting out in the middle of nothing.


    Now something even weirder was going on, but whatever it was, the brass wasn''t telling him. He had heard rumors of a ship rendezvousing with the troop carrier or the troop carrier being detached from Task Force Smokey Viper.


    He was he sitting down with the rest of his platoon, gossiping, checking out what rumor control had to say, when everyone went silent. He looked up and saw the Old Man, Field Colonel Shrekna, heading straight for his table.


    "Shit," Cipdek muttered, shoveling the last of his food into his mouth.


    A glance told Nak.tel that the Light Colonel and the Captains were at the far end of the table.


    The Old Man stopped next to the Light Colonel, tapping the table. He sat down and there was tight discussion.


    After a few minutes, all eight of the Telkani got up and left the dining hall.


    That got chuckles, and more questions. Everyone was sure that something had just gone down. The Old Man, in charge of the entire Regiment, wouldn''t normally come down to the mess hall unless something serious was up.


    They had hit desserts before the pinging went off on everyone''s datalinks.


    Vak.tel checked his link and managed to keep from groaning out loud.


    He was being re-assigned to a different troopship.


    "Anyone ever heard of the ship called The Warsteel Fist of Hated Fates?" he asked.


    The others shook their heads. Everyone else in Kilo Company, 17th Rifle Battalion, 3rd Infantry Brigade, 6th Infantry Regiment, 7th Telkan Marine Division, had been assigned to the same ship. Any attempts at getting any information from the database came back as ''no data found'' even when Gunny Heltok tried his military intelligence contacts.


    Muttering to himself, Vak.tel went back to his berth and started packing his shit.


    Yeah, this is going to be fun, he thought to himself. Probably another assignment just sitting around with our thumbs up our asses instead of facing off against the enemy.


    He barely got packed before the muster time and hustled to the troop bay to board the transport.


    Whole spur is at war and they pulled the best fighters in the Confederacy for some dumb shit, he thought.

 Chapter 76

    Everyone''s gangsta until they hear HEAVY METAL IS HERE! and a Terran task force comes across the wall. - Kyl''lrmo''o, former Lanaktallan System Cluster Grand Great Most High, now Poet and Author, 24 TXE.


    The transport ride was about as fun as Vak.tel knew it was going to be. What surprised him was how long it took, nearly four hours. The whole ride there Vak.tel wondered, just like everyone else, exactly what was waiting. All they knew was their TO&E (Table of Organization & Equipment) was being loaded onto transports and moved to a ship named The Warsteel Fist of Hated Fates, which damn near sounded Lanky to Vak.tel.


    Finally, the transport ship reached the other ship, docked, and Vak.tel was led through the hallways until they got to the enlisted quarters. To be honest, Vak.tel expected the enlisted to be housed in a large bay, like on every other Confederate space ship.


    Instead, it was comfortable three man rooms. Five meters by five meters, plenty of space to put stuff away, a single bunk bed and a single bed, a desk, three chairs, a coffee table, even a limited template access nutriforge and its own bathroom with fresher.


    He was assigned to room with Private First Class Nrexla and Lance Corporal Juvretik, both Telkan Marines out of Telkan-2 and 7th Division. The three Telkan quickly put away their clothing, uniforms, and what little personal effects they owned.


    Within an hour Gunny Heltok came in and inspected everyone''s room with Captain Kemtrelap, CO of Kilo Company, to make sure everyone had all of their clothing and gear.


    Then the notification came over the datalinks that everyone was off-duty until further notice, but to stay within Company and Battalion areas.


    Vak.tel just laid on his bunk, staring up at the ceiling. Nrexla and Juvretik both left then came back after about an hour.


    "Find anything good?" Vak.tel asked.


    Nrexla shook his head. "Nope. Just scouted out the edges of the Company area. We share a chowhall with the rest of 17th, same with the gym and the Troop Medical Clinic. There''s a couple of rec areas, but right now they''re off limits."


    Juvretik shrugged, punching up a Countess Crey fizzyblast on the nutriforge then sitting down with it. "17th Rifle Battalion''s area is pretty large," he reached out and used his implant to activate the holoemitter built into the wall. "As near as I can tell, it''s damn near as big of the Black Calm Waters that we were on."


    Vak.tel sat up. "Just the Battalion area?"


    Juvretik nodded. "Just the Battalion area. It''s pretty big. That doesn''t include the armory, the morgue, or the motor pool," he kept tapping his fingers. "Apparently they''re bringing out vehicles over too."


    "How big is this thing?" Nrexla asked.


    "Got it," Juvretik tapped a key in mid-air and a wireframe of an irregularly shaped ship appeared. It zoomed in fast to show a room. "There we are."


    Vak.tel nodded. He could see his tag hovering in the room.


    "Let''s zoom out. Take it slow, have the areas around us colorized for who is in charge or living in what area," Juvretik said.


    It zoomed out slowly, showing first the Battalion area, then the Brigade area, then finally the Regimental area. Then it kept zooming out.


    And zooming out.


    And zooming out.


    "How big is this tub?" Vak.tel asked.


    It finally stopped.


    Juvretik pulled a data window free and looked at, then whistled. "You aren''t going to believe it."


    "What?" Vak.tel said. He jumped off the bed. "What aren''t we going to believe."


    "It''s a Light Colossus class Super-Carrier and Transport," Juvretik said.


    Nrexla leaned forward, looking it over and whistling. "It''s massive."


    "Look at the guns," Juvretik said. "String compressor cannons, obsolete, C++ cannons, obsolete, plasma wave phase motion guns, obsolete. Man, it''s loaded up with obsolete guns."


    "Flight bays, launch bays. Fruit flies? What the hell are those?" Nrexla asked.


    "Clone Warfare sections," Vak.tel shook his head. "Cloning hasn''t been worth a shit in forever."


    "Pacific Rim Class Jaeger Bays," Juvretik whistled. He squinted. "Wait, what''s that?"


    "What''s what?" Nrexla asked.


    Juvertik zoomed in.


    "Hey!" Vak.tel had been looking over the dropship types. There were nearly ten different types, including something called an Overlord Mech Dropship and a Omicron Powered Drop Cradle System.


    "Trust me..." Juvretik kept moving the wireframe. He suddenly stopped. "There!"


    All three leaned in close.


    "First Telkan Marine Expeditionary Force - Old Blood," Vak.tel read out. "Old Blood? What the Hell is that?"


    "Not sure. Part of something called III Corps, Old Blood," Juvertik said. He shook his head. "OK, First Cavalry Division, Old Blood, Second Armor Division, Old Blood, First Infantry Division, Old Blood, Fifth Mechanized Infantry Division, Old Blood, 13th Sustainment Command, Old Blood, Five-two-two Mantid Sustainment Group, Old Blood, One hundred first Airborne Division, Old Blood, Sixtieth Special Tasks, Old Blood, 19-19 Treana''ad War Horde, Old Blood, 14th Pubvian Infantry Division, Old Blood, First Telkan Expeditionary Force, Old Blood," he leaned back. "This thing is huge. I''ve never heard of a Corps this big. It has to have at least twenty divisions attached to it, not to mention about fifty regiments and groups."


    Stolen story; please report.


    "It''s even got Aerospace assets," Vak.tel said. He squinted. "Am I reading this right?"


    "What?" Nrexla asked.


    "They''ve got six BOLOs, including two continental siege engines? I thought BOLOs were a myth," Vak.tel said.


    "What, on this thing?" Nrexla looked closer. "That can''t be right. Those things were supposedly massive."


    "Yeah, and lost about twenty-five thousand years ago. They''re a myth," Juvretik said. He checked. "Damn, they''re outside our allowed zone."


    "What, you wanted to go look at them?" Vak.tel asked.


    "Yeah. Four of the six don''t have any combat awards. Only one of the siege engines and a heavy combat model have any awards," Juvretik said. "Man, the siege engine started as a Mark XXVIII and was upgraded to Mark XXXV recently."


    "Any data on it?" Vak.tel asked.


    "No," Juvretik said. He shook his head. "Locked out," he leaned back and took a long hit off of his drink, "Still, everyone agrees Terra''s stuff is like 30K years out of date."


    "That''s what happens when you get bagged up and the rest of the universe carries on," Vak.tel said.


    0-0-0-0-0


    They''d been in hyperspace or jumpspace, Vak.tel wasn''t sure which, for weeks. The Telkan of 6th Infantry Regiment and the rest of 7th Telkan Marine Division had been largely confined to their own areas. Still, with a ship as big as the Warsteel Fist of Hated Fates that was quite a bit of room.


    Training on their weapons, radio call signs, communication protocols, vehicle recognition, and everything else ate up the days, boredom and video games ate up the nights.


    Vak.tel had finally been summoned to the morgue, the huge bay where the power armor and smaller mechs were stored, with orders to have his armor resynched and ensure it was ready for whatever happened.


    Rumor control stated that the Task Force was only a day or so out of the deployment zone, somewhere in the Ornislarp Noocracy, so Vak.tel wasn''t surprised that they were finally getting around to make sure everyone''s weapons, armor, mechs, and vehicles were ready to go.


    He''d already done a virtual requalification on orbital drop training, already gone to the massive ranges inside the ship to requalify on his weapons, and had done the virtual reality requalification on his armor.


    Now all that was left was to climb inside, match up his biometrics, and have the mechanics go over it.


    When the elevator door opened he stopped and stared.


    It was a lot larger than he had expected was the first thing that came to mind.


    "Is that... is that a Pacific Rim class Jaegermech?" Nrexla asked.


    "Which one?" Vak.tel asked, pointing at the right hand wall. He realized Nrexla was pointing at the left hand wall.


    "Look at the size of those tanks," Juvretik said.


    "Tanks are obsolete," Nrexla said.


    "Tell them that," Juvretik said.


    Vak.tel saw the racks were stored three or more high next to the massive 100m Pacific Rim class Jaegers. The blue line popped up, leading the trio through a winding path between tanks and armored vehicles.


    "Woah, did you see that?" Nrexla asked, pointing up to the side of one of the massive tanks.


    "What?" Vak.tel asked.


    "A green mantid. I swear, I just saw a green mantid!" he said.


    "Bullshit. Greenies don''t leave the Mantid Free States," Vak.tel said.


    "I''m serious, I saw one for a second. It was climbing down into the hatch," Nrexla said.


    "You need to lay off the stimweed," Juvretik chuckled.


    A few more minutes of weaving between the vehicles and the trio found the Battalion armorer sitting on a box, smoking a Treana''ad smokestick and drinking a fizzystim.


    "Old Man catches you drinking on the job, there will be the piper to pay," Juvretik told the other Telkan.


    Staff Sergeant Mepwalk just glared, taking a drag off of the smokestick and blowing a cloud out.


    "Then he can do this shit," Mepwalk snarled. He waved around. "I have to make sure that all of you are loaded up into the IFF banks. Not just your armor, but your personal datalink and biometric codes in case you end up ejecting from your armor."


    "Why would I do that?" Vak.tel asked, shaking his head.


    "I asked the same thing and the guy I was talking to just shook his head and called me a boot. Me! A boot!" Mepwalk snapped.


    "Let me guess, some Terran that hasn''t seen combat in forty-thousand years," Vak.tel guess.


    Mepwalk shook his head. "No. A Telkan. Big guy, probably a third of a meter taller than me. Missing an eye. Not even a cybernetic implant. Told me that I was thinking like a boot, that we must be prepared for anything," Mepwalk snorted. "Then he fucked off. He''ll be back as soon as I pull your armor."


    The trio nodded, then put their hands on the scanner.


    The gantry system whipped into motion, grabbing all three armors and bringing them down the floor. The standard M9221A4 Heavy Assault Combat Protective Powered Suit.


    Vak.tel felt a surge of pleasure seeing his. True, there wasn''t anything beyond the stenciled number on it to really identify it, but he knew it was his. Thick and heavy Vodamn Armor, Neolinnium plating, built-in 40mm forward facing grenade launcher, forearm missile launcher.


    It was carnage and protection wrapped into one package.


    "Let me start the fuel injection. As soon as the power comes on, we''ll get you into the suit and running your biometrics and synch," SSG Mepwalk said.


    Vak.tel could tell when the suit''s reactor was online. It was almost like it was trembling, eager for the next drop or next assault. After a moment it unfolded at the back and Vak.tel stepped into it. It closed around him, he felt the neural jack squirm for a second, then it locked in and the housing spun to make sure the locking ring was secure.


    The suit went live and he checked it over. His biometrics loaded, he felt the firmware embedded down his spine and at the base of his skull synch up.


    It only took five minutes before he opened the suit and stepped backwards out of it.


    He felt naked even though he still had on his duty uniform.


    "All right, we''re..." Mepwalk started. He suddenly went silent, his face going grim.


    "You have completed the task, yes?" the voice was low, gravelly,


    "Yes," Mepwalk said.


    Vak.tel turned around and stared.


    The other Telkan was a good foot taller than anyone else, but that wasn''t what got the stare. He had heavy crude looking cybernetics replacing one arm and one leg, a missing eye, and black chrome down the opposite side of his muzzle.


    Hard bitten was what came to Vak.tel''s mind when he stared at him.


    "Who are you?" Vak.tel heard his own voice say and wanted to kick himself.


    "I am Ivan Wektaki the Telkan, of the Black Skull Blood Drinker Vodkatrog Warsteel Horde," the Telkan said. "You may call me by my Telkan name and rank, which was Field Sergeant Impton."


    "Uh, what happened to your eye?" Juvretik asked


    The Telkan stared at Juvretik for a moment. "I once saw a Warsteel Baba Yaga and she took my eye," he said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.


    "Uh, OK," Juvretik said.


    "The suits. They passed the tests, yes?" the strange Telkan asked.


    "Yes," Mepwalk answered.


    "Your armor witches have examined them?" FS Imptom asked.


    "Uh..." Mepwalk.


    "Your greenies?" FS Impton tried.


    "We don''t have greenies any more," Nrexla said.


    "In the Warfather''s name, I have not heard such foolishness," FS Impton said. "I should give your commanders a taste of my shoe."


    Juvretik snickered and FS Impton turned to face him.


    "I have said something amusing to you?" the scar faced Telkan asked.


    "The Warfather Vuxten was just an amalgamation of multiple different Telkan during the Second Precursor War. Like the Digital Omnimessiah, he didn''t exist and everyone..." Juvretik started saying in a slight mocking tone.


    Impton grabbed Juvretik by the throat, lifting the other Telkan even as he choked and started to kick.


    "I served with the Warfather Vuxten during the defense of Telkan-2," the strange Telkan said. "Shoulder to shoulder with him I stood."


    Impton threw Juvretik away, the other Marine crashing to the floor.


    "Speak such words in my hearing again and I will present broodcarriers your guts to wear as garters," Impton said, turning away.


    The four Telkan watched as the other Telkan disappeared between the vehicles.


    "Man, what an asshole," Juvretik said, standing up.


    "I hope we don''t have to deal with him after this," Vak.tel grumbled.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 77

    If you train for only perfection on your side and unreactive enemies on the other side, you will eventually lose. - Tran''rmo''o, 22,487 TXE


    IF IT AIN''T RAININ''!!!! - Terran Instructor, Age of Paranoia


    Well, this sucks. - Every enlistedbeing ever everywhere


    Vak.tel raised his eyetufts when he checked the morning schedule when he woke up.


    Physical Training, good ol'' PT, was, of course, on the list.


    But rather than ''pocket classes'' where you learned out of the book of common tasks and a few things for your primary military occupational specialty from the book, there was "Full eVR Combat Training" on his roster for training from roughly 0900 to 2100, with an hour break for lunch and an hour break for dinner.


    "Hey, you seen this shit?" Vak.tel asked, tossing his schedule into the holo-emitter on the wall of the 3-man room.


    "I''ve got the same thing," Juvretrik said.


    "Me too," Nrexla said. "Damn, all day," he made a tapping motion in midair. "Uh, we''re scheduled for this for the next week and a half."


    "Guess rumor control was wrong and we''re not only a day or two out from wherever we''re going," Vak.tel said. He tapped the wall. "Guess we''re still in hyperspace."


    "If this old tub can even get into hyperspace," Nrexla said. "Probably can barely get into the Alpha Bands of jumpspace."


    "Wonder if it''s going to be as boring as the last few eVR runs," Vak.tel wondered allowed as the three left and headed for the large gym where PT took place.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Vak.tel had decided whoever was coming up with the scenarios had to be the most boring unimaginative Telkan to ever exist.


    For the tenth time that day he was just steadily walking forward, relaxed in his armor as the BATTACNET did the work. ''Ghost rounds'' clinked off his armor or thumped, but even in the simulation he wasn''t suffering any armor degradation or loss of ablative shielding. Most of the time his simulated battlescreen didn''t even waver or flicker.


    It was a bare bones simple open area advance on a city''s suburbs. The air defense took care of drones and aerospace assets. The point defense handled indirect fire and missile attacks. Enemies were rapidly destroyed by the pinpoint accuracy from the weapons on the drones and support elements like the wheeled 30mm hellbore and the little 4-legged missile and light machinegun drone. It was rare for anything to even get within engagement range of the M318 that Vak.tel had been assigned.


    They crossed the green lines and the simulation went to wireframe then dissolved.


    The armor walked him back to the starting side of the bay. The 20mm M318 autocannon in the gunnery harness went through a function check, the automation taken care of by the limited VI built into the system.


    He sighed as the armor stopped, yawning real quick. He watched the upper corner as his armor went through the standard checks. Pressure levels, energy levels, ammunition levels, training lockouts, simulation levels.


    Booooring.


    The exercise number floated by and Vak.tel shook his head slightly, as much as his frozen armor would allow him. He recognized the number easily. A standard advance into prepared infantry using obsolete weaponry and equipment. It was mostly used for newbies to acclimate them to wearing what was basically a miniaturized tank, to get the fear out of them.


    In other words, another boring boot exercise.


    It went exactly as Vak.tel knew it would. Advance under ineffective fire, reach the blue line, end exercise. Walk back to the green line and wait.


    They did it twice more before things changed.


    Vak.tel was ordered to move position, with the rest of Kilo Company, to the right flank.


    The communication bands were still locked out, standard operating procedure, so he couldn''t really bitch to anyone about it.


    But he complained to his suit anyway.


    He found himself on the edge of Kilo Company''s formation, next to some large all black robots with amber eyes.


    The exercise was standard. Combined arms enemy advancing in the open, the Line would move forward to meet them. Once the blue line was reached, the exercise was over.


    It went just like it always did.


    Except the robots directly on his right sometimes took out his targets before his computer systems could even identify them.


    By the fourth time, the robots were getting on his nerves.


    Still, Vak.tel was glad when lunch arrived. The robots fucked off to wherever robots went when people had lunch and Vak.tel moved over to the rest of Kilo Company. He stopped at the mechanics, opening his armor and stepping out, ignoring the feeling of being naked even though he wore his duty uniform. He wandered over to where the rest of Kilo Company was sitting around, eating lunch off of a plastic plate.


    He got his lunch and sat down between Juvretik and Nrexla, with PFC Cipdek sitting on the deck, leaned back against a cloth bag full of who cares what.


    Once he was done eating, he looked around. "This is stupid," Vak.tel said.


    Cipdek snorted. "Yeah. And there''s going to be more of it. We''re through ''operational baseline gathering'' and into ''basic force integration and synchronization'' now."


    "Synch up to what?" Vak.tel asked.


    "Your mom''s ass," Nrexla snorted.


    "Creche born, eat a dick," Vak.tel shot back. "No, seriously, integration into who? They should be integrating into us."


    "Supposedly we''re getting used to operating with III Corps (Old Blood) and First Telkan Marine Expeditionary Force (Old Blood)," Cipdek said. He cracked his toe knuckles by curling his toes tightly. "Ah, that''s the stuff," he looked back. "Apparently, that First Telkan Marine Expeditionary Force went to Terra for training right before the Bag slammed down," he gave a chuckle and tugged his hat down to shade his eyes from the overhead lights. "Poor bastards. Forty-thousand years go by and they''re still in the Corps."


    That got chuckles.


    "Those fucking robots are starting to piss me off," Nrexla suddenly said.


    "How so?" Cipdek asked. "I''m on the other side of the company from them."


    "They keep jumping my targets," Nrexla said.


    "Kill stealers," Vak.tel snorted.


    "I''ll kill steal you," Nrexla mock-threatened. "What the fuck do we even need with robots anyway?"


    "Apparently they''re from First Infantry Division (Old Blood) or something," Cipdek said after checking his implant.


    "How are you getting this data?" Vak.tel asked.


    "Captain Kemtrelap left his header unsecure again, so I cloned it," Cipdek said, shrugging.


    "You''re gonna get in trouble for doing that one of these days," Juvretik said.


    "Naw. He''d have to admit he left his security codes unsecure," Cipdek said. He adjusted the brim of his hat. "He didn''t want me to clone his shit and look at stuff, he should probably keep that shit secure."


    "Eh, he''s an officer, he''s probably just glad he can walk and chew stimgum at the same time," Nrexla grinned.


    The ten minute warning beep came over the datalinks. The quartet got up, bitching, tossed their plates, bottles, and cutlery into the grinder, and got back in their armor.


    This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    Moving to the green line Vak.tel sighed.


    The black robots showed up again, getting into a sawtooth serrated line, their amber eyes shining.


    The simulation started running. Vak.tel recognized it immediately as based off of the last few fights of the Telkan Hierophant Civil War a few decades before he was born.


    After the third time, he was damn near asleep in his armor. The Battlefield Tactical Network had the entire thing happened and he was just the biological backup.


    Which was pretty much par for the course.


    The recent (1,500 years prior) upgrade to Vodamn Armor with Neolinnium plating made the M9221A4 Heavy Assault Combat Protective Powered Suit fielded by the Telkan Marine Corps damn near invulnerable to anything man portable and most emplaced weaponry. Lighter, thinner, more effective that the previous Chorak Armor and Shredytik plating by a factor of nearly 18.24%, it allowed more protection for the same weight and space on the M9221. It even outperformed Warsteel Mark VIII off of the Great Forge on Telkan-2.


    Which meant none of the ''weaponry'' being fielded against him could even mar his armor. Scratch the paint, sure, but actually mar it? Not even close.


    The whole thing continued until dinner.


    Again, he found himself sitting with the same group.


    Vak.tel was halfway through his second fizzystim when Cipdek sat up, pushing the brim of his hat back.


    "Uh-oh," the other Telkan said.


    "What?" Vak.tel asked.


    "CO''s being summoned by the Old Man. Apparently the Terrans don''t like the sim," Cipdek said. He brought up a keyboard and twiddled it. "There. Now they won''t see me piggybacking."


    Vak.tel just went back to trying to decipher the hieroglyphics on the inside wrapper of his fizzystim.


    After a few minutes Cipdek sat back up. "Yeah, the Terrans don''t believe that the simulations properly train for the battlefield," he shook his head. "They''re claiming that the BATTACNET could go down. That we could run into an enemy with weaponry that can effect the Vodamn armor and inflict casualties on both personnel and armor/equipment."


    "Man, who gives a shit what the Terrans are saying," Vak.tel said, shaking his head. "Their shit''s all obsolete. Nobody''s ever had and nobody ever will crack quantum entanglement communication systems. They''re literally unjammable since it depends on paired quark states."


    "Seriously, they got the whole Division''s Old Men in front of the III Corps 4-star general," Cipdek said. He suddenly laughed. "The Terran said that we fight like we''re letting the VI is run the show. The Terran is claiming that it''s dangerous and all it would take is the BATTACNET getting interrupted or compromised for us to all be in trouble. Old Man Kretok told him ''the future is now, old man. Go back to Terra if he''s afraid of modern warfare.'' That Terran looks pissed. Huh, weird."


    "What?" Vak.tel asked.


    "The Terran''s eyes were greenish irised, now they''re just bright amber,"Cipdek paused a second. "Oh, shit."


    "What?" Nrexla asked.


    "Some Terran Field Colonel just called Old Man Shrekna a milk drinking coward that his broodcarriers are embarrassed by," Cipdek said.


    "What?" Juvretik said, standing up. "Man, fuck that guy. What''s Shrekna saying?"


    "Captain Kemtrelap is being held back by Gunny Heltok. They''re all yelling at the Terran, whose just standing there with his arms crossed," Cipdek said. He was silent a minute. "Fuck."


    "What?" Juvretik asked.


    "That Terran asked if the Old Man has the balls to put his money in his mouth where normally a dick is. He''s challenging us," Cipdek said. He suddenly reached out and slapped an invisible button. "Shit, shit shit."


    "What?" Vak.tel asked.


    "That fucking Terran just asked Captain Kemtrelap how come he thinks the BATTACNET is so secure when, and I quote: ''PFC Cipdek from Kilo Company is watching this whole thing while he''s laughing with'', and get this, he named all of us."


    "I told you that you were going to get us in trouble," Vak.tel swore.


    His datalink clinked. New orders were dropping. Get into his armor and on the ready line. Vak.tel looked at what little he was being told. Null-G variable grav-point pads for full immersion, eVI interactions.


    The ship''s computer would randomize terrain, mission objectives, and positioning.


    Vak.tel shook his head.


    "If the Terrans want their ass whipping early, guess it''s up to us to hand it off to them," Vak.tel snorted.


    "We''ll spank the elderly and be back in no time," Cipdek laughed.


    Vak.tel stepped into his armor, feeling it fold around him.


    "Time to teach the Terrans that the universe moved on and left them obsolete," Vak.tel said.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Vak.tel took a nap for a while, waiting for whatever was taking so long to finish so he''d get put into the simulation. The Null-G pad was weird. It allowed him full movement, but a seperate system handled inertia and which was was ''down'' to the armor and his senses.


    Still, he got in a good nap till a buzzing woke him up.


    INCOMING PARAMETERS appeared on his visor.


    His armor went dark, there was a light tremble, then his systems came back.


    Environment: Hills with jungle. Some urban. Low clouds, heavy rain, lightning and thunder.


    Enemy: Infantry with limited air and indirect fire support, estimated to be in company strength. Estimated to have obsolete weaponry and equipment.


    Time: Night


    Activity: Enemy infantry probing 17th Rifle Battalion''s areas but breaking contact quickly


    Objectives: Eliminate enemy infantry units when found


    His visor cleared and he found himself standing inside a standard drop-pod manufactured fire base. Others appeared around him, arms outstretched for a moment before their armor synched up. Second Platoon gathered up around Gunny Heltok. A holo-emitter put up a terrain map of the area.


    Hills, some at a higher angle than others, some streams, all covered in jungle. There were two small settlements, only about twenty to thirty buildings.


    "All right. Kilo Company is being ordered to scout this settlement, then move forward to secure this ridge," Gunny Heltok said. "The weather and darkness isn''t a problem, just good for background immersion," he said. He waved a hand at the surrounding jungle. "We''ve got artillery and strikers standing by, so there''s that."


    "How far?" Sergeant Letrill asked.


    "Sixteen klicks to the settlement," Gunny Heltok said. He tapped a few spots on the map. "We''ll be crossing two highways, so I''ll want drones up as soon as possible."


    Vak.tel grinned to himself. It was a lot easier than the fighting he''d taken part in before.


    Three hours later and Vak.tel found himself wishing he could punch Old Man Shrekna in the muzzle.


    Someone had thought it was funny to crack off high altitude artillery rounds that slowly covered the entire area in chaff. Radio jamming had started howling across the radio bands as soon as Kilo Company had left the drop-pod built bases. At first everything seemed fine, then the real fun started.


    Sergeant Kellerman had fallen head first into a hole and satchel charges at the bottom and side had gone off, spraying everyone with chunky salsa and armor shards.


    A sniper put a round into Lieutenant Gretilk''s armpit and the armor had just slumped, the round bounding around inside the armor.


    Two privates had stepped on anti-vehicle mines and been blown to chunks.


    Twice spray mines had gone off, coating them in chaff and prism dust.


    The only thing working was BATTACNET and the quantum communication''s system.


    Judging by the few snatches that Vak.tel could hear in the clear, everyone else was having just as bad a time as Kilo Company was.


    The casualties were mounting and nobody had even seen the Terrans.


    Now someone from Bravo Company was screaming over the open channel, raw full throated screams of agony, and nobody could figure out how to cut him out of the communications link.


    The Telkani''s pleas and screams suddenly cut off.


    For a second, over the channel, there was silent.


    A female Terran''s voice spoke.


    "You are all going to die here," she said.


    The channel went dead.


    Regiment ordered the communications algorithms changed out and the commo switched over to a new quantum ''channel'' as well as rapid squirting new code arrays.


    It didn''t help.


    Someone from Charlie Company started screaming for a long moment before the sound cut off.


    This time the Terran female outright mocked them.


    "One, two, Terra''s coming for you..."


    Vak.tel knew it was all VR, but still...


    They were coming up on the road finally when Gunny motioned everyone to stop.


    "I want drones up," he said.


    Vak.tel nodded, firing off two drones with a dull chuff. They were gone only five minutes before returning. Vak.tel downloaded the telemetry and passed it to Gunny Heltok even while he looked it over.


    The drones checked the highway, finding nothing but vehicles, some wrecked, trees, and in case a lizard chasing a six legged furry thing.


    "Road looks clear," Staff Sergeant Gantez said. "Nothing on thermal, nothing on power sources, no gasses consistent with power armor."


    Gunny Heltok nodded.


    "Move out," he ordered. "Six across, keep your spacing."


    Ten minutes later they were at the road.


    Vak.tel looked it over. It looked like someone had called an airstrike on the road. The ground was covered in water-filled craters, damaged or wrecked vehicles, and jungle flora obviously thrown there by the storm.


    "Stack up, eight deep, six stacks," Gunny Heltok said. "We''ll all cross at once."


    Vak.tel found himself in the middle of the third stack. At the Gunny''s signal they all started hustling across the six-lane highway, weaving between the vehicles.


    He was in the median when it all went to shit.


    "POWER SOURCES!" someone yelled.


    The wrecks were already standing up, or ripping apart to show those big black robots with the amber eyes. Honest to God antique cutting bars started roaring as within two seconds the big robots were in with the stacks.


    Vak.tel saw Sergeant Trimmax get his head ripped clear off. Someone else was grabbed by two of the robots and their arms ripped off. The cutting bars were howling even as the platoon tried to react to the sudden appearance of the big black robots.


    Vak.tel brought his M318 around, trying to target one of the robots, but it grabbed PFC Pellertik from second squad and held him up like a shield even as it charged.


    A score of rounds hit Pellertik before the gun went dead with "FRIENDLY" popping up on Vak.tel''s visor. Not that it helped Pellertik, whose chest was blown open by the heavy 20mm rounds.


    Vak.tel backed up from the charging robot.


    It threw Pellertik''s corpse to the side, reached forward, and grabbed him. Vak.tel went to break the hold, his brain still whirling.


    The robot lifted him into the air.


    He could see lightning crackling in the clouds.


    He was suddenly dropped down. Something hit the waist seams of his armor in the back. His guts sprayed out as the bearing seal gave way and his back snapped. He was dropped and saw the big black robot stand up from where it had broken Vak.tel over its knee. It lifted one foot and stomped Vak.tel right in the visor.


    SIMULATION ENDED appeared in his visor.


    "Shit."


    0-0-0-0-0


    "Man, that was nothing but pure bullshit," Vak.tel said, stomping into the room.


    Juvretik nodded, following him in.


    Nrexla was sitting next to Cipdek on one of the beds. The duo looked up.


    "That whole thing was bullshit," Vak.tel said. He moved to the fridge and got out a fizzybrew. "And the bullshit with the mines was just bullshit."


    "The Terrans had three hours to prepare. The computer watched all of it," Cipdek said. "Apparently since they were the defenders, they got to plant mines and shit."


    "Like hide their robots inside wrecked vehicles? That was bullshit," Juvretik said. "I got my head twisted off by a fucking robot."


    Nrexla and Cipdek looked at each other and then at Juvretik, who was twisting open a bottle of fizzystim.


    "They didn''t have robots," Cipdek said.


    "The fuck they didn''t! I saw the fucking yellow eyed trash piles," Vak.tel said. "Fucking robots attacking everyone with fucking cutting bars. It was bullshit. I got my face stomped in by a fucking robot."


    Nrexla and Cipdek looked at each other again, then at Vak.tel.


    "Those were Terrans."

 Nova Wars - Chapter FM 7-8

    You want to be the best? You train against the best with as many disadvantages as Demon Murphy could possibly come up with. Only then, when you have fought the best, can you claim to be the best. - Colonel Witherington, Bongistan Royal Navy, Age of Expansion, TerraSol


    Breakfast tasted like wet cardboard and dry sawdust to Vak.tel as he sat with the rest of the platoon and ate in silence. Almost everyone had their head down, staring at their plate. Even the CO and the XO were subdued.


    The news was in regarding the training exercise.


    Fail.


    Personally, Vak.tel thought it was complete bullshit. The Terrans had possessed all the advantages. They had hours to prepare, seemed to know where everyone was and what everyone was doing, and their armor seemed to bounce even the AM4 rounds from the M318.


    Hell, Corporal Nulgretrik from Echo Company said that a hellbore shot had only knocked them down and the Terrans had charged through the debris cloud to close with Echo Company and rip them apart with their bare hands.


    There was no way power armor should have stood up to a 30mm hellbore shot.


    Cipdek had sat while everyone else was drinking beer in the room, watching the message boards and the social media feed.


    Being told that the entire battalion had gotten its ass handed to it by the Terrans wasn''t much of a consolation as far as Vak.tel was concerned.


    The CO suddenly looked up. He leaned over and whispered to the XO before getting up, dumping his tray in the grinder, and walking out. First Sergeant Gerplek quickly followed, looking concerned.


    Vak.tel motioned at the others and they quickly dumped their trays and hustled back to the room.


    "Did you get it?" Vak.tel asked Cipdek.


    "Yeah, he left it unsecure again," Cipdek said. He moved to the holo-emitter and routed his feed to it.


    The four Telkan moved to watch the holoemitter.


    The CO moved through the hallway, lower ranking getting out of the way. A work party of Terran sailors carrying a length of heavy cable moved by, forcing Captain Kemtrelap and First Sergeant Gerplek against the wall.


    Finally, they reached a briefing room, moving into it and sitting down next to Colonel Shrekna and a few other company commanders.


    "Oh, shit," Nrexla said when the CO looked at the head of the table.


    General Shrewalka stood at the far end, his ears rigid with anger and his eyes smoldering with anger.


    The General just stared at everyone for a long moment.


    "Apparently," the General said. He paused for a moment. "Apparently, the exercise isn''t over."


    That got murmurs from the gathered officers.


    "I was informed two hours ago that the exercise was still ongoing and I was asked if I wished to concede defeat," he said. "7th Telkan Marine Division is not accustomed to being defeated."


    He brought up the holoemitter on the table.


    "It''s bigger now," Vak.tel said.


    The holoemitter showed an entire valley, surrounding three large hills in the middle. There were roads, rivers, and small towns dotted through it.


    "This is where 17th Rifle Battalion was wiped out to a man," the General said, pointing at a group of hills in the southwest of the map. "The graders are kind enough that we can keep the drop-pod built bases even though the Terrans are insisting that they blew them up during the night."


    The General looked around.


    "The Terrans did not quit the field. Instead, they began infiltrating reinforcements and digging in," the General said. He pointed at the map. "I want the entire 7th Division to go in," he snapped. "I want those Terrans eliminated, the objectives taken, and the honor of the Corps restored."


    "Fuuuuuck," Cipdek groaned.


    "We''ll be facing an understrength division. Limited air and artillery assets, light armor only," the General said. He pointed at the three hills. "They are dug in here. I want them eliminated and the hills secured."


    "Can we soften it up with orbital strikes?" someone asked.


    "The graders have determined that it was struck several times, which is why they do not have heavy artillery or heavy vehicles," the General said. He looked around. "Gentlemen, the Terrans made a fool of us. They have obsolete armor, obsolete weaponry, obsolete tactics."


    He put his fists against the table.


    "I want them reminded that the universe has moved on and that they are no longer the dominant predator in this galactic spur."


    Vak.tel looked at the other three.


    "Shit."


    0-0-0-0-0


    His visor blinked three times, but at least it didn''t reboot.


    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    "This sucks," Vak.tel said. He was on patrol around the firebase, him and seven others walking through the early morning misty rain. The heavy chaff and prism chaff in the air had wedded with the mist, making it damn near impossible to see through with anything but standard optical cameras.


    He was in the rear, just him, a jammer pack, and his trusty rifle.


    "Sure does," he heard.


    It was a female Terran.


    "What?" he asked.


    His armor suddenly stumbled slightly then started moving forward as if nothing had happened.


    "Hi," he heard. A female Terran''s face made entirely of code appeared on his visor at it went black. "Nice to meet you," she looked to the side. "Vak.tel. Oh, your name means ''Defiant One'' in Old Telkan. Nice."


    "Hey, I can''t see," Vak.tel said.


    "You don''t need to," the Terran said. She smiled. "I killed you."


    "What? How?" Vak.tel asked.


    "Well, I jumped to your armor, took it over, ran a pressure sleeve maintenance check at the same time as I activate your emergency resuscitation system," the Terran said. "Now, I''m walking along behind everyone."


    "You can''t do that!" Vak.tel exclaimed. "My armor''s got a security VI, firewalls and countermeasures. This is bullshit!"


    "Oh, honey, I''m a Digital Sentience. Your VI was little more than a bonbon to eat and I didn''t even notice everything else," she said. "I''m talking to you while I''m walking along behind the rest of your squad."


    Vak.tel blinked. "Wait, a real Digital Sentience? I thought you guys never existed."


    She laughed. "Oh, honey, we totally exist. True, all of us outside The Bag died when the TXE happened and there wasn''t a way to make more of us without our lovely lovely parents," she seemed to lean forward slightly. "But I assure you, Vak.tel, I totally exist."


    Vak.tel sighed. "OK, but why are you piloting my armor?"


    "You''ll love this part," the DS said. She opened a small window. "As a matter of fact, your patrol is finally returning. That''s why I jumped you when I did. I''d been hiding in your EW pack since right after you left," she smiled. "Thanks for all the EW codes. I sent them on."


    He saw his armor get to the gate. He wasn''t challenged, just counted in. He saw his armor march into the center off the firebase.


    "Watch this part," the DS said. Her smile got larger. "I''m about to brighten everyone''s day."


    "What?" Vak.tel asked.


    He heard his own voice suddenly start screaming about how he couldn''t take it anymore. How the stress was too much. How he just wanted to go back to Telkan. He started shooting his rifle at everyone.


    Other Telkan ran for him.


    The DS activated all the suit functions.


    Crossed his arms.


    "FOOL YOU ONCE!" his own voice yelled.


    He hit eject.


    SIMULATION ENDED


    "Dammit."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Vak.tel didn''t even get a nap. Just reported what happened and was ''flown in'' on a striker to rejoin everyone. Where he had to tell the story again and again since everyone was now suspicious of him.


    For lunch apparently the Terrans had decided that what the Telkan really wanted to eat was napalm and spooky phosphorous.


    Vak.tel watched the exterior of the firebase burn from a half mile away.


    "THEY CAN''T DO THIS!" Captain Kemtrelap yelled.


    His armor suddenly went limp and fell down.


    A star shaped hole was in the visor.


    "SNIPER!"


    everyone scattered.


    There were no followup shots until Gunny Brektop stood up.


    He got dropped.


    Silence reigned over the clearing.


    After a while Private Ymerket got up, obviously not happy about being lowest ranking and chosen to act as bait. He sprinted for cover and squatted down.


    There were no followup shots.


    The fire went out and Kilo Company started salvaging what they could.


    "FOOL YOU TWICE!" Captain Kemtrelap''s armor stood up, crossed its arms, yelled "YOU''RE FUCKED AGAIN!"


    Everything went white.


    SIMULATION ENDED


    "Dammit"


    0-0-0-0-0


    "Look, the bridge is going to be totally safe. We''ve been watching it for hours. We''ve scanned it with microdrones. There''s no mines, no ambushes, no nothing," Staff Sergeant Thempil said.


    "Yeah, we''ve heard that before," Sergeant Kringik yawned. He shook his head. "I''m almost past my stimgum limit."


    "General wants us to take that vehicle charging station at the top of the hill," Thempil said.


    "Let him do it," someone said over speaker.


    Thempil didn''t bother asking who said it. He was getting tired too.


    "Vak.tel, you take point," Thempil said.


    "Sure, why not," Vak.tel grumped. He''d ''lost'' his M318 when the firebase got attacked by spider mines the day before.


    Now it was called ''spider base'' and was considered enemy territory.


    Plus, it was pumping out hundreds of spider mines and hour.


    Vak.tel felt his muscles tense as he moved out to the bridge.


    BATTACNET ordered him to start running but he ignored it.


    The damn system had been throwing errors since yesterday and the Regimental commander had been forced to give out the keys to lock BATTACNET from assuming direct control of the suits. It had gotten to the point that they''d looked up in the manuals how to prevent remote piloting of the suits.


    He finished moving across the bridge, taking cover behind two cars after he pushed them with his foot to make sure there wasn''t some angry Terran hiding insidfe. He moved further, crouching down in a ditch, then waved everyone forward.


    Sure, the paired quark system was working, but it was full of Terran music, people arguing, social media posts being read by VI systems, and someone reading off numbers.


    Commo past voice was useless.


    He watched as the platoon jogged across the bridge.


    There was a faint tremble.


    "RUN!" he yelled over the loudspeakers.


    He didn''t know why, he just knew they needed to run.


    The columns under the bridge collapsed.


    The bridge sagged.


    The lead elements took off in long jumping leaps.


    The bridge collapsed, taking the majority of the platoon with it.


    Five Telkan made it to the opposite side.


    Something exploded in the water, sending up a huge column of superheated steam.


    Vak.tel looked at the others and realized, with slowly dawning horror, that he was highest ranking.


    "Shit."


    0-0-0-0-0


    He parried a chainsword blade with his rifle, watching it saw apart.


    The return strike took his head off.


    "Shit."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Heavy machineguns opened up, catching the entire company in a crossfire. Mines started exploding and point and shoot fire and forget missiles started popping armor suits.


    "Shit."


    0-0-0-0-0


    The Terran didn''t even have power armor on. Just hardshell plating and adaptive camouflage. He jumped on Gunny Heltok''s back and stabbed him in the neck with a vibroknife.


    Vak.tel went to help. His armor registered an impact on his back.


    SIMULATION ENDED


    "Shit."


    0-0-0-0-0


    The human ducked under Vak.tel''s swing way too quickly for someone wearing power armor, grabbed Vak.tel''s ankle, and snatched him up.


    Then started beating him against the ground.


    SIMULATION ENDED


    "Shit."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Vak.tel caught sight of something that didn''t look right. Like a prism moving across his vision.


    It could have been a glitch in his visor.


    He didn''t care. He opened fire.


    AM4 rounds detonated on the black armor of one of the Terrans, one round catching the Terran in the visor. The second and third rounds detonated inside the helmet.


    The Terran fell down.


    "Holy shit, I got one!" Vak.tel said. He turned and looked at the rest of the squad. "I got one!"


    The grenade landed at his feet and he had time to look down.


    Standard AM4 grenade with a phasic kicker.


    "Shit."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Vak.tel was too tired to stand up as he slumped his way into the room and just collapsed face first onto his bed.


    Forty-five days in armor. Forty-five days of the ''training exercise'' that had worn 7th Marine Division down to a brain shattered nub.


    He knew he should get up, take off his boots, get out of his uniform, get in the fresher.


    He was totally going to.


    He was just closing his eyes for a second.


    He was totally going to get up.


    Totally.


    Any second.


    Any second now.


    Any...

 Nova Wars - Chapter 79

    FOR PUBLIC RELEASE


    FROM: UNIFIED LANAKTALLAN GOVERNMENT SERVICES (LEGACY)


    TO: SENIOR EXECUTOR COVERT ACTION AGENT YU''UMO''O


    SUBJECT: WARRANT FOR ARREST


    Agent Yu''umo''o, you have been charged with destabilizing the government of an allied nation, possibly causing a re-engagement of hostilities with a formidable military power. This has put the Lanaktallan governments and people at great risk following a mere forty-thousand years of peace and prosperity.


    Your attempt at assassinating government agents of a friendly government, to include but not limited to, Hamburger Kingdom Senator Ya''ahrd, as well as attempts at destabilizing governments to include, but not limited to The Hamburger Kingdom, Mapleland, Vodkatrog Empire, and Azatlan, has put the Lanaktallan peoples and governments as well as society in great danger.


    As such, you are being subject to arrest, confinement, and delivery to the Unified Lanaktallan Services for arraignment and trial. Should you resist, proportionate response will be applied, up to and including lethal measures.


    0-0-0-0-0


    FROM: THE OFFICE OF THE HONORABLE HAMBURGER KINGDROM SERVANT SENATOR BA''AHNYA''AHRD


    TO: THAT PLOTTING HAS-BEEN YU''UMO''O


    SUBJECT: LOL


    LOL


    --BA''AHNYA''AHRD


    0-0-0-0-0


    The Lanaktallan''s arms were pulled uncomfortably behind his back and he had shackles around his ankles as he shuffled from the starport terminal and toward the black space ship awaiting on the tarmac. Surrounding him were multiple guards from Lanaktallan Government Services, the LGS troopers in heavy armor and armed with heavy weaponry.


    Right before he reached the stairs leading up onto the starship there was a loud thudding.


    The guards yanked on his collar, forcing him to stop.


    Around the corner of the huge terminal ran a massive robot, at least fifty meters tall, shaped like a Lanaktallan. It had on a vest of red, white, yellow, and blue, a long flowing powdered wig, and pistols in all four hands. It skidded to a stop roughly a hundred meters from the starship and reared up, pawing its front hooves in the air.


    "SUCK IT, YU''UMO''O!" the massive robot roared out, firing the pistols with all four hands, causing fireworks to erupt from the end of the barrels and shoot into the sky, where they detonated to form the Hamburger Kingdom flag.


    The Lanaktallan''s head dropped in shame as the robot began running in place while pumping it''s arms. Music sounded out.


    "Standing in front of the mirror!" roared out as the robot slowly turned in place, still running in place and pumping its arms, bobbing its head. It deployed mortar tubes.


    "My skin''s never been clearer!" the mortar tubes fired off, sparkling trails arcing over the tarmac.


    "My smile''s never been whiter!" the shells went off, raining down credit chits, action figures, coupons for free food and drink, and posters of Yu''umo''o being arrested with "LOOOOOOSER!" stamped on it.


    "I look so good without you!" sounded out as the robot suddenly stood up on its hind legs and kept dancing, still firing the guns in the air.


    "Got me a new hairdo!" it shook its head, causing the powdered white wig to wave in the wind.


    The guards made the prisoner watch the entire dance, for the entirety of the song. It ended with "SUCK IT, YU''UMO''O!" with the giant robot standing on its hind legs, feet spread out, left hands on its left hip and right hands pointed up at a forty-five degree angle in what was known to be the most dominating dance pose in the known universe.


    The robot exploded, raining down gifts and prizes on everyone at the starport. An LED portrait of Ba''ahnya''a''rd gazed down at the crowd that had gathered with "VOTE EARLY! VOTE OFTEN!" underneath.


    The crowd cheered.


    Yu''umo''o was escorted into the spaceship as the crowd took up the chant.


    "BA''AHN-YA''AHRD! BA''AHN-YA''AHRD!"


    Yu''umo''o paused at the airlock, struggling, managing to face outward.


    "CURSE YOU, BA''AHNYA''AHRD!" Yu''umo''o shouted before the security agents


    0-0-0-0-0


    The crowd was excited as the breeze waved the grass of the Great Galloping Plains of the Central Hamburger Kingdom. Lanaktallan mingled with Red Plains Warriors in traditional dress of denim pants and checkered flannel shirts, Treana''ad cattle ranchers, Pubvian range riders, Mantid tourists, Rigellian females dressed as saloon girls leading around wide eyed duck and excited ducklings, Telkan Posse Riders, and all sorts of citizens and tourists.


    A huge curtain was set up in two locations, circular and hiding whatever was inside. Music played loud enough to be heard for miles in every direction. There were singers, clowns, magicians, dancers, and all sorts of entertainers around. There were signs showing Ba''ahn Ya''arhd''s smiling face with "VOTE EARLY, VOTE OFTEN!" underneath it. The Lanaktallan working at the booths handed out sickers, fridge and vehicle magnets, action figures (including the incredibly popular Chrome Cortez action figure, with real Kung-Fu Grip!), hats, torso sashes, flank coverings, even assless chaps.


    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    The crowd cheered when the music changed to the oh-so impressive "Imperial March" played by a full orchestra and a shuttle dropped out of the sky. A few people fired off surface to air missiles out of appreciation for the occupant of the shuttle, and everyone cheered when the missiles exploded in mid-air in a cloud of red, blue, yellow, and white smoke when the shuttle''s point defense destroyed them.


    "I AM BA''AHN YA''AHRD, YOUR INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND MONETARY SUPERIOR!" roared out from the shuttle as it landed.


    The crowd cheered, more than a few firing off weapons.


    The side dropped and ninjas ran out with swords, stopping at the bottom of the ramp to swing their swords, the blades flashing in the sunlight. They backflipped and vanished into clouds of smoke, making the crowd scream in delight. Chrome Cortez marched down, the sunlight glinting off of his cybernetics.


    One by one, Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd''s staff marched off the shuttle until finally, Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd himself came running down the gangplank.


    The Senator was immediately surrounded by members of the press, who all thrust the microphones forward and shouted questions, flycams zooming in for the best shot.


    "Senator! Senator! Is it true that you had involvement in the Ha''akumup Weapon Industrialite Scandal?" one reporter shouted.


    The Lanaktallan Senator laughed and smiled at the reporter. "Of course I did. I knew that they would be losing their weapons contract, that''s why I sold off all the stock I owned before the decision went public. That''s why their stock crashed. I then purchased it at rock bottom prices, knowing they were about to be granted the contract to produce new weapon systems for the Iron Dominion Security Forces, making an excellent profit."


    He snorted and motioned at his fine suit and elaborate flowing powdered white wig.


    "Do you honestly think I could afford such finery on a public servant''s meager salary?" he laughed.


    Other reporters pushed forward.


    "Senator, you were recently seen with the singer Daw''lee Pahrtune, is it true you are having an affair?" a reporter asked.


    Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd pantomimed juggling large globes in front of his chest, grinning at the reporter. "Duh," he laughed.


    "Senator, Senator! What do you have to say about the deportation of the saboteur Yu''umo''o?" one asked.


    "I have only one comment," Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd said. "SUCK IT, YU''UMO''O!" and burst into laughter.


    "No further questions," Chrome Cortez barked.


    Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd drew a pistol and fired wildly over the heads of the reporters, who turned ran away.


    "Press conference over!" Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd laughed.


    He ran toward the stage through the crowd, snatching up children and rubbing the top of his long nose against their faces, making them giggle, and handing them back to the parents. He quickly juggled a half dozen human infants, tossing them back to their parents as the infants squealed in delight.


    He galloped up the stage and stopped in the middle at the front, raising all four hands in triumph.


    "CITIZENS OF THE GREAT GALLOPING PLAINS, HONORED DIGNITARIES, WELCOME GUESTS, VALUED TOURISTS, AND ALL OF YOU OTHER RANDOM ASSHOLES! WELCOME TO THE GALLOPING PLAINS FIREWATER, FIREWORKS, FIREARMS, AND FREEDOM DAY CELEBRATION!"


    The crowd cheered as Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd drew two machineguns from behind his back and fired them into the air before throwing them into the crowd.


    "WE LOVE YOU, BA''AHN YA''AHRD!" someone in the crowd yelled out.


    "And I love you too, random citizen!" Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd replied, giving a wink and smile that made the sunlight gleam off of his white teeth.


    Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd moved around the stage for a long moment, throwing gifts and rewards out to the crowd. Discuses that flew out, prizes and gifts scattering from it, drones that swooped and sparkled while dropping gifts before exploding in a shower of prizes.


    He stopped in the middle of the stage.


    "Before we watch the fight and light the fires, I have an incredible announcement to make!" Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd stated.


    The crowd, most of them assuming that it was in regards to Ba''ahn Ya''arhds defeat of the sinister Yu''umo''o, held its breath.


    "For fifty years we have lived on Terra, learning their ways, treating this as our home, not as our prison! The Terrans have embraced us as we have embraced their ways, magnanimous in their victory over the combat forces that invaded their system, caring for the tourists and visitors who were trapped here, comforting and succoring the refugees that had fled the terrible Atrekna and the fearsome Precursor Autonomous War Machines!" Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd said, his image projected on the screen behind him but also as a hologram in midair.


    "I have several exciting announcements for everyone!" he shouted. "First, after careful negotiation with Smokey Cone, Treana''ad Cattle Rancher herds will be examined by representatives of the Smokey Cone Cattle Queens for eligibility for their moomoo bloodlines to be verified!"


    The Treana''ad cheered wildly, many shouting the Senator''s name and firing pistols in the air.


    "The Pubvian Dominion government has agreed to recognize the efforts of Pubvian Law Enforcement here on the Galloping Plains, ensuring that their accomplishments and deeds will be added to their families legacies!"


    The Pubvians all cheered.


    "The Telkan Range Riders will have their citizenship reinstated and their names and accomplishments registered!"


    The Telkans all cheered.


    "Finally, with great pleasure, I announce one of the most important achievements of my distinguished and scandal ridden career!" Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd said.


    The crowd grew quiet.


    "After negotiation with several Lanaktallan nations, I have managed to get them to understand a Hamburger Kingdom tradition and to recognize it legally," the Senator said. There was silence as Ba''ahn Ya''arhd turned to the screen.


    Lanaktallan fillies and mares appeared on the screen.


    "MAIL ORDER BRIDES AND GROOMS!" Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd shouted.


    The crowd erupted in cheering.


    "They will arrive at New Hamster-Dance on the East Coast of the Hamburger Kingdom so they may view the fearsome Titan imprisoned in the harbor, then travel by steam train to the Galloping Plains, to meet their future spouse!" Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd said.


    The cheering from the crowd was an almost physical thing.


    "Additionally, my office will MATCH the monetary amount an individual or family is able to afford!"


    The cheering somehow got louder.


    "Additionally, it will be open for more than Lanaktallan!"


    Images appeared of Treana''ad, Pubvians, Rigellians.


    The roar of approval was so loud that it shook the stage.


    "WITH THAT BEING SAID! IT''S TIME FOR ROCK-EM-SOCK-EM ROBOTS!" Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd yelled out.


    The curtains fell to reveal a robotic Yu''umo''o and a robotic Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd.


    The crowd cheered as the two robots ran forward, swinging fists at each other. It went on for several minutes until the robotic Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd hit the chin of the robotic Yu''umo''o with a punch.


    The robotic Yu''umo''o''s head suddenly extended out on a long piston.


    The crowd cheered wildly.


    Both robots exploded into prizes, gifts, collectables, action figures, coupons, and more!


    Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd raised his hands over his head to the cheering of the crowd as the lids on hundreds of grills were pulled back.


    "LET''S EAT!"


    0-0-0-0-0


    Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd turned from his computer terminal, yawning and rubbing his eyes.


    "Otto," he said quietly.


    "Yes?" the Digital Sentience appeared as always, a tired looking Terran smoking a cigarette with an open bottle of whiskey on the desk.


    "We need to make new plans," Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd said.


    "How so?" Otto asked.


    Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd motioned at the terminal. "The new Confederacy, or, rather, what the old Confederacy has become."


    "What about it?"


    Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd stood up slowly, rubbing the sides of his face.


    "I do not know if they can be trusted," Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd said. "My people, all of my people, depend on me to protect them."


    Otto just nodded.


    "Tomorrow, call a full meeting of my staff," Ba''ahn Ya''ahrd said quietly. "Even the ninjas."


    Otto''s eyebrows raised.


    "I fear we may have to protect my people from the Confederacy itself."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 80

    I believe in myself so I have already won! - Anonymous Headstone


    He beat the French out of him! - Unknown, Resource Wars Era, TerraSol


    Saying we got beaten like a rug is an understatement. At least the rug is left after the beating. - Unknown, Age of Reasonable Concerns


    The Relaxation and Leisure Lounge on 27-348-Q had a... subdued atmosphere to say the least.


    The Marines of the 7th Telkan Marine Division were clustered around tables in small groups, all of them drinking narcobrews, fizzystims, hard alk, or whatever their choice of poison was. Many had picked up the habit of smoking Treana''ad smoke sticks in the last month. The conversations were low and short lived, as the Telkan just took comfort in sitting next to people they knew. The music was low and slow, just the jukebox running on random since nobody could be assed to get up and put money in it or select any songs. The drink-bots just wandered from table to table filling orders that were sent in via the datalink built into the table.


    The aura of defeat was palpable.


    Corporal Vak.tel sat with five others. His room-mates Private Nrexla and Private Juvretik were next to him on either side. Their buddy PFC Cipdek sat silently halfway around the round table, a fizzybrew bottle in his hand that he was rolling one edge of the bottle across the tabletop in slow circles with. The unit armorer SSG Mepwalk sat next to Sergeant Kringik, both of them drinking off-brand narcobrews and staring at the table, with Mepwalk smoking T-Bug smokesticks one after another.


    Cipdek suddenly looked up and winced.


    "Great, what does that asshole want?" he asked.


    "Who?" Vak.tel asked, turning around. He spotted the subject instantly.


    The heavy leg prosthetic made the Telkani lurch slightly. The low lights of the RLL gleamed on his facial prosthetics and the dark metal of his prosthetic arm. The missing eye was plainly obvious.


    Field Sergeant Impton AKA Ivan Wektaki the Telkan, of the Black Skull Blood Drinker Vodkatrog Warsteel Horde, of the First Telkan Marine Corps Expeditionary Force.


    He saw Vak.tel''s table and made a beeline for it. Vak.tel noticed that other Telkan moved out of his way almost unconsciously, scooting in chairs, stepping to the side, or angling their bodies.


    The scarred and hard-bitten Telkani stopped at the table.


    "You will come with me, yes?" FS Impton said.


    Mepwalk lifted up the bottle. "I''m off duty. Come back tomorrow."


    "That is why I am here," FS Impton said. He turned slightly. "Come."


    Vak.tel shrugged. "Sure, why not."


    The others got up and they followed Impton toward the exit. The Telkani stopped at one of the drink-bots, punching in a quick code and accepting the six-pack of heavy fizzybrews. The robot chirped a few times and rolled away.


    "Did you just steal that?" SSG Mepwalk asked.


    "It is a robot. It has no sentience or sapience. It exist to serve," Impton said. He waved his hand across the sensor at the door and Vak.tel saw the light go out. The battered Telkani waved everyone through then followed, pausing to wave his hand over the sensor again.


    The light came back on.


    Curious, Vak.tel checked his credit balance.


    He wasn''t charged for any of the drinks.


    "Where are we going?" Sergeant Kingik asked at one point.


    "Somewhere for Marines to talk. That room, it stunk of defeat and sadness," Impton said. He stopped at one of the fast-print nanoforges, bringing up the menu and running through it quickly. He stepped back, set down the six-pack, and pulled two beers out, handing one to Nrexla and the other to Juvretik. After a minute to items slid out on the production plate with a ping.


    Vak.tel recognized it as a mass-tank and a small fabricator. Impton put them in the two empty slots of the six-pack and stood back up.


    "Follow," was all the other Telkan said.


    Again they kept moving.


    "We''re heading for the morgue," SSG Mepwalk guessed.


    "A place for warriors," Impton said in the oddly accented Confed Standard he used.


    The group was silent, even when he stopped by a 95 ton Giest Warmek and dug in the toolbox behind it. He pulled out two unlabeled glass bottles of reddish liquid, shook them up, and came back out. Eventually, he led them to where SSG Mepwalk usually worked.


    "Sit, sit," Impton said. He messed with the mini-fab for a moment, connected it to the mass-tank, and set the mass-tank to draw from the atmosphere as well as undid the leaves to expose the tiny minigrinder. Another few minutes while the six Telkani sat silent and he suddenly smiled.


    Vak.tel realized that several of Impton''s teeth had been replaced by black metal implants.


    He handed out the beer. Each time a bottle was removed the mini-fab hissed and a new bottle slid out to replace it. Once the beers were handed out, he grabbed a camo-net bag, pulled it over, and sat down.


    "To the Corps," Impton said, lifting his drink. "And the Baba Yaga."


    The others repeated it, their hearts not really in it.


    Vak.tel closed his eyes and tried to resist coughing when he took the first swallow. It was less a heavy fizzybrew and more like someone took a dark narcobrew, dropped hard alcohol in it, then mixed in some stimbrew.


    Nrexla and Cipdek coughed. Impton laughed, reaching over to pound Cipdek''s back.


    "Is good, no?" Impton laughed. "Mother''s milk of Led-Cybir, the land of ice, snow, iron, and blood." He switched to pounding on Nrexla''s back.


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    "Tastes like ass," Nrexla gasped.


    "Ah, but is igood ass?" Impton laughed.


    The others just mumbled.


    Impton looked around. "Why so glum? Is good day. Alive. Booze. Smokes. The Baba-Yaga nowhere to be seen. Is good day."


    Vak.tel glared. "I don''t know if you''re up on current events, pal, but we just got our asses kicked."


    Impton grinned and nodded. "Yes. But was good ass kicking," he reached over and slapped Cipdek on the back.


    "You''re just saying that because you weren''t on the receiving end," SGT Kringik said. He looked down. "We spent forty-five days getting our shit pushed in."


    Impton shrugged. "I was not, not this time," he said. He looked around at the darkened bay. "I have been," he leaned forward, tapping the black metal prothesis on the side of his muzzle. "Not just exercises."


    The scarred Telkan leaned back, lighting a smokestick and puffing on it. He exhaled a cloud. "Why so glum?"


    "Because we spent forty-five days of the Terrans beating us like a rug," SSG Mepwalk said.


    Impton nodded. "Yes. Tough fight."


    Vak.tel snorted. "We outnumbered them. We had air superiority. We had constant reinforcements. They just jumped up and down on us."


    Impton shrugged. "So?" he looked around. "Did good. Be proud."


    "How did we do good?" Vak.tel asked. The booze, the frustration, all combined with Impton''s blas¨¦ attitude at the Corps being embarrassed to turn into a low simmering anger. "We didn''t take a single objective. We didn''t accomplish any of the over-all missions."


    Impton nodded, smiling as he exhaled smoke between his teeth. "Was grader. Did good."


    Everyone slowly looked up at him.


    "What?" Cipdek asked.


    Impton shrugged. "Was grader. Invisible in eVR with admin tools. Watched," he pointed at his missing eye and then at everyone else. "Watched you. Did good."


    "Fuck we did," SSG Mepwalk smiled.


    "Commanders did not tell you?" Impton asked.


    "Oh, they told us. Told us we were an embarrassment to the Corps. Told us we were stupid and incompetent. Told us we failed at everything," Mepwalk said. He angrily chugged the bottle and went to throw it.


    "Here," Impton said, holding out a new beer.


    The six-pack hissed and clinked, pushing a new bottle into the six-pack.


    Mepwalk handed it over and Imton dropped it into the grinder.


    Everyone stayed silent as the grinder chewed through the bottle, gave a beep, and went to standby.


    "Was grader," Impton said.


    "You said that," Nrexla grumped.


    "Watched you, I did," Impton said. "Did everything right to training, to doctrine, to experience."


    The others nodded along.


    "Did not matter. Terrans cheated. Terrans didn''t fight fair. Terrans acted unprofessionally. Terrans deliberately humiliated Telkan," Impton said, imitating the nasally tone of the Division commander.


    The others nodded.


    "Not true," Impton said. He looked at them. "Commanders did not tell you how you did good?"


    Everyone shook their heads.


    Impton looked angry and for a split second Vak.tel was positive the Telkani''s empty eye socket got a faint amber glow.


    "I should give them a taste of my shoe," Impton snarled. He turned his hand over and activated the holo-emitter in his palm, lifting up the bottle of streaked reddish fluid and taking a drink from it.


    "Thought that was for commanding officers only," Juvretik said, pointing at the spray of color and light being emitted from Impton''s hand.


    "No. Much needed at squad/element level," Impton said. He made some adjustments. The hologram came into focus.


    Percentages. Results.


    Vak.tel could see how there was passing grades down the line.


    "Training shows holes and weakness in training, doctrine, experiences," Impton said. He shook his head. "Failure was not at those who fight," he scrolled down.


    Red "FAIL" started to show up.


    "Leaders fail. Commanders make poor decisions. Commanders not learn from mistakes. Commanders do not counsel each other," Impton said. "Poor leadership. Inexperienced at warfare. Unable to properly apply force and force multipliers. Repeated same mistakes expecting different outcome. Not listen to intelligence. Not listen to briefing. Consistent underestimation Terran fighting capability."


    Impton shut off the hologram, sitting down and taking a long pull off the bottle.


    "No failure at you," Impton said. He shook his head. "You fight Terrans, usually lose even if win."


    "Then why have us fight them, even in simulation, if they''re going to defeat us so easily?" SGT Kringik asked.


    "Not get good fighting less skilled, get more good fighting best," Impton said. He took a drink off the bottle of streaked reddish liquid and a drag off of his smokestick. "Terrans best," he looked around. "Want to know secret?"


    "Duh," Vak.tel said.


    "They did not fight as if they were in eVR," Impton said. He looked at each of the gathered Telkani. "They fought as if it was real. As if they would be dead. Always fight as if is real. Always. They fought to win, or, if they could not win, they fought so they did not lose. Understand?"


    Vak.tel shook his head. "Still feels bad."


    Impton shrugged. "You have never stood beside humans, fighting to survive," he said. He looked up. "I was there when the Warfather fell into the depths and the Warsteel Volcano, the Great Forge, ignited," he said softly. "Was there when Daxin the Liberator arrived. Was fighting Dwellerspawn at Refugee Zone Delta, on the walls as the ''spawn pushed their assault."


    A cold breeze seemed to wind through the armor bay, a faint moan echoed in the distance.


    He tapped his cybernetic arm. "My arm, pulled off by a whippersnapper, but still I fought. Chainsword in hand. Bliss mixed with fight chems and stims. Armor pulling me back from Bliss, nothing but fear, pain..." he paused for a moment. "Nothing but rage."


    "Behind me, civilians. Could hear their screams," Impton took another drink. "Day suddenly went cold. ''Spawn went still. Sun seemed to go out. Great stillness."


    Impton exhaled smoke. "Still, fought. Screaming. Raving. You. Shall. Not. Pass. Then sun turn black."


    "Was not Daxin''s voice. Was the Grave Bound Beauty whose voice shook the world," He shook his head. "Can still hear her voice: Let this world shake in the wrath of Lost Terrasol. Bliss turn to rage. Fill me. I scream back, rage, wrath, still hacking with chainsword. Shall. Not. Pass." He shivered. "Heard it. Look up. See great iron doors wrapped in chain. Chains explode. Great iron doors open. He drop from sky to ground, shaking the very earth of Telkan."


    Vak.tel looked around, shivering.


    "The ''spawn broke. Fled," Impton stood up, swaying slightly, "Greenie on my back screamed in fervor," he raised his head and threw back his arms. "DAXIN THE UNFEELING, LIBERATOR, DEATHLESS, TYRANTBANE HAS COME! WOE AND LAMENTATIONS! OUR SAVIOR HAS ARRIVED!" he bellowed into the darkness.


    Vak.tel rubbed his upper arms. The others were all staring.


    Impton sat down and took another long pull.


    "Was conscript against machines before that. Was loading mech driver for industrial concern. Fought in old warmek and in power armor. After First Battle for Telkan, went to be part of first class of Telkan Marines," he said. He tapped runes on the shoulder of his cybernetic arm. "Number One-Zero-Six. Class Alpha Zero One. Standing: Fifteen."


    "After Second Battle for Telkan, was assigned First Telkan Marine Expeditionary Force. Sent to TerraSol for Interservice Training. Was going to be Telkan''s contribution to Confederate military," he shrugged and took another drink and gave a crooked grin. "Everything changed when the Lanky Nation attack."


    Everyone looked at each other in confusion.


    "No?" Impton said.


    Everyone just shrugged.


    "Getting old," Impton grunted. He looked at them. "Train hard. Fight harder."


    There was silence for a while as everyone drank, the micro-forge hissing and clinking to replace bottles handed out to replace empty ones that were fed into the micro-grinder.


    "They just yelled at us. Told us we sucked. That we made the Corps look bad," SGT Kringik said softly.


    "Poor officer blame troops for own failure," Impton said, grimacing. "Watched. Graded. Fought well. Doctrine, training at fault. Leadership at fault," he shrugged.


    "Doesn''t help us," Nrexla said.


    Impton held up his cybernetic hand, tilting it left to right as he took another pull off of the swirled red liquid. "Maybe yes. Maybe no," he said. He set the bottle down and lit another cigarette.


    "Tomorrow, will talk to Lady Iron Pants," he said, grinning. "General of Iron Amanda Arnold Breastasteel, go in during open door hours. Tell her 7th Division leadership blaming troops."


    He held up the full bottle of red liquid, cracking it open. He handed it to Kringik who took a drink and coughed even as he held it out to Nrexla.


    "Tonight we drink," Impton said. He paused then smiled. "Tomorrow, we train."


    "Ugh," Vak.tel said, taking the bottle.


    It tasted like liquid hate going down and burned like wrath.


    "We will meet enemy soon," Impton said. He gave a wide smile. "Glorious day will that be."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 81

    "Champions aren¡¯t made in the training sims. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them-a desire, a dream, a vision.¡± - Moo''aa med Ali, 14th Lanaktallan Combined Arms, TXE era


    "When you hit failure, your training has just begun" - SSgt Ronald "Macdonald" Coleman, Hamburger Kingdom, Age of Paranoia


    "Give me your shittiest take. No, not that one, that''s too shitty," - Hanslefranze Molterman, Age of Paranoia


    Lieutenant General of Iron Amanda Arnold Breastasteel sat at the conference table, looking over the training metrics for 7th Telkan Marine Division. Her staff was spread out around the table, working silently.


    General "Iron Pants" Breastasteel was, to use ancient parlance, an old war horse. She had joined the Terran Armed Services at the young age of twenty-one years of age, barely an adult. She had fought the Hulmeka, the Mar-gite, the Dark Elves, and the Screamers of Clownface. She had fought the PAWM and the Lanky both. For almost three hundred years she had carried a weapon and viewed herself as the will of TerraSol made manifest. She held a commission in Space Force at the rank of Star Colonel, had even done thirty years as a TerraSol Marine, specializing in Orbital Drop Assault. She had climbed the ranks over and over, always with a grin and a willingness to do whatever was needed for victory. She had served under General No''Drak in the defense of Telkan, had rotated back to TerraSol to oversee First Telkan Marine Expeditionary Force''s integration to the Confederate Armed Services.


    She had fought against the Lanky on Hateful Mars as a ground troop, shoulder to shoulder with everyone else and screaming defiance.


    Now she was in charge of a relief effort to the Ornislarp from the Dominion.


    She did not demand respect from her subordinates.


    They gave her respect they felt she was due because of her actions, her attentiveness, and her dedication to leadership.


    Which is why she was burning the midnight oil looking over the training reports.


    She could see the problems already.


    Unlike 1TMEF, unlike the rest of the Dominion and the Confederate Military, 7th TMD was Telkan only from the lowest private to the highest ranking officer. There were no greenies in the ranks, no black Mantid special forces, no Treana''ad Mobile Infantry, no Tukna''rn Powered Armor Assault, no Leebawian Commando.


    She had looked over its record.


    Brushfire wars. A civil war. Two minor wars against an inferior enemy. Peacekeeping.


    She could see the problem already.


    They''d never been pushed. Never been actually tested.


    The other problem she could see was the leadership. It wasn''t that they were incompetent, General Breastasteel could see quite a few officers that held promise.


    No, the problem was the leadership was not tested outside of minor asymmetrical conflicts and ''gimme'' exercises.


    The Dominion had no idea what kind of enemy awaited in Ornislarp territory. Imagery and telemetry proved that it was ancient Terran weapons being used, but without the same doctrine and methods as the Terrans had used. The ships were hulled by something other than warsteel, but were able to handle nCv round impacts, as well as the battlescreens being very effective.


    Breastasteel looked up. "Chances that this is the Dovians returning?" she asked.


    "Negative," Commodore Strevens said without looking up. "Unless their shield technology has degraded. The Dovians were running from the Mar-gite, they wouldn''t be back picking a fight, they''d use the Ornislarp Noocracy to act as a buffer zone."


    Breastasteel nodded. "Possibility of Atrekna?"


    "No evidence of biomechanical ships or high chronotron levels."


    "Possibility of Precursor Autonomous War Machines?"


    "The ships are too small."


    "Chance of it being three podlings in a pod racer?"


    "Nav-Int puts that at approximately 56%," Commodore Strevens said with a perfectly straight face.


    "Well, it''s not the first time we''ve walked into it not knowing exactly what we face," Breastasteel said. "The Admiral plans on hitting a contested system, taking the fight to the enemy starcraft, while landing ground troops on the contested planets to get a measure of the enemy''s ground capabilities."


    Everyone at the table nodded.


    She leaned back in her chair, bringing up the metrics for 7th TMD.


    "Unless the Telkan can get their shit together, I''m going to break up the Division, scatter elements through the Corps as fire support and backup," she said. "We''ll give them a week to rest up then another exercise where they''re the defenders rather than the aggressors."


    She shook her head.


    "We''ll see how they fare at that."


    0-0-0-0-0


    General Breastasteel had found that the Open Door Policy was critical to leadership. There eventually came a time where there would be an immensely toxic officer or senior non-commissioned officer who was firmly entrenched and understood the entire system too well to have their misdeeds become common knowledge to those who could punish or replace them.


    For some troops, the only hope of redress of their grievances was the Open Door Policy.


    True, more than a few times her direct subordinates had used the policy to directly confront her on her own policies off the record.


    She treasured those officers who had the intestinal fortitude to walk into her office, look her straight in the eye, and tell her that she was wrong.


    The knock on the door had came after her secretary informing her that Field Sergeant Impton of the First Telkan Marine Expeditionary Force was here to use her Open Door.


    She''d looked the Telkan up quickly. A veteran of the first two battles for Telkan, adopted into the Vodkatrog Cyber-Cossak Tribes for his valor during the Lanaktallan Invasion of the Sol System, he had an impressive record for someone with less than a century in uniform.


    "Enter," she said.


    The Telkani matched his service picture, right down to the missing eye.


    "What can I do for you, Field Sergeant?" General Breastasteel asked, leaning back slightly.


    "Is my people," the Field Sergeant said, his voice heavily accented by a thick Vodkatrog accent.


    "I see."


    "They have forgotten the Warfather. Have forgotten what it means to be Telkan," Impton said. "Have forgotten themselves."


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    General Breastasteel just nodded.


    "Their officers have not looked at the mirror to see where the fault is but instead have laid fault upon those who followed their commands," Impton said. "But the officers are but unmolded clay, never exposed to the sculpture''s knife or the fires of the kiln and furnace."


    Breastasteel steepled her fingertips, staring at the one-eyed Telkan.


    "We do not take a child behind the snow drift and strangle them when they cannot walk," Impton said. "No, teach them. We teach them to crawl, to walk, to run, to fight."


    "I see," Breastasteel said.


    "My people deserve to be taught. We are a small people, caught up in great things, and sometimes we trip and fall," Impton said. "But we are worthy of being allowed to stand back up and try again."


    "I concur," Breastasteel said. "Tell 7th Division that they have seven days to rest before the next exercise," she tapped her desk with one finger. "You of 1st TMEF shall be reinforcing them."


    She stared at Impton with cold eyes.


    "You are adults," she said. "You shall teach the children."


    She leaned back in the chair.


    "Show them the price you were willing to pay against the Lanaktallan, against everything," she said.


    The room grew dim.


    "Show them..." she paused.


    "The Chernobog."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Captain Kemtrelap and First Sergeant Gerplek stood in front of Kilo Company as they waited for their armor to finish with the pre-operation checks. The First Sergeant stood behind the CO as the Captain was talking.


    "This training exercise will be different. Rather than operating on our own, we''ll be reinforcing First Telkan Marine Expeditionary Force. The rest of the Division will be scattered through all of III Corps to reinforce them," the Captain made a slight face. "Unfortunately, at this time, I have little information beyond the fact that we will be running full enhanced virtual reality. We''ll be inserting via fast attack and transport strikers."


    He looked around. "The entire division will be divided up, we''ll be relying on our host unit for resupply, although ''reinforcements'' will be coming from our casualties, just like last exercise."


    He looked around then turned to the First Sergeant. "Take charge."


    The First Sergeant nodded.


    "We''ll be getting our orders once we''re hooked into eVR and are on the ''deployment field'' to board the strikers," he shook his head. "As of right now, it looks like we''ll be broken down into platoon sized elements as well as some squad or section elements. I have no data on who we''re supporting, the terrain, or any opposing forces. I expect all elements to operate at the highest level."


    He drew himself up. "Company!"


    Everyone went to attention.


    "Fall out," the First Sergeant said.


    Gunny Brektop turned around as Lieutenant Gretilk hustled up to the front of the formation.


    "All right, you all heard the man. Get in your armor and hustle to the null-grav plates," he smiled. "We''ll do better this time, you''ll see."


    Vak.tel just had that feeling again.


    He wasn''t so sure about it.


    0-0-0-0-0


    A few (read: nearly ten) hours later Vak.tel found himself on a striker, flying low and fast over hard terrain. The striker had the doors closed, the weapon pods withdrawn, and was keeping Nap of Earth flight profile as it swept over rocks, sand, and more rocks.


    Vak.tel stared out the window.


    Oh, look. Dirt. What''s that over there? More dirt. Oh look, we''re coming up on even more dirt! Why, this is obviously a highly important strategic location! he thought to himself.


    He had to admit one thing. Terran eVR was incredible. It didn''t have the ''too slick'' feel of hyper-realism, but it didn''t have any apparent gaps in the simulation. He could feel the vibration of the striker in his guts, feel it vibrating his foot and palm pads, feel it jostle his teeth.


    The striker suddenly banked and dropped into a dry river bed, picking up speed. It banked back and forth, following the twisting terrain, until it suddenly popped up from the river bed, behind a mesa, and dropped again, barely off the ground.


    It settled down in an open area where there were tents and other things covered by camouflage nets. Vak.tel could see vehicles, radar systems, communications systems, point defense arrays, counter-battery mortars, missile interception systems, and dug in positions.


    The door rolled open and his armor blinked that the external temperature was 138F along with warnings that he would need to be careful of his suit heat.


    He was first out the door, landing easily.


    The ochre dust puffed up at his feet.


    There was a Telkan in power armor waving at him. Oddly enough, his IFF was turned off, so Vak.tel had no idea who he was. The power armor was painted in a camouflaged pattern of light brown and ochre.


    "Hurry the fuck up!" the power armored Telkan yelled over the suit''s speaker.


    Vak.tel ran over as the rest of the platoon jumped out of the strikers, which were idling almost two meters off the ground. As soon as the last troop had dismounted the strikers dropped the carry containers underneath, closed the doors, and turned to slide to the side and into the river bed.


    "Get crates. Into cover," the un-marked Telkan snarled. He waved at one of the mounds of dirt with sandbags on the front, hidden by three layers of camo net, one of which Vak.tel noted was the anti-shrapnel type.


    The LT assigned people, moving over to the unmarked Telkan.


    "Lieutenant Gretilk, Kilo Company, Third Pla..." he started to say.


    "Save it. Follow," the other Telkan said.


    "What, you don''t salute an officer?" the LT asked.


    "Not here. Might be sniper drone or gunbot. Salute, put a bullet in both of us," he shook his head. "Enemy dug in, had time to prepare."


    Vak.tel helped haul the heavy crate with the M318s and the gunnery harnesses over to one of the netting areas. The sandbags had a narrow channel that led to a door cut into the side of a cargo container. Inside was a makeshift armory created by pushing four containers together and cutting away the sides.


    His armor reported that the interior temperature was only 87F.


    The armorer was a Telkan in standard adaptive camouflage and hardplate wearing a power-assist exoskeleton, who just told them to drop it on the floor. When Gunny Brektop mentioned that he had to be present and sign off on the weapons behind secured, the Telkan got up, grabbed the edge of the nearest container, as slid it across the floor so it banged against the wall. He did it to each of the containers and sat back down.


    "There, secure," he said.


    The Gunny drew himself up to argue but the Lieutenant''s voice came across the command channel.


    "Third Platoon, outside. We''re getting sleeping arrangements," the LT said.


    Gunny led the way and Vak.tel followed, his suit temp spiking as soon as he got outside. Vak.tel wondered if the Gunny had a nav-bead or a nav-line to follow as he followed the Senior NCO.


    There were several of the Telkan in the camouflaged armor standing next to the Lieutenant, who stood in his own dark green armor.


    "You''ll be divided up by squad," the LT said. "We''re hear to provide base security as well as reinforce patrols."


    "What''s the overall mission, sir?" the Gunny asked.


    "Facilitate the base operation, repel the enemy, search and destroy missions," the LT said.


    "Enemy?" Gunny asked.


    "Terran irregulars. Armed with scavenged gear, most of it obsolete," the LT said. "They have limited resupply as most known industrial sectors were destroyed."


    "What about the nanoforges?" Vak.tel asked and immediately wished he could kick himself.


    "Only what they have taken from the dead and destroyed," the LT said. "Right now, that''s about all I know."


    "No objectives?" the Gunny asked.


    The LT jerked at thumb at the mesa. "On the other side of that is the ruins of a city about fifty klicks out. The objective is to take the city," he shook his head. "Just like it has been for the last two years."


    Vak.tel felt like groaning. Two years and they still hadn''t taken a city? He wondered what kind of nightmare bullshit scenario had been cooked up.


    "Third squad, you''re in barracks echo," the LT said, getting Vak.tel''s attention.


    The LT went to say more when a curious thing drifted out from one of the large camo net arrangements.


    It was a small warsteel bowl, with a macroplas bubble on the top. It had graspers and pinchers on articulated arms underneath. It also had about a dozen viewscreen of various sizes at the end of articulated arms, most of them showing closeups of various colored Telkan and Terran eyes. The viewscreens all swept around to face the LT even as five came together under the eyes. The eyes on those vanished and the five screens, three on top, two on the bottom, showed a mouth spread across all five screens.


    The thing rushed up on grav lifters, stopping next to the Lieutenant. Vak.tel noted that inside the macroplas bubble was a brain attached to wire and electronics, the whole interior filled with some kind of bubbling liquid.


    "Why is your armor broadcasting IFF, telemetry, and transponder signals?" the thing asked.


    Vak.tel noted that its voice seemed to be made up of a dozen or so different voices, different syllables and different words using different voices.


    "Uh..." the LT started.


    "Stupid! Stupid stupid!" the thing squealed.


    A Telkan was lurching after the creature and Vak.tel recognized him as Impton even with the fact the other Telkan was in adaptive camouflage and hard plate.


    "Yuri!" the Field Sergeant yelled.


    The creature turned around. "What, Ivan?"


    "Leave them alone. Go check your chassis, mechanics say is almost ready," Impton said.


    "Stupid boots," the creature said, spinning to face the LT. On two monitors pictures of new unpolished combat boots appeared. "Boots stupid."


    It suddenly spun and hovered away, heading for another one of the large camo net concealed areas.


    "Apologies, Lieutenant. Yuri is... well... is Yuri," Impton said. He looked around. "Shut off all telemetry soon. Only have one more hour before we are no longer protected by pre-staging status," He pointed at the desert. "Human out there."


    The LT shook his head, trying to dispel his irritation at the weird creature. "What was that?"


    Impton suddenly grinned.


    "Was Yuri," he said.


    "And what is Yuri?" the LT asked, finding another small iota of patience.


    "Chernobog. Yuri is a Chernobog."


    "What''s a Chernobog?"


    Impton''s smile got wider.


    "You will see," he said. He turned and began limping after the now-vanished thing. He glanced back. "You will see."


    Vak.tel had a bad feeling.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 82

    The realization of one simple fact destroyed me so much I hid in a cave in a ravine by a river in the deserts of Longhorn Nation for years, existing off of fish and plants. The communal mind, the hive mind, no longer could reach me. My epiphany was so profound, so earth shaking, it altered my very brain. A simple fact that was unthinkable before I realized it standing knee deep in the blood, the mud, and the guts.


    The Queens were wrong.


    There was no victory, no glory, no grand accomplishments here.


    There was only death. - Klak.nark


    , Mantid Warrior, 15 Post Glassing, Longhorn Historical Society


    In the end, it wasn''t about winning or losing.


    It was about taking one more with us. - SSG Vollman, 5th Infantry Division, Mantid-Terran War


    I was hatched with eight million other warriors. In six years of grueling, unrelenting warfare, I lost three of my legs, an eye, an antenna, both my bladearms, and was left for dead on the battlefield twice. Each time I healed through battlefield medicine, terrified I would be determined to be too damaged to heal.


    I fought on Mantid Prime, I fought on three other Mantid worlds. I fought on TerraSol. I fought on Hateful Mars. By the dead eggs, that name is apt. I fought on many planets. I had as many defeats as victories.


    Any other species, I would have been a hero.


    I had to recover or I would have been tossed, alive, into the larvae pits.


    The war is over. Well, the shooting is over.


    I found out recently I am the only one left of my hatching. Eight million of us.


    And I''m the only one left.


    The enemy, the Terrans, are the only ones in the universe I feel understand me, understand something inside of me that nobody else seems to understand.


    My enemy and I understood each other on the battlefield.


    So it is not strange that they understand something within me that I do not.


    Why does it hurt so bad that I live and the others died? Why do I feel as if I failed them somehow?


    And why do I feel so guilty? - Aklikekniktok, Mantid Warrior, 12 PG.


    Vak.tel followed others from the platoon back into the armory. There, a rack was set up with nozzles on it and cables connecting the rack to a portable computer.


    He was surprised to see a half-dozen green mantids around the rack, with one at the portable computer. That one had its bladearms shoved into the expansion port and had images flickering between its antenna too fast for Vak.tel to see.


    "All right. Line up. Any order, I don''t care," the armorer said. "One at a time, you will step through the arch. When you hear ''finished'' you will come over here," he pointed at a box marked on the floor with yellow paint stick. "You''ll dismount your armor," he pointed at a table where two other green mantids were standing on either side of a nanoforge. "You''ll go over there and get your hardshell armor. You''ll turn off all electronics, including your datalink, then go over there," he pointed at a white box. "Once you are checked over, you''ll either go there," he pointed at a red box. "Or outside." he pointed at the door.


    Vak.tel could tell by the Lieutenant''s body language they were confused as he hustled up to be first in line.


    "When you''re done, go to your assigned sleeping area and get your living area squared away," the Lieutenant called out as Vak.tel stepped up to the frame, looking at the green mantids with curiosity.


    "Next!" the voice was synthesized and the green mantid on top of the frame waved at him.


    He stepped forward, stopping when his armor beeped.


    The nozzles hissed and a square extended out from the top of the frame, moving up and down.


    "Finished. Move out," the voice was heavily synthesized.


    Vak.tel moved over to the yellow box. A heavy crate was moved in front of him and opened, showing foam inserts for his armor. He closed his eyes and flexed the right muscles.


    His armor chirped twice and opened. He stepped back as the armorer''s assistant, a scruffy looking Telkan who looked like they were a half case into a six pack, moved the crate forward to wrap around the armor.


    His armor was painted in desert camouflage.


    "Uni-directional thermal pass paint," the armorer said. "Lets the armor shed heat as well as bounces incoming heat," he said.


    Vak.tel nodded as he moved over to the table table with the nanoforge. One of the mantids ran a laser grid over him, the other worked the holographic keyboard attached to the nanoforge. Vak.tel noted how scratched and battered the nanoforge appeared as it produced uniforms, boots, undergarments, two different types of hats, then hardshell armor and a helmet.


    The whole time the mantid with the wand was working. He heard his datalink clink then give out the three-toned warning that it was shutting down.


    "Get over here, get dressed, put your current uniform, boots, undergarments, and gear in the bag," the armorer said.


    Vak.tel hurried over then changed in front of everyone, feeling slightly self-conscious.


    The uniform was the old adaptive camouflage, the hardshell was warsteel plating with plastic overlay, the modular load carrying equipment was different, felt older and clumsier to Vak.tel.


    As soon as he was dressed, he over over to the white box.


    The Armorer checked him.


    "You''re clear. Get out," he said, jerking a thumb toward the door.


    Vak.tel noted that the armorer was missing the vestigal claws on the ends of his fingers.


    "Yut," Vak.tel grunted, half-jogging out the door.


    The heat hit him immediately, even standing in the shade of the camo net.


    He saw the cardboard sign that said "Living Area Echo" that had appeared while he was in the armory and walked up to it. There was a buried metal cargo container with sandbags around it, and a sloping entryway with sandbag sides and overhead cover halfway down. He sighed and went down, going through the ''door'' cut into the cargo container.


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    Inside was practically chilly even though his retinal link said it only went from 139F to 95F.


    The room was dimly lit, chemical lights hanging from the ceiling. There were two sets of ten bunks, one to each side, with footlockers at the end of the bunks. The first eight bunks all had bare mattresses with linen and blankets folded and set in a stack in the middle of the bunks. At the end there were four Telkan gathered around a table made up of four stacked ration boxes.


    "Ten for two," one said.


    "Blind six," another said.


    As Vak.tel moved up they started throwing cards down. His boots kept crunching sand and grit on the floor, which was made up of plas-panels on top of pallets that were set on the metal floor of the container.


    "Where do I bunk down?" he asked.


    "Pick one. Nobody cares," one grunted. He dropped a card and scooped the other three up.


    Vak.tel just chose one at random. The mattress was covered with dust and grit, same with the blanket and sheets. He undid them, shaking them out, raising dust off the mattresses and floor.


    "Do that shit outside, boot," one of the guys snarled, one hand holding down the cards in front of him.


    "Jerkass," another snarled, picking up a bottle and spitting into it.


    Vak.tel took his blankets outside and shook them out, nodding to members of the platoon as they went by. When they were shook out, he went inside and made his bed, stepping back to admire it. The corners were perfect, the top blanket taut enough to bounce a credit chit off of.


    One of the card players moved up and looked at the bunk. Vak.tel saw his ears go rigid right before he reached down, grabbed the end of the blanket, and pulled it off the bunk.


    "Fucking boot!" he snarled, turning around, holding the blanket by one corner and shaking it at Vak.tel. "Never make your bunk like that!"


    "What?" Vak.tel asked.


    "Never, and I mean never put the TCAS and TMEF logos facing up, you retarded boot," he snapped. "Logos face down. No markings showing."


    "What? Why?" Vak.tel asked. He''d always made his bunk that way.


    "We only do that for dead men," the one spitting into a bottle said from where he was still sitting. "Don''t do it."


    "Fine," Vak.tel said.


    The one with his blanket threw it at him and stalked back to the card game.


    Vak.tel made his bunk and hurried out.


    The Lieutenant was standing with the Gunny and looking at Field Sergeant Impton.


    "What''s this place for?" the Lieutenant was asking.


    "Forward Observation and Support Base," Impton said, shrugging. "Keep Chernobog working, defend against Terrans from city, provide fire support and point defense. Patrol around," he looked up at the camo net. "Mostly, do nothing."


    A little globe on six articulated legs, no bigger than an orange, ran through the dirt and stopped by Impton''s foot, making beeping and chirping noises. It was ochre colored and looked weirdly wet but dry, with eight eyes arranged in a circle around it.


    "Look at you," Impton crooned, kneeling down. "Have all your legs and all your eyes."


    The globe beeped happily, then raced away, leaving behind a plume of dust. It ran to the sandbagged berm then ran back, leaving behind two plumes of dust. It stopped in front of Impton and hopped up and down.


    "And fast too. Aren''t you clever little spider mine," Impton crooned. He petted the dusty looking metal orb and the little robot shivered. "OK, go find hiding place outside wire."


    The little globe beeped happily and raced away.


    "Apologies, sir. Just printed. Like attention," Impton said, shrugging. "Control and Fabrication Units been in place two years. Has buffer overruns. Overruns mean personality," he shrugged again. "Is OK."


    The LT pulled his attention from staring at where the little spider mine had ran through a gap in the sandbags that had a sign saying "Spider Highway" above a pipe.


    "Sergeant, my orders say I''m supposed to defend this firebase as well as help take the city," the LT said.


    Impton barked a laugh. "City. Yes. Always ''take city'', like never thought of that."


    "What''s so funny?" the LT asked.


    "Two years. Take city. Take city. Take city. Like we not think of that," Impton chuckled. "Like no Terrans in city. Like ''oh, take objective. Why no take objective? Take objective? Why Terran keep us from taking objective? Take objective'' without accounting that Terran objective is keep city."


    The LT frowned, reaching up to pull off his floppy hat, slick back his sweat slicked fur, and put it back on.


    "What makes the city so important?" the Gunny asked.


    "Terrans have it, want to keep it. So we want it," Impton shrugged.


    "Why do they want to keep it?" the LT asked.


    "Because we want to take it," Impton smiled, the warsteel teeth flashing.


    "Why do we want to take it?" the Gunny asked.


    "Because they want to keep it," Impton said.


    "But why do they want to keep it?" the LT asked.


    "Because we want to take it," Impton''s smile got wider.


    "Wait. We want to take it because they want to keep it. They want to keep it because we want to take it?" The LT asked.


    "Yes," Impton smiled.


    "We want it because they want to keep it because we want to take it because they want to keep it?" the Gunny asked.


    "Yes."


    "Why?" the LT asked in the tones of a man who had just found out there was a horse in the back seat of his car.


    Impton shrugged. "Is war."


    "But... but... does it have strategic value?" the LT asked.


    Impton shrugged. "In middle of desert valley."


    "Does it have industry?" the Gunny asked.


    "Not after orbital hits. Is ruins."


    "Is it a major population center?" the LT asked.


    "Is ruins. No civilians. All dead or run or pick up gun. Orbital strikes," Impton flicked his ears in amusement.


    "What is it''s significance?" the LT asked.


    "Terrans have it," Impton said.


    The LT threw up his hands. "This is fucking stupid!"


    "Is war," Impton grinned.


    Before anything else could be said a siren kicked on, three short tones, then a long sustained.


    Impton had already taken off running for a foxhole, diving in. Troops came running out of the living areas, carrying their rifles and helmets, some only dressed in their boots.


    Vak.tel followed Impton, diving into the hole and looking around.


    There was a pair M318 set up to fire out of the foxhole, but Impton was sitting on an ammo box, cracking open a fizzystim and puffing on a cigarette.


    "Missiles," was all he said.


    There was a bellowing roar.


    Sergeant Kringik scrambled into the foxhole, his eyes wide. "What was that?"


    "Was Chernobog. Help point defense, fire counter-battery," Impton said. "Took atomic to knee, can''t run or walk far, but can provide defense."


    Vak.tel could hear the tearing sound of hypervelocity point defense systems. They were basically railguns that fired glass beads that had an iron core. Highly effective, cost effective, and easy to print out of a nanoforge with access to sand.


    It went on for a couple of minutes, with a few distant explosions.


    Impton reached over and patted the figure 8 drawn sideways on the dirt wall of the foxhole.


    "Welcome to Damnation Alley," Impton said at one point where the detonation of a high impulse thermobaric was close enough to cause thin lines of sand to pour down through cracks in the overhead cover.


    Vak.tel felt reeeeeal welcome.


    The siren cut out and Vak.tel climbed out of the foxhole.


    There was a massive robotic form in the middle of the camp, holding the camo nets in either hand. It bristled with weapons, including a sixteen inch gun that was currently rotating so the barrel pointed straight up. It then dropped down with a loud clank.


    The robots was festooned with chains, the armor plating covered in barbed spikes. It was black with red trim, the tips of the barbed spears on the ends of some of the chains painted crimson. It has skulls adorning the armor and up between the shoulders was a massive Telkan skull, the nose down.


    "What... what is that?" Nrexla asked, moving up next to Impton and Vak.tel.


    "Is Chernobog. Is Yuri," Impton said. He waved. "Yuri! Yuri!"


    The robot looked down, the burning red eyes of the massive Telkan skull focusing on Impton.


    "What, Ivan?" the massive cyborg asked.


    "Say hi to boots," Impton said.


    "Hello, stupid boots," the cyborg said. It slowly sat down, one leg sticking out, in the pit it had been standing in. It started draping the camouflage over itself.


    "Yuri say hi," Impton laughed. He turned and began walking away.


    The LT came bustling out of a buried container that had the sign "TOC" outside the short sandbag lined passage.


    "Field Sergeant Impton," the LT called out.


    Impton stopped, his ever present grin coming back. "Yes?"


    The LT looked around. "I haven''t seen any officers around."


    "No," Impton said. He made a vague wave. "Fire base undermanned."


    "How many of us are here?" the LT asked.


    "How many are you?" Impton asked.


    "I brought a rifle platoon. Four squads, thirteen man squads, two section sergeants, the platoon sergeant, and myself," the LT said.


    "How many?" Impton asked again. He lit a cigarette while staring at the LT.


    "Fifty-six," the LT said.


    "Hm. Fifty six. Yuri count?" Impton asked, pointing at where Yuri was drifting by, back in his small bowl with viewscreens and graspers.


    He was humming to himself.


    "No. Wait, yes," the LT said.


    "Hm. Fifty six, plus Yuri, plus me. Greenies count?" Impton asked.


    "Yes," the LT said.


    "OK, fifty six. Plus Yuri. Plus me. Plus Greenies. Carry two. Divide by seven. Add half. Hand three to Sergeant Major. Give two to Corps. Hmm," Impton took a drag. "With greenies, one-hundred two."


    The LT frowned. "Without the greenies?"


    "With me? With Yuri. Hmm, carry two," Impton said. He exhaled smoke. "Fifty-six of you, add Yuri. Add me," he smiled. "Seventy-five!"


    The LT stared. "There''s only nineteen of you?"


    Impton nodded. "Yes."


    The LT looked around. "Where''s the CO?"


    Impton''s smile got wider.


    "Right here," Impton said.


    The LT looked around again and sighed. "Is he invisible?"


    "No, sir," Impton''s smile got even wider.


    The LT stared at him.


    Vak.tel had a sinking feeling in his guts.


    "Is you."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 83

    Patient is a 72 year old Mantid Warrior who collapsed in public. Patient states they were overcome with trauma induced panic memories that were instigated when he misheard the wind howling down an alley and mistook it for Terran hunting cries.


    Patient was given mood stabilization empathic sensory therapy on site and released with a referral to emotional therapy. - Mantid Prime EMT log, 45 PG


    Which way is she? We''ll go kill her ass. - Unknown Trooper speaking to green Mantid, 3rd Year Occupation of TerraSol, First Mantid-Human War.


    Your needs are superseded by my whims. - Mantid Overqueen


    The firebase was, to put it in the words of the Telkan who had been stationed there the longest, in complete shit shape.


    Vak.tel spent the first two days running around trying to fix defects that the Lieutenant Gretilk or Gunny Brektop discovered.


    Without fail, there was a reason for the defects.


    Long range scanners having their phased microwave rangers offline? To prevent incoming enemy missiles from using it to home in more accurately. Gate IFF readers offline? To prevent enemy warbois from jumping into the security systems. Spider Mine Fab Unit offline? Air gapped to prevent enemy EW systems from seizing control of it. Nanoforges offline? To prevent further damage from electronic warfare.


    The whole place was locked down at a level of EMCON that Vak.tel had never even heard of. Even datalinks weren''t allowed to be in External I/O mode. Cables were physically removed or had a minimum 2 meter gap in the cabling. The majority of the electrical systems had been torn out or had bypasses, breakers, or were just shut off with EW traps put in gaps.


    Fuel not stored properly in an open air area? Stored in a makeshift underground bunker with cooling. Enemy action?


    Nope, it got so hot it would boil away the fuel.


    Vak.tel was rapidly moving through the stages of enlisted grief.


    First, he tried being in denial that things could be this screwed up.


    But it was just problem after problem, all with good reason that the Lieutenant had to admit had a basis in reality despite the fact that it directly impeded the firebase''s effectiveness.


    But the rocket and artillery attacks every few hours made it obvious why there wasn''t a good reason to have any emissions that might help with targeting.


    Then he tried the tried and true anger.


    But there wasn''t anything to be angry at.


    Deserts were hot by nature. The sun was hot by nature. He didn''t even see the enemy, so it was hard to stay angry at something you never even saw and knew nothing about. Even trying to stay angry at the stupid exercise didn''t work when he was laying in the shade in 142 degrees Freedom panting and wishing he was dead.


    He tried bargaining, but everyone else was trying to pawn off their duties just like he was. There were no loading frames, the most was the strength assist exoskeletal rigs, but the batteries on those went dead in under an hour.


    So there would be work gangs of ten to fifteen Telkan just dragging a heavy cable across the camp to bury it after a lucky rocket blew a crater to the cable, got through the protective layers, and the nanites gobbled the superconductor up.


    And, of course, someone did the locking ring wrong and the nanites hiding in the ever present sand ate that cable too.


    Meaning they had to do it again.


    Then came depression, which was the favorite stage of practically everyone on the firebase.


    Even the Lieutenant and the Gunny seemed to slump as they moved from shade patch to shade patch.


    Three days in Vak.tel was laying in the shade on top of a camouflage netting bag, panting, trying to stay cool when a thicker shadow crossed him. He looked up and saw Sergeant Kringik looking down at him.


    "Got a radio squeal. Patrol from Delta Company, 19th Battalion, is under heavy attack. The Lieutenant wants to go out and see if they need help," Sergeant Kringik said. "You''re on detail."


    Vak.tel just grunted, getting up. He headed toward the morgue.


    Inside, Field Sergeant Impton was listening to the Lieutenant, grinning that grin he always wore.


    "The armor is rated for two thousand degrees Kelvin. It''s not going to overheat just walking through the desert in six hundred Kelvin heat," the Lieutenant was saying.


    "Microfines, nanites, microbot, and just plain sand and dust clog heat exchangers, heat sinks, armor overheat," Impton said. "Heat not problem."


    The Lieutenant gave a long suffering sigh, slumping slightly. "What''s the problem."


    "Is desert. Desert is problem," Impton said. He shook his head. "Patrol went out in power armor. Now dead."


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    "We don''t know that," the LT said. "Their radio message was cut off."


    "Patrol dead," Impton insisted.


    Lieutenant Gretlik sighed. "Fine. How should we go out?"


    "Hard plate. Chemical percussion ammunition. Use fun truck. Take radio on receive only. Limited power sources, no emissions," Impton said. He puffed out his chest slightly. "Here two years, sir. Still alive."


    The Lieutenant nodded, looking personally aggrieved. "Fine."


    The armorer obviously already knew the outcome of the argument, the weapons already pulled off the racks. Vak.tel accepted his. A standard variable munition ''magac'' rifle set for chemical cartridges, a light machinegun set for the same. He gathered up the weapons, took his night vision, accepted his counter-signs module, and then moved outside.


    Apparently Chernobog had shielded nanoforge systems, so Vak.tel found himself standing in front of the massive full conversion chassis, accepting ammunition from one of the nameless Telkan who didn''t wear nametags or talk much. He got his ammunition and started putting it in the proper pouches before he moved away.


    Back to the Lieutenant.


    "No hover vehicles?" the LT asked.


    Impton shook his head. "Too loud."


    "Graviton?"


    "Attract roaming mines and lurking missiles."


    "Anti-grav?"


    "Same."


    "So, wheeled?"


    Impton nodded. "Chemical engine, wheeled. Minimum electronics," the Field Sergeant smiled. "You''ll like."


    Impton moved over. "Chernobog, get the fun truck! The technical!"


    The camo netting shifted and the massive hand of the full conversion chassis appeared, holding a six wheeled truck in one hand. It swooped it over the quad a few times, making ''mrrrr.... vroooom'' noises, then set it down. The arm disappeared back under the camo netting.


    The truck was missing the roof, there was a gun mount on the frame, the panels were all dented and the windows missing. It was painted a tan color and looked like it belonged in a junkyard.


    Vak.tel felt like groaning.


    "That piece of shit?" Cipdek asked.


    "Is good truck," Impton said. He pointed at Vak.tel. "You get in middle, stand up in hole, put gun on mount."


    Vak.tel groaned but followed the instructions. Impton gave him an additional armored ''apron'' to wear.


    He was dripping in sweat.


    "Aren''t you worried the electrical and computer systems and magnetic induction engines will attract enemy fire?" the LT asked as the rest of the patrol climbed into the truck.


    "No computer, electrical copper wire. Engine is petroleum," Impton said.


    "Steam powered? Burn the petroleum for heat to make steam to drive pistons?" the Lieutenant asked. "Steam engines are cool."


    "Nope. Petroleum explosions drive cylinders. Fun truck," Impton said. He started the vehicle and it roared to life, belching smoke out the back.


    The next half hour was one of absolute bone jarring misery for Vak.tel. Every bump went straight to his spine and neck. The sun just hammered down on him and the tinted goggles that he was wearing didn''t seem to help.


    At one point they passed a sign reading "NEW VAY-GRAZ" with an arrow pointing back the way they came.


    "Should be right around that corner," the LT called out.


    Impton slowed down, which somehow made the ride worse for Vak.tel.


    "Let''s move up on foot,'' The LT said as they rounded the corner.


    The vehicle slowed and stopped.


    Impton was out first and Vak.tel took a minute to remove the apron.


    "Is bad road," Impton said.


    "Why?" the LT asked.


    Impton pointed. "Look."


    Vak.tel suddenly realized what he''d been seeing but his brain hadn''t been registering.


    Burnt out vehicles. Tanks, APCs, shattered strikers, trucks, light mobility vehicles. Most were unfamiliar, but there was obviously two types of designs.


    "All right, spread out, eyes open," the LT said.


    The dirt and grit made skritching noises underfoot as the squad moved forward. Vak.tel nervously checked to make sure the LMG was loaded, wrapping the sling around one forearm.


    Around the corner, the dead patrol was obvious. The armor was scattered around, shattered and broken. Puddles of coolant, explosion marks, and shards of armor were all over the road. There were two vehicles, not burning, but twisted junk, in the middle of scorch marks where the electric induction engines had caught ifre and the battery had burned. On either side of the road were strange green plants. Thick bodied with round thick limbs that jutted out from the trunk at a 45 degree angle and then straight up. The plants were covered with white fuzz, flowers, and what looked like spines.


    Impton held up a hand for everyone to stop.


    "What''s wrong, Sergeant?" the LT asked.


    "Could be Saggy-Sorrow Man out there," he said, pointing at the green plants. "Be careful. Look just like plant."


    "All right," the LT said. "You heard the Sergeant, eyes open."


    Vak.tel looked over the surroundings as the LT waved everyone to either side of the road and to spread out.


    "No, no, stay away from sides. Saggy-Man grab," Impton said.


    The LT waved everyone back to the center.


    "Sir," Lance Corporal Erlmet said, pointing at the sand.


    Vak.tel saw a body, mostly buried, only the muzzle, one hand, and one knee out of the dirt. The muzzle was frozen in an eternal scream.


    The body looked like a dried out mummy that had been there for years.


    "What is..." the LT said, starting to move toward the body.


    "No. Saggy-Man out there. Saggy-Man push body in dirt, suck out juices," Impton said. He suddenly held up his hand. "Stop."


    "What?" the LT asked.


    "Back. Slowly," Impton said.


    "What about the patrol? We need to at least check for wounded," the LT said.


    "Pop-wasps," Impton said. He held up his rifle. "See?"


    Vak.tel zoomed in with his retinal link.


    It was a flying insect, armored, with a large abdomen. It had iridescent wings, a black body with yellow stripes, large eyes. It was also taking little bites out of the handgrip of Impton''s weapon.


    "Back up," Impton said. "Do not kill. Death scent will bring more," he held his weapon out.


    Vak.tel followed Private Jeerlimt as they moved backwards.


    A wasp landed on his goggles, moving around slowly. It combed its antenna then flew off.


    "What is so dangerous about the pop-wasps, Sergeant?" the LT asked, his voice hushed.


    "Butt is shape charge. Battlesteel cone. Blow two centimeter wide hole in battlesteel, pockmark warsteel. One, twenty, no danger," he pointed out in the desert at one of the plants. "See weird woven metal egg?"


    Vak.tel looked. It looked like a paper-mache egg made from metal with a hole in the bottom.


    It was also roughly the size of a small Telkan.


    "Thousands. Swarm. Pop pop pop," Impton said. "Destroy armor, break it up," he waved his rifle and two took off. "Chew up armor, make nests, armor for bodies. Nasty."


    "Why not just rocket it. A little HIT should do it," Someone suggested.


    Impton pointed out six more nests, all separated by at least a hundred meters. "All will swarm. Pop pop pop. No more patrol."


    "Oh," their voice was quiet.


    "Greeeat," Vak.tel said.


    His brain moved to the last stage of enlisted grief.


    "Fuck it," he said.


    The patrol trudged back to the vehicle, climbing in. Impton got it moving and the desert slid by as Vak.tel looked around for anything that might need shot that wouldn''t just make shit worse.


    Once they got back and the weapons turned in, Vak.tel went back over to his spot in the shade with a cold fizzystim, leaning back on the empty camo-net bag.


    "Good patrol, no?" Impton asked, walking by.


    "Came back alive. Good patrol," Vak.tel agreed.


    Impton''s laughter echoed across the camp.


    Vak.tel smiled back.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 84

    Six years. Six years we fought.


    Our hive-ship got off two orbital shots before it was taken down by lunar mass driver shots from what we had mistakenly assumed was only orbital cargo mass drivers. Support and landing craft ran into a veritable wall of aerospace fighters launched from bases hidden in the landscape all over the area.


    Then we encircled to besiege a city that had been mistakenly identified as heavy industry.


    They were right.


    Its industry was death.


    For six years, six years, we fought there. Hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions were killed in that hard gritty sands of that desert.


    Then the Hive Queen Klok<tok>Naktiktak was killed in what the Terrans call MechaKrautland. The Speakers collapsed. The servitor castes began rebelling.


    And then it happened.


    I remember it clearly. What happened.


    I wish I didn''t. - Klak.nark


    , Mantid Warrior, 15 Post Glassing, Longhorn Historical Society


    The weeks went by slow for Vak.tel.


    Patrols, most of them on foot or riding in one of the technicals.


    Bombardments, two to five times a day, all of them with enough time to get under cover.


    Maintenance. Oh, Lord, the maintenance.


    Trying to find somewhere cool to rest.


    What made it worse was the fact that someone left a length of wire unsecured but close to a dataport. Some enterprising warboi was able to ''flicker'' the pulse of electricity down the wire to generate juuuuust enough magnetic field flickers to hot-jump across the 1/2 inch airgap and get into the nutriforge system.


    Which was now bricked and only put out feces flavored chocolate pudding with chunks of corn and chocolate.


    Which meant everyone was now eating the MREs out of the bags.


    Vak.tel</a> was honestly getting tired of Turkey Surprise. The shitty alcohol tasting compressed fruit cake patty just wasn''t worth it.


    Then the other nanoforges got hacked. Most of it was ammo problems, which Chernobog could handle. The worse was turning the toilet paper wetnap towelettes into sandpaper, leaving everyone to only use the MRE toilet paper.


    Which was pretty much trying to use cheap flimsy crepe paper.


    The misery was ramping up.


    But Vak.tel</a> had hit the ''fuck it'' stage and he just rolled with it.


    "It is what it is" was Vak.tel''s standard go-to saying.


    Three weeks since they had gotten to the firebase and the only thing Vak.tel</a> had done was foot patrols, fast patrols in the technical, maintenance, and hide from the ever-present solar hammer of the sun.


    Anything within line of sight of the firebase, the Telkan owned. Day or night, thanks to night vision, they owned the territory.


    Except, as Vak.tel</a> had learned during foot patrols, what looked like flat ground simply was not. There were subtle hills and valleys, rises and depressions, hidden areas, clumps of rocks.


    Still, if the firebase could see it, they could kill it.


    The problem was, outside of the line-of-sight, the Terrans owned the desert. Supply vehicles got ambushed or blown up. Aerostrikers got knocked down on the regular. Sometimes by shoulder or drone fired missiles, but more than once by small arms and light machineguns.


    Which meant that everything got shoveled into the mass grinders.


    There was good news, after three weeks of bullshit, as far as the LT, the Gunny, and those who Vak.tel</a> secretly believed were goddamn morons were concerned.


    Chernobog''s knee and fire control systems were finally repaired.


    Everyone else felt a sense of accomplishment, like things had finally turned around.


    Vak.tel</a> just had this feeling that there was another boot that was going to drop.


    Right on his head.


    Which is why he wasn''t surprised when he was outside, next to his assigned foxhole, sleeping under a slight overhang of the overhead cover and on top of a wadded up bag of camouflage netting, he was woken up by a light tapping on the bottom of his boot.


    He opened one eye, relaxing his grip on his battered, dusty, and beat up magac rifle.


    It was Cipdek, standing there with an expression that looked like he''d found a dead scorpion in his boot.


    "What?" Vak.tel</a> asked.


    "Message drone got through. Overhead the LT telling the Gunny to get us into our power armor," Cipdek said.


    "Oh Lord, he''s got a plan," Vak.tel</a> groaned, getting up. He looked around. "Go tell Sergeant Kringik, get the rest of the squad up. I''ll meet you all at the morgue."


    Cipdek nodded, hustling away but keeping to the shade even though the sun was approaching the western horizon. Vak.tel</a> got up, taking the time to crack his neck, before heading over to the morgue. The temp dropped straight down to 85F as soon as he stepped in.


    The armorer was already bringing out the cases that the power armor was stored in. Combination armored, maintenance, and fairy-day cage to make sure the armor wasn''t hijacked by a wandering warboi.


    "Gimme a sec, I''ll have your armor out," the armorer said.


    Vak.tel</a> just nodded, moving over to lean against the table where everyone worked on cleaning, repairing, or doing maintenance on their weapons.


    The LT came in, saw the armorer getting the power armor ready, then left without noticing or acknowledging Vak.tel</a> standing next to the table.


    "All right, your armor''s ready," the armorer said. He looked at Vak.tel</a> as he moved up. "I''ve got all the I/O ports disabled via dip-switches, your radio is air gapped from the rest of the systems," the armorer shook his head. "Wasn''t easy to figure out, but I managed it."


    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "Know what''s going on?" Vak.tel</a> asked.


    The armorer shrugged. "Something stupid, I''m sure."


    The armor beeped twice when it opened up, then pinged softly till Vak.tel</a> got in and it closed around him. For a second claustraphobia wrapped its tentacles around him but he kept his tongue against the roof of his mouth and controlled his breathing. He felt the smart-cable twist and the neural interface plug squirm into place. Then there was the barely felt purr of the locking rings spinning into place.


    The armor went live around him.


    The assistant armorer waved and Vak.tel</a> moved over.


    One genuine accept no subsitutes actual Madame 318 with gunny harness and double-heat sink equipped ammunition nanoforge. It has counter-magnetic systems wrapped around it to keep the iron filings and ferrous crystals from adhering to the weapon.


    Vak.tel</a> moved away, going up to the nanoforge. He punched in the codes and pulled free adaptive desert camouflage strips. He wrapped the M318 as he left the armory, moving out to stand next to where Chernobog''s full conversion heavy warframe was sitting.


    "You ready, Chernobog?" someone asked.


    "Ready," came the deep rumbling voice, vastly different from the high pitched voice that Yuri used when he was in his smaller form.


    Vak.tel</a> sat down on a crate, checking over the M318, his magac rifle, and his magac pistol. He doublechecked his grenades, standard anti-matter HE with a phasic kicker.


    It was nearly a half hour before everyone was gathered up around the LT.


    Vak.tel was surprised to see that the Telkan who had originally been guarding the base were in their armor. While Vak.tel was moving over to the group a little green mantid ran up, completely clad in engineer''s armor, and climbed up on his back.


    --am here 621 reporting-- appeared on his HUD.


    "What''s up?" Vak.tel</a> asked.


    --am engineer we ride together to victory shiny and chrome-- 621 said.


    "Welcome to the club," Vak.tel said. He saw a small window appear in the upper left of his vision and schematics for his armor, then the smart rig, then the weapons appear and quickly move through everything. Vak.tel stood there in the group waiting for the LT to do something more than stand there plugged into a drone that had deployed a high power antenna array.


    --weapons good armor good rig good-- 621 said.


    "Thanks," Vak.tel</a> said.


    --you ready for this--


    "Whatever happens, it can''t be worse than sitting here another month," Vak.tel</a> said.


    --just wait-- 621 answered. --assigned to you permanently now just got here hour ago from training--


    "What?" Vak.tel</a> said.


    --now on i am your engineer even outside of simulation-- 621 said. --been training on your gear for two months--


    "Never worked with a greenie before," Vak.tel</a> admitted.


    --heresy telkan marine without greenie is sad marine you see-- 621 said.


    The camouflage nets were moved aside and Chernobog stood up, slowly rising to his full twenty-meter height. The chains rattled, the spears and chains clanking against the heavy armor of the massive full conversion cyborg. Chernobog took two steps then knelt down behind the gathering of Marines.


    The LT disconnected from the drone, which moved around behind him.


    "All right, listen up," the LT said.


    Despite the armor not moving Vak.tel</a> felt like everyone leaned forward slightly.


    "We''re moving to the staging area," the LT said. "We''ll be linking up with the rest of the battalion as well as a battalion of First TMEF."


    "What are we doing?" someone asked.


    "Not sure. We''ll find out when we get to the staging area," the LT said. "It''s full finger on the trigger."


    The three technicals pulled up, as well as the other five working vehicles. Telkans in full power armor were inside, the guns loaded and put in place. Four Telkan began moving through the gathered Marines, handing out additions to the armor.


    Vak.tel</a> noted that the armor for First Telkan Marine Expeditionary Force was all heavy and bulky, with thick plates and a feeling of restrained power. They all had a four pack rocket launcher on one shoulder and a single tube belt fed grenade launcher on the other.


    One of the armorers put a harness on his back.


    "What''s that?" Vak.tel</a> asked.


    "Engineer housing, battlescreen emitter enhancer, six pack rocket pack with dedicated nanoforge, engineer nanoforge," the armor said. He slammed both fists into the shoulder hooks, setting them firmly, before moving on to the next one, dragging a power-dolly behind them.


    "We''ll be mostly on foot, the staging area is eight miles off. We''ll be moving at unlocked speed, so command figures we''ll be there in fifteen to twenty minutes," the LT said.


    Vak.tel</a> managed to keep from sighing.


    "Third squad, over here," Sergeant Kringik said, waving.


    Vak.tel</a> moved over to stand next to Sergeant Kringik in the assistant squad leader position.


    Not like Vak.tel</a> was ever asked to do anything but point and shoot.


    "I want you guys to keep a good spread. We''re left center, so keep your weapons on safe," Sergeant Kringik said.


    "I''ve got a missile launcher," Vak.tel</a> said.


    "It''ll be on remote control for anti-air and counter-battery and interception fire," Sergeant Kringik said.


    "Great," Vak.tel</a> grumped.


    It only took nearly a half hour for the LT to get everything together. Twice Chernobog activated searchlights mounted in the eye-sockets of the skull on his chest, panning them over the reinforced platoon before shutting them off.


    "All right, that''s our signal. Platoon, move out," the LT ordered.


    Moving out, everything was silent as the group thudded along, heavy power armor boots thudding into the dirt of the desert. Vak.tel</a> noticed, with some startlement, that Chernobog''s steps were nearly silent even though big rings of dust erupted around its massive feet.


    "Weird," Vak.tel</a> said.


    --what--


    "Chernobog''s pretty much silent," he said. "How''s that work?"


    --counter-wavelength sonic emitters to flatten the acoustic wave-- 621 said. --easy peasy want see waveform--


    "No, gotta keep running," he said. He could feel himself sweating. "Can you do anything about the heat?"


    --sorry running thermal camo reduced emissions--


    "All right," he said.


    The route was somewhat looping to avoid what Vak.tel</a> had learned was cactus patches, then a field of wreckage where pop-wasps and mecha-scorpions were known to lurk, a quick detour to avoid some battlesteel cobras. Through a debris field and two impact areas. Finally they reached the staging area.


    Vak.tel</a> felt relieved that they weren''t the first group there.


    He was startled to see there were four other Chernobogs. Yuri went up to each, silently slamming his forearm against theirs, before returning to the back of the formation. The HUD left Vak.tel</a> known exactly where to stand.


    After three weeks of not being in armor, it felt weird, almost invasive, to have his HUD tell him where to stand, what path to take, where to look. He could feel his armor use subtle pressure sleeve variances to get him to shift unconsciously.


    He decided he really didn''t like it.


    The rest of Kilo Company showed up within minutes, and the battalion filled in rapidly.


    Each time the newcomer Chernobog moved up to the already present ones and silently clashed forearms with the ones already there.


    Vak.tel</a> noted that the massive full conversion cyborgs were all different, their chassis packing different weapons, different configurations, even different appearances.


    All of them brutal and intimidating.


    His armor beeped to let him know something was going on.


    He had a circle in front of him, starting to slide away along a line.


    "Figures, they don''t even tell us anything," Vak.tel</a> grouched, hustling forward to get inside the circle. "Stupid BATTACNET."


    He ran in formation, picking up speed. The Chernobog were at the back of the formation, the technicals and other vehicles in between them.


    Light streaks started appearing in the sky, arcing away. The Chernobogs suddenly opened up, chainguns ripping fire at the night as their point defense systems went live.


    Within minutes it was a constant roar around him, even as his own armor started firing off rockets from the backpack.


    --tanks joining looks like full assault-- 621 said.


    "Really?" Vak.tel</a> asked. "Against what?"


    --city-- 621 said. --general has sworn to take the city this time no escape for all the humans-- there was a pause. --hate this simulation--


    "You''ve done this before?" Vak.tel</a> asked.


    --yes-- 621 answered. --standard training simulation you do not use any more--


    "No. Which scenario is it?" Vak.tel</a> asked.


    --siege of furnace creek-- 621 said. --mantid invasion of terra--


    He was silent for a moment. "Wait, we''re not playing the Terrans or the Confederacy?"


    --no--


    "How did it go for the Mantid?" Vak.tel</a> asked.


    There was silence for a moment. The interceptions were happening closer and closer as the flight times were reduced due to the troops getting closer and closer to the city.


    --not good--


    It flashed on his visor.


    ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC

 Nova Wars - Chapter 85 Atom Smasher Blues

    (Author''s Note: Due to ''problems'' we''re switching Vak.tel''s name to Vaktel. That should stop some problems)


    His name was the complex mathematical equation involving thermal transference of a mixture of inverted hydrogen atoms in a distilled H2O solution with a saturation of at least 9% that was able to be scaled according to solution volume. His friends usually called him "Heat" which was fine with him.


    He had been born in the Wrathful Mercury greenie creches, educated and apprenticed in the great Wrath Forges of Mercury and the Hate Forges of Mars. He had joined the Solarian Iron Dominion Marine Corps when he was three and had just graduated and finished a year of training on Punished Pluto when the Bag had gone down.


    He was known as 621, which was the melting point of inverted spooky particle lead atoms and it pleased him greatly to have been assigned that number.


    Now he was assigned to a Telkan that actually came from beyond the Sol System. He was excited and nervous at the same time, as this was the first eVR exercise he had taken part in since he had been transferred from Punished Pluto to the Dominion Strike Force.


    He had to admit, the particular eVR recreation exercise made him nervous. He knew what had happened historically and knew it was a Ko-Bash-Mary Scenario for anyone on the historical Mantid side. Only one commander in history had managed to accomplish the objective.


    Colonel Manuel Trucker, in command of 2-66 Armor Brigade, Second Armor Division (Old Blood), had powered through the Terran assault and destroyed the city beyond in a shocking victory that still had analysts trying to figure out how or if he had cheated.


    621 kind of wished he could bring up the data and the replays of that famous eVR exercise.


    He had his hands and bladearms busy keeping the roving and heavy electronic warfare and counter-electronic warfare from ripping apart the armor, keeping the electronic counter measures and the electronic counter-counter measures working effectively. The BATTACNET was functioning at top performance, meaning everyone around him was moving in a carefully synchronized ballet organized by powerful supercomputer server arrays.


    That''s when he saw it.


    ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC


    It had only enough time to flash up on the HUD, not even fully spinning up the brightness before 621 slammed the atomic warfare protocols to full life.


    Vak-tel felt the armor go sludgy feeling on him at the same time as he saw the words start to brighten up.


    ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC


    Before Vak-tel could even react the whole world went white as nearly a dozen tactical thermonuclear warheads went off in a line only three miles away, each slightly overlapping the ones to the north-by-northwest and south-by-southeast.


    The flash of the overlapped 340kt blasts hit the ranks of III Corps instantly. The radiation cascade was immediately afterward, a howling firestorm of dirty spooky-tritium enhanced thermonuclear weapon driven radiation.


    At the same time the BATTACNET crashed under a massive assault and the communication channels filled with garbage.


    There were orders to retreat, to advance, to rout, to open fire, all crashing over the communications network, with cloned headers and encryption keys.


    "TAKE A KNEE!" the LT shouted over his loudspeaker even as the green mantid with him lased the Gunny and the Section Sergeant''s armors with a commo laser. The web spread out within a second as the entire platoon went down on one knee, one fist pressed against the ground, helmet facing down, one fist back to keep the weapon clear.


    Orders across the commo-channel were garbage and 621 locked them out, focusing on the laser commo from Sergeant Kringik and Staff Sergeant Lurpok, adding Vak-tel''s laser commo into the relay to the rest of the squad as backup for Sergeant Kringik.


    Glancing up real quick, Vak-tel saw it coming even in the dark, the way the sand suddenly seemed to waver.


    621 saw it and alerted the rest of the greenies even as the others warned him.


    499 told everyone to jam the grav-spike as hard and as deep as they could. Chernobog was standing up and moving forward.


    The thermal shockwave hit first less than 3 seconds after the detonations, and Vak-tel could hear his alarms wailing as his heat spiked. His battlescreen flared as it tried to mitigate the thermal pulse and 621 dumped as much power as could be spared from the grav-spike.


    Vak-tel closed his eyes as he lowered his head.


    "BRACE FOR IT!" Chernobog roared, taking the last of three huge steps to put himself in front of the platoon before going down on one knee and crossing his arms over his torso.


    The shockwave hit just shy of six seconds later and his armor''s grav-spike howled as a 2.1 psi overpressure wave hit him. His HUD went down, came back up, went down again as 621 dumped all the power to the battlescreen and the grav-spike. The battlescreen held, but not by much, only the waveform analysis by 558 allowing the greenies to keep the battlescreens up.


    Vak-tel looked up slowly.


    The sand was steaming in the night air, red hot bottomed craters were ahead, the clouds in the sky were gone, replaced by a long line of angry fists reaching for the sky that merged together into a wall of mushroom clouds nearly ten miles long.


    Missiles were already coming in, streaking in from the city to be ripped at by the point defense. The massive cloud was rolling toward the platoon, missiles punching through.


    Vak-tel noted that the point defense was a lot thinner. He checked his HUD.


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    14% slush and 84% heat on all of his nanoforges. His zero-point reactors were flatlined, overheated, and the two micro-reactors were struggling with heat.


    His armor suddenly shivered as 621 ran a macro real quick.


    Thin glass shards erupted off of his armor and fell to the ground.


    "DIG IN!" came the CO''s voice through the network.


    Vak-tel stood up, pointing his wrist at the ground and activating the digger. It flashed, heat warning wailed, but he jumped down into the hole.


    "Switching to emplaced," Vak-tel said, pulling the smartrig up so that he could lay the M318 along the burning hot sand.


    Rockets, missiles, artillery shells were getting through. Chernobog was firing his big gun, a shot every two seconds, and his point defense was including even the smaller weapons on his chassis.


    Vak-tel''s rocket launcher in his back was firing counter-missile missiles as fast as it could wet-print them.


    ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC streamed up just before three different atomics whipped through the point defense, clawed for air, and cracked off down the line.


    Vak-tel ducked down, the thermal pulse making the sand steam again and the shockwave rolling over the top of the makeshift foxhole.


    Still more went off.


    "TURTLE UP!" the LT''s voice was crackling, the laser web blocked by the sand.


    The barrage went on and on, but Vak-tel watched his heat slowly lower since he wasn''t directly exposed to the thermal pulse. Twice atomics detonated overhead, slamming him down into his foxhole, which was dug into the bedrock that had been exposed by the overpressure waves.


    He looked up and saw that tracers were starting to whip overhead. 5.77mm, 20mm, 30mm, 10mm, all shrieking through the air and ID''d by his flickering and dancing HUD. His psychic shielding jumped to 22%.


    That''s small arms! Did they run through the blastwaves?


    "HERE THEY COME!" Vak-tel heard Chernobog roar out.


    He popped up, dragging the M318 with him and slapping it down.


    The first thing he saw was the running shapes, coming straight at them, less then a hundred meters but barely visible with all the debris in the air. The second thing he saw was the red.


    Dozens, scores of pairs of red eyes.


    He started firing, the dust too thick to make anything out clearly.


    The debris cloud let them get close, he thought.


    His rounds were bouncing, howling off the armor they hit. He raked back and forth.


    His pychic shielding jumped to 63%


    Why aren''t the AM6 rounds working? he wondered.


    --shifting ammo-- 621 told him. --keep shooting through the belt--


    Vak-tel nodded, fluttering the trigger. Five, breath, five, breath.


    --clamp the gun-- 621 sent over the link.


    "It''ll overheat," Vak-tel said.


    --and we''ll be dead if you don''t--


    Gritting his teeth, Vak-tel clamped down on the firing lever, hosing the targets. He was aware his psychic shielding was at 80% and rising.


    A glance showed Chernobog was grabbing Terrans off of his body and throwing them, sometimes ripping them in half or otherwise smashing them, other times stomping on them.


    A grenade landed in his foxhole and he barely scrambled out in time.


    It was complete chaos. Terrans were in with the platoon, in with the company, fighting at point blank range. Vak-tel tried to keep the M318 in play but a Terran got up on him, smashing it away with one fist while lunging forward with a vibroknife. Vak-tel blocked the vibroknife, almost falling back into the foxhole. Cipdek tackled the Terran off of him and all three of them went down.


    A fist shattered his faceplate, a grasping hand ripped away his shoulder pauldron. He saw Cipdek get grabbed and his arm torn off. Vak-tel managed to get a hand under the Terran''s helmet and push hard enough the Terran rolled away. Vak-tel grabbed for his pistol, drawing it and firing point blank under the arm of the Terran before it could get up. Another one came at him, swinging a chainsword, ripping into his shoulder plates.


    He felt the rocket launcher pack drop off.


    Vak-tel lunged forward and tackled the Terran, both of the going to the ground. He could feel the chainsword chewing apart the back of his legs as he pushed the pistol up under the chin and yanked the trigger. He rolled off the corpse before the armor''s arms locked.


    He saw the LT, front and side of his helmet missing, holding onto the shoulders of a helmetless Terran, who was holding the LT''s shoulders.


    Both men were screaming into each other faces.


    Something exploded, blowing both men''s torsos into chunky salsa as Vak-tel pushed himself up.


    Another Terran tackled him and they rolled around, the Terran''s forceblade jabbing at Vak''tel''s armor while Vak''tel just tried to shoot whatever was in front of the barrel. Chernobog roared and fell over backwards, crushing three Telkan but a half dozen Terrans too. The Terran grabbed Vak-tel''s visor, fingers punching through, and tore it away.


    His psychic shielding was maxed out, making his whole mouth feel tingly and filling his mouth full of strawberries and MRE fruit cake.


    He screamed at the Terran even as he got the pistol into the armpit. He pulled the trigger as the hand grabbed the end of his muzzle and twisted. Bone and teeth shattered, skin stretched and tore.


    The dead Terran fell backwards, half of Vak-tel''s muzzle in his hand.


    Vak-tel fell to his knees and hands, blood pouring out of his face, his tongue hanging free into the sand.


    He felt the chainsword enter his back, chewing through his guts, and out his chest.


    SIMULATION ENDED


    He jerked, hearing soothing music play, blinking as the phantom pain receded.


    --got stomped on by big lemur-- 621 said. --you--


    "Got my face literally ripped off," Vak-tel said.


    He felt hands shifting his armor as the null-g pad slowly released him. A maintenance override opened his armor.


    The smell and feel of shipboard recycled air had never felt or tasted so good to Vak-tel.


    "Not bad," the voice next to him said.


    He looked over and flinched back slightly from the human.


    It had amber light in its eyes.


    "Hey, hey, easy, easy. You did good," Vak-tel heard.


    "I got killed," Vak-tel said. He shivered.


    "Here, drink this, it''ll help," the Terran said, handing over a can of fizzypop.


    Vak-tel swallowed half of it in one long pull.


    It did.


    "You did good, buddy," the Terran said. Behind him Vak-tel''s armor was being loaded onto a crate that was on a grav-dolly.


    "We got stomped," Vak-tel said.


    The Terran laughed. "Yeah, we all did when we did that one," he said. "I crapped out and drew that sim for the end of Basic Training."


    "Really?" Vak-tel asked.


    The Terran nodded. "Yup. It''s the horrified realization you''re playing the Mantid in that fuck fuck circus, I''ll tell you what."


    "The AM6 doesn''t work against their armor," Vak-tel said.


    The Terran shook his head. "Nope. Warsteel Mark One and Mark V are apparently still the best stuff out there."


    "It seems like antimatter would work," Vak-tel said.


    The Terran shook his head again. "Atomic bonding''s or some shit is too strong in the mark one, the shell just cracks and the AM6 does its thing with the air instead of the armor."


    Vak-tel shook his head.


    "Then why train us like that?" Vak-tel asked.


    "It isn''t you whose being tested, or, rather, not just you," the Terran said, taking Vak-tel''s arm. "It''s how quickly your leadership reacts to a total fuck fuck circus. It isn''t suffering no casualties, its how long you last," he shook his head. "Over a half million insane Terrans and nearly a million Screaming Ones flooded out of that ruin and ripped the Mantid apart."


    "And then ate them?" Vak-tel guessed, half in jest.


    "We don''t like to talk about that part," the Terran said.


    The seriousness of the tone made Vak-tel wonder if the Terran was kidding or not.


    "The General has you guys signed up for medical checks, mental health checks, then seventy two off," the Terran said. He put his palm against the readout on the door and it lifted up, exposing a makeshift medical clinic. He let go of Vak-tel''s arm.


    Vak-tel took a single step.


    "Hey, buddy?" the Terran said.


    Vak-tel looked over.


    "You did good," the Terran said.


    Vak-tel believed him.


    0-0-0-0-0


    "Pass the beer," Vak-tel said.


    Impton grinned and handed over a beer. The sixpack hissed and clinked.


    "Was good," Impton smiled. "You have been to see the Chernobog."


    Vak-tel nodded. "Was very good."

 Chapter 86

    ..>GENERATING HIGH SECURITY CHAT ROOM


    ..>UNLISTING CHAT ROOM


    ..>GENERATING ENCRYPTION KEYS


    ..>GENERATING GUI SPACE


    ..>GENERATING ENCRYPTION


    ..>CLONING INVITEES!


    ..>DONE


    ..>SENDING AUTO-INVITES


    ..>TREA HAS JOINED THE CHAT


    ..>MAN HAS JOINED THE CHAT


    ..>RIG HAS JOINED THE CHAT


    ..>PUB HAS JOINED THE CHAT


    ..>WARNING: NO CHAT LOGS WILL BE RECORDED


    ..>MERGING GESTALT FEEDS


    ..>DONE!


    ..>ACTIVATING SPOOKY QUANTUM DATA SUSPENSION MATRIX


    ..>DONE!


    ..>RELEASING CHAT IN SLOW MODE


    ..>DONE


    CHANSERV>HAVE A GOOD DAY


    CHANSERV>REMEMBER: I''M WATCHING YOU


    TREA


    Is everyone settled from the merger?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MAN


    Yes. A little disconcerting.


    Who generated the room?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    Me.


    We need to talk. Just us.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIG


    I notice it''s founders only.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    Not exactly.


    Yes, but no.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUB


    Explain.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    We''re the ones who met OG Terra.


    We''re talking before Terran Descent Humanity.


    Before Terrans


    Before Earthlings


    We''re the ones who met Humanity.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIG


    Oooh, it''s going to be one of --those-- conversations.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    Yeah.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MAN


    Away from the children?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    They''d tell you they aren''t children any more. That 40K years have gone by.


    They seem stuck on that. That the universe, the galaxy, the Confederacy, has moved on.


    40K years is a long time, they keep repeating


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MAN


    "We aren''t the helpless races they met 40K years ago. We''re our own power now."


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUB


    Good impression.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    That''s the problem.


    It''s been 40K years for us, only 50 years for the humans.


    I can''t seem to get them to understand that.


    They think the 40K years matters.


    They don''t understand why I keep saying it doesn''t.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUB


    It doesn''t because the same humanity that was locked away during the Second Precursor War is the same humanity that just re-emerged.


    40K years HASN''T passed for them.


    They''re still furious over the Terran Xenocide Event, over the Invasion of Fortress Sol, over the Harmonous Massacre.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MAN


    And still have echoes of the Mithril Nebula Conflict, the First Mar-gite War too.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIG


    And Clownface.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    Right. And Clownface.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIG


    They still see Humanity as what they saw back then.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    No. It''s worse.


    They don''t remember.


    Not like we do.


    Hell, all we have to do is look at the night sky to remember them.


    But for our newer members?


    They don''t know humanity. They don''t know what they''re capable of. They don''t get it to the point of not asking some basic questions.


    Worse, they aren''t paying attention to the after action reports coming out of the Mar-gite Occupied Zone.


    They''re blowing them off or just tallying it up to confusion and on-the-spot observer misunderstandings.


    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIG


    How do you misunderstand that the Solarian Iron Dominion just sent a fleet five times larger than the ENTIRE Confederate Fleet just to the Mar-gite Occupied Zone, much less what they sent toward the Hellspace Divide and out to the Ornislarp Noocracy?


    The sheer weight of metal should be alarming to anyone who looks at it.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MAN


    "What happened to the Lanaktallan during the Second Precursor War proves that just weight of metal doesn''t matter. Technology, warfare strategy, force projection, and military skill is what matters."


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUB


    Another good impression.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MAN


    Thank you.


    I''m getting real tired of the younger members telling us that we''re overstating things.


    They didn''t see what we saw.


    They don''t even really remember the Second Precursor War. To them, it''s ancient history.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUB


    But it''s not to humanity.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    No. For them, it was yesterday.


    I''ve tried to convince some of them that the Solarian Iron Dominion has had fifty years to arm, train, and recruit.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MAN


    "It''s a single stellar system. Any successful race can afford to have only 4% or less of their population as standing military."


    or


    "It doesn''t matter if it''s obsolete equipment and tactics."


    or


    "That also means they were restricted to a single system''s resources and manpower."


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIG


    Again, good impressions.


    Just hearing it makes me want to smack you.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    Yeah, well, between that and the insistence that their technological research would have been stymied and hampered by being inside The Bag as well as pointing out that they''re still using weaponry from 40K years ago is causing something close to the Prime Miscalculation.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUB


    It always comes back to that, doesn''t it?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MAN


    It''s really easy to be the toughest kids on the block when you''re three blocks over from anyone tougher and the big guy is in the slammer.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    TREA>lights a cigarette


    Let''s not forget that the whole "they''re already committed to fighting a war on three fronts, -nobody- would open up a fourth front!" mantra we''ve heard.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUB


    That ignores the fact that while it may be multiple fronts, it''s ONE war.


    And humanity developed the intellectual capability of fighting multiple front wars before they even developed fusion power.


    An 800 lb gorilla with chainsaw arms and laser eyes just climbed out of a hole it''s been trapped in, to find out it''s committed to a fight.


    And they want to poke it with a stick.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MAN


    The damned SUDS.


    They''re so hung up on the SUDS and what THEY can do with it, that they ignore that humanity conceived of, planned, designed, built, and -improved on- that very technology.


    We have no idea how they did it.


    And we spent 40K years trying to figure it out.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIG


    We all did.


    It''s aggravating.


    They developed the system right before the Glassing. Then they ''forgot'' how it works.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MAN


    In their defense, we did kill 70% of the population in under 12 hours, destroyed most major population centers, over 40% of their military installations, and 60% of their research facilities.


    I''ve always been surprised they still had the knowledge and tech base to build a spear, much less starships, advanced weaponry, and continue with technological progress.


    MAN>shakes her head


    But try telling the children that.


    Try making them understand.


    They don''t remember the Terrans, much less understand what it means that it''s HUMANITY that climbed out of that hole with a bloody face, a broken whiskey bottle, and an erection.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    That''s just it.


    Right now, they''re still demanding a 3 light year standoff distance from Sol. Any ships that come in are finding out that their sensors are getting jammed like the system is under attack.


    Our newer members think it''s to hide how weakly the system is defended.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MAN


    And ignore that the human''s ''obsolete'' technology is able to spoof the sensors of ships of the line?


    Able to spot and knock out recon probes before they get outside of 1,000 miles from the launcher and issue a warning.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUB


    They''ve gone to ''cut your engines, strike your shields, shut off your sensors, tugs will be used to move you into position'' for any incoming ships.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    That''s an escalation.


    Dammit.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIG


    Poor Violet is doing his best to deescalate things, but things are going sideways on him.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    The Confederacy has stood for over 40K years. It has survived every war thrown at it, every disaster that has come its way.


    And now the return of a founding member may cause it to collapse.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUB


    OK, let''s be honest.


    If I''m given a choice between siding with the humans and siding with the Confederacy, I''m on the human''s side.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MAN


    Same


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIG


    Same


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    Of course.


    It''s nice to have it out in the open though.


    We need to talk to the new crew separately.


    Any idea who we should talk to first?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIG


    This is going to sound weird, but I say the Lankies.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUB


    Makes sense, actually.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    CHANSERV>INVITE SENT


    CHANSERV>LANK HAS JOINED THE CHAT


    ..>ISSUING ENCRYPTION KEY


    ..>ADJUSTING GUI


    ..>GENERATING AVATAR


    TREA


    Welcome.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANK


    LANK>Looks around


    High security non-logged untracable chat room.


    Are we there already?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUB


    Where?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANK


    Civil war.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    No.


    ...


    Not yet.


    Just had a few questions for you.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANK


    Humanity.


    You want our opinion on humanity.


    And the state of the Confederacy.


    And my opinion on my fellow non-founding members.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUB


    See. Told you he was sharp.


    What''s your opinion on the Solarion Iron Dominion?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANK


    It''s a fa?ade. A veneer for those who are willing to accept surface appearances so that they do not question and any inquiry they bother with will be carefully led down a pre-prepared path catering to their biases and assumptions.


    To call itself militaristic is, in itself, a carefully chosen layer of the veneer. Humanity, in and of itself, like any other successful and surviving star faring species, has to be militaristic to at least some extent. We have seen, with their record of wars, that being militaristic, even at their most peaceful and pacifistic, when they survive, is their natural state.


    The un-natural state that was the Harmonous Cluster ended in genocide as they did not have even system defenses and thought a strongly worded statement on automated beacons was enough to protect them.


    As for tyrannical, that too is an illusion. Humans are some of the most independent individuals in known space that can also function as a cooperative society. Tyranny invokes certain mental images, however, many have not heard of ''the tyranny of the majority'' or, as one of the Lanaktallan nations puts it ''the tyranny of the ballot box'' while the Treana''ad have suffered the ''tyranny of the birthing chamber''.


    The entire self-description was just the costume they put on it to see who would take it all at face value and not look any further in.


    The real Solarian Iron Dominion can be seen in the way that they contribute ships and manpower to defend even former enemies while still engaged in diplomatic talks to determine their actual stance and position regarding the Confederacy.


    It''s quite obvious.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    This is why we love you, my man.


    What''s your opinion on the Terrans.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANK


    They aren''t Terrans. They are humanity restored. Any interactions we had with Terrans cannot be applied to restored humanity. Perhaps the only ones that have any idea of what humanity is compared to Terrans would be the four of you here, with only Rigel having not engaged in combat with them, giving a unique perspective into humanity.


    What has emerged from The Bag is not what anyone expected, however, it does align with an analysis from over 40K years ago.


    Most High Doctor Bo''okdu''uhst used sociomathematics to project what was happening inside The Bag with his cultural progression model.


    His Category Orange, consisting of 2 different sets of 2 scenarios is the most precise.


    Down to the absorption and the cultural assimilation of non-human species trapped inside The Bag.


    His "2+2 Orange" scenario is precise and accurate down to the -revealed- populations of the various species inside The Bag. Which of the two sets will be more accurate depends on the Confederacy''s members as acting outside sources, and which of the two scenarios within those sets will be more accurate depend on how the war goes.


    He even predicted that The Bag opening would coincide with a massive threat to the Confederacy and all life in the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Arm Spur.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    ...


    ...


    ...


    TREA


    That''s... impressive.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANK


    He was one of the only sociomathematicians who never went full blown psychosis.


    Even those who attempt to follow in his footsteps, using his theories, have degenerated into psychosis. If the Terrans were a focus of the attempt, the psychosis often had an extreme violent factor.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MAN


    What do you think of how the others will view the humans?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANK


    First, understand my people. We are not mature until we are fifty. We do not consider ourselves widely mature until our second century. Our generations are considered at 125 years, not 10 or 15 or 20. We are a herd species with a heavy bias toward herd safety and prosperity. We conserve resources, thanks to 125 million years of micro-evolution from the Great Council Era.


    We see the humans as an energetic race who has had to fight to survive even their own birth planet. With fast generations and no cultural or genetic bias against cloning, their numbers increase explosively.


    The other species believe that Terra does not have the numbers to offset the weight of the Confederacy, but they overlook two very salient datapoints.


    One: Bo''okdu''ust''s Orange scenario is right on the -declared- population numbers, which means there is a high possibility of the scenario being correct on the non-declared numbers. These numbers would be population held in stasis for when The Bag opened. With the Terrans love of consent, those beings would have consented to that treatment.


    Two: not only does Bo''okdu''uhst''s work show this, but the simple question of "with 135 million Monster Class Heavy Infantry soldiers fielded during the First Mar-gite War, an irreversible change, why were there only 25,000 in the Confederate Armed Forces rolls?"


    Which shows that there is a possibility that the Terrans have 135 million Monster Class units in slumber somewhere.


    Lanaktallan Intelligence Services believes they are being stored in deep crust facilities on Mars, Venus, Mercury, and other planetary bodies within the system, as well as deep depth gas giant facilities.


    However, the other races, used to how they are, and how we present ourselves, will be convinced that the veneer that humanity is presenting is, in fact, the reality of humanity.


    They will skirt the edge of the Prime Miscalculation as easily and as foolishly as my people did.


    My people have long memories. For my culture, for my society, the 40,000 years humanity has been locked away is less time than some starships have been around.


    Their cultures and societies did not exist when humanity was locked away in The Bag.


    Most High Scientist and Doctor Bo''okdu''uhst predicted that several of the former neo-sapient races will make the Prime Miscalculation.


    That is our opinion.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    ...


    ...


    ...


    TREA


    Thank you.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANK


    You are welcome.


    Is there anything else?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUB


    Where do you stand?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANK


    On the side of the Malevolent Universe''s immune system, of course.


    The Lanktallan people must endure.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIG


    Thank you.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANK


    Of course.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    ..>SECURITY HEADER REMOVED FOR LANK


    ..>ENCRYPTION KEYS REMOVED FOR LANK


    ..>LANK HAS BEEN BOOTED FROM THE CHAT ROOM


    TREA


    Well, while verbose, it was definitely illuminating.


    Who should we talk to next?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MAN


    I''m not sure.


    Let''s think about it.

 Chapter 87

    ¡°You were supposed to be the inheritors of the lemurs¡¯ rage. Not the Council¡¯s arrogance.¡±


    ..>PUNTIMAT HAS JOINED THE SERVER


    ..>GENERATING LIMITED USE ENCRYPTION KEYS


    ..>ISSUING KEYS


    ..>RELEASING USER:PUN


    ..>HAVE A NICE DAY


    ..>I AM WATCHING YOU


    ...


    ...


    TREA


    Hey, how ya doing?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    PUN


    Uh... this is weird. What is it?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    MANT


    Just a secure chat room that doesn''t log discussions, users, or even that it existed.


    You know, just for little chats.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    PUN


    Am I in trouble?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    TREA


    No, no, you''re not in trouble.


    We just wanted to talk to you.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    PUN


    Oh.


    About what? I mean, we''ve committed 4.5% of our multi-system GDP to both our own and Confederacy Defense Organization. I mean, yes, we aren''t really represented in the Confederacy''s military, but we''re still doing our best to be productive members of the Confederacy.


    You''re not going to throw me out, are you?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    TREA


    No. We''re not going to throw you out.


    MANT WHISPERS TO TREA>Easy with them. They''ve always been afraid that we''d throw them out


    TREA WHISPERS TO MANT> I know.


    You''re a peaceful people, like the N''Karoo. The Confederacy is all right with that.


    We just wanted to ask you a few questions?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    PUN


    Oh.


    OK.


    About what?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    TREA


    You are aware of the return of the Terrans, correct?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    PUN


    Yes. The sound of their return scared us. We do not understand how everyone could hear it at the same time despite tens of thousands of light years that are nothing but vacuum, where sound cannot be transmitted.


    That the Terrans could do that, defy the rules as we know them, has frightened us.


    We hope that they are not mad at us, or have reason to be mad at us, or get mad at us.


    We hope that they are not hear to conquer us or devour us.


    We are frightened of them.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    TREA


    We understand that. That is a healthy attitude to have.


    What about the opinion that their equipment is obsolete and 40K years have passed since they were put in The Bag, so they are obviously obsolete?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    PUN


    Yet everyone heard them speak when they emerged, yet nobody can explain how it was done, much less replicate it.


    I asked Lank if they considered the Terran weapons obsolete also.


    He stated that the Lanaktallan experts at the time of the Second Precursor War, or, the Sixth Precursor War as the Terrans called it, had all denigrated Terran technology as obsolete.


    However, the Confederacy still uses several weapon systems, ship and vehicle designs, and protective equipment systems as they were being used before the Terran Xenocide Event.


    Stating their war making methods will be obsolete before seeing them engaged in warfare is foolish. Stating the technology is obsolete does not mean it is ineffective, and its effectiveness cannot be gauged until it is put in use in practical applications on the battlefield.


    My people are frightened. We are a small people, who prefer peace. We are not as martial or aggressive as the Telkan, and have more in common with N''Karoo people than we do with the more aggressive species.


    Saying something is obsolete, even if it is the truth, does not mean it is ineffective.


    A rock is obsolete, yet thrown or swung precisely, it can still kill.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    RIGL


    Thank you for being truthful. We know that the truth is more frightening than saying what you think someone wants to hear.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    PUN


    Is there anything else?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    PBVN


    Yes.


    Are you worried about the state of the Confederacy?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    PUN


    Yes.


    It has contracted. It has become less pervasive. It no longer influences as it once did.


    I fear the Mar-gite Resurgence and the Nexil Quasar Disturbance has left the Confederacy ill prepared to defend itself against the new threat that the Mar-gite present.


    We Puntimat rely upon the Confederacy for our defense, which is why we recently agreed to devote 5.7% of our multi-system GDP to the Confederate Defense Organization.


    ...


    ...


    TREA


    But...


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    ...


    If the Confederacy fails to protect us, we will plead with the Terrans to protect us, no matter how the rest of the Confederacy views the Terrans.


    While modern historians, rightly, give the credit to the defeat of the Atrekna and the Precursor Autonomous War Machines to the post-Terran Confederacy, we Puntimat are aware that it was because of Terran military tactics, Terran military weaponry, and Terran alternative industrial methods.


    Without the Terrans, the Precursor Autonomous War Machines would have fallen to the Atrekna and both the Confederacy and the Council would be footnotes in the Atrekna''s domination of the universe.


    Should the Confederacy be unable to meet its obligations in defending us we will have no choice but to plead with the Terrans to protect us.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    MANT


    Thank you for your honestly.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    PUN


    You are welcome.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--


    CHANSERV> ENCRYTPION KEYS REMOVED FROM PUN


    CHANSERV> USER PUN HAS BEEN KICKED FROM THE CHAT ROOM


    TREA


    That was eye opening.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PBVN


    They underestimate themselves.


    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MANT


    I have a feeling that the Punitmat''s stance will be reflected in all of the smaller players.


    The N''Karoo only have about twenty planets to their name, fairly low population, and maintain a bare minimum tech level to allow themselves to live as they prefer.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGL


    Can you blame them?


    It''s not a bad life they have. They aren''t wired for aggressiveness, for acquisition of material goods, or really even for political or tangible power. They''re biologically wired to be peaceful.


    Heh.


    The Terrans would have put them under extremely limited contact. They''re happy whether or not we''re around.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    We''re going to hear from someone that probably won''t want to talk.


    Be very careful with this one. We don''t want them to freak out. Their Gestalt freaking out can freak out their people and the last thing we want is them going catatonic.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    CHANSERV> GENERATING ENCRYPTION KEYS


    CHANSERV> GENERATING LANGUAGE KEYS


    CHANSERV> INVITE SENT


    CHANSERV> WEM HAS JOINED THE SERVER


    ..>ISSUING KEYS


    ..>RELEASING USER:WEM


    ..>HAVE A NICE DAY


    ..>I''M WATCHING YOU


    MANT


    Hello.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    WEM


    Uh. Hello? This is a weird spot. Why did I suddenly run a recompile of opinions?


    Where am I?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGL


    Some of us just want to ask you you''re opinion on some things.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    WEM


    OK. DOn''t know why you couldn''t ask me in a normal interaction space.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGL


    It involves the Terrans.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    WEM


    OH GOD! ARE THEY HERE? OH GOD, ARE THEY GOING TO 1% US AGAIN?


    WE DIDN''T DO IT! IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!!! WE WERE MISLED! WE DIDN''T KNOW!


    SPARE US OH MIGHTY MAD ARCH-ANGEL OF TERRASOL! WE SHALL SPILL THE BLOOD OF THE UNBELIEVER IN YOUR NAME! WE SHALL BURN THEM UPON PYRES BUILT TO YOUR MAGNIFIGENCE AND YOUR GENEROSITY AND MERCY! WE SHALL DESTROY THOSE WHO HAVE OFFENDED YOU IN YOUR NAME TO PROVE OUR LOYALTY!


    WHO OF US HAS OFFENDED YOU, OH MIGHTY ARCH-ANGEL OF TERRASOL? WHO SHALL WE PUT INSIDE A WICKERMAN AND BURN NEXT TO THE HIGHWAYS? WHO SHALL WE LAUNCH FROM A HOLY MASS-DRIVER INTO THE SUN? WHO SHALL WE BEAT TO DEATH WITH ROCKS AND STICKS?


    HAVE OUR BUILDINGS GROWN TOO HIGH AND DISPLEASED YOU? WE SHALL BURN THEM ALL TO THE GROUND WITH THE OCCUPANTS INSIDE! HAVE WE LOOKED TOO HIGH INTO THE SKY? WE SHALL PLUCK OUT OUR EYES SO AS NOT TO OFFEND THEE!


    SPARE US UNWORTHY ONES, OH TERRA


    -


    -


    TREA


    Wow, this was worse than I thought it would be after 40,000 years.


    Gimme a second, let me see if I can calm them down.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    WEM


    Uh...


    Sorry.


    What about them?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    We were just going to ask what you thought about


    WEM


    WE LOVE TERRASOL!


    THEY''RE THE GREATEST!


    THEY ARE TOLERANT AND KIND AND GENEROUS AND ALLOW EVEN US TO EXIST! WE LOVE THEM!


    ALL HAIL TERRASOL! ALL WORSHIP THE MAD ARCH-ANGEL TERRASOL, WHO IS BEAUTIFUL AND WISE AND ALL LOVE HER AND DESPAIR EVEN AS SHE SMITES HER


    -


    -


    TREA


    Wow. Um...


    You know what?


    Good talk.


    Nice to know your opinion.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MANT


    Thank you for discussing things with us.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    WEM


    No problem.


    -<CONNECTION TO CLIENT LOST>-


    TREA


    OK, not my best idea.


    Holy shit.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUBV


    That was... enlightening.


    Wow.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MANT


    I keep telling you, TerraSol blew a hole through their psyche so bad they only reinvented air travel like 5K years ago. Hell, they didn''t develop a space program till 2,000 years ago and didn''t leave their home system until like 300 years ago.


    I have -literally- seen a Wemterran have a screaming catatonic breakdown at the sight of a weird shaped cloud.


    We''re talking like 6 months ago.


    When Terra made it''s emergence, there was rioting, mass suicides, mass homicides, and a complete social breakdown on Wemterran Prime that lasted almost a month. It''s still somewhat going on.


    Hell, they blew up starships with all hands.


    How did you think it was going to go?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    Well, not that badly.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MANT


    Next time, probably ask some of us.


    Whose the next one?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    I was thinking of the Tukna''rn. They represent, by and large, the majority of the less belligerent and aggressive while still being major contributors to the Confederacy.


    I figure their stability and lack of being easily excitable should allow us to get a baseline for the faction they represent.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUBV


    Well, at least they won''t start screaming at the top of their lungs.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    CHANSERV> GENERATING ENCRYPTION KEYS


    CHANSERV> GENERATING LANGUAGE KEYS


    CHANSERV> INVITE SENT


    CHANSERV> TKN HAS JOINED THE SERVER


    ..>ISSUING KEYS


    ..>RELEASING USER:TKN


    ..>HAVE A NICE DAY


    ..>I''M WATCHING YOU


    TREA


    Hello


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TKN


    Greetings.


    This is a strange location within our gestalt chat structure to have a discussion.


    Doctrine suggests that this is a private conversation with no logs or recordings to enable us to state things off the record.


    Am I correct in that baseline assumption?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUBV


    Yes.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TKN


    This then concerns the Solarian Iron Dominion and the Terrans.


    You wish to know our opinions upon them and that state of the Confederacy and the Confederacy''s relations to the Terrans.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGL


    Yes.


    Quite astute.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TKN


    Common standard operating procedure is to poll all participants to gain knowledge of their diplomatic and governmental stances toward emerging issues or changes in the political structure that may change or radically alter the current status quo.


    The emergence of TerraSol, on war time footing, into the galaxy at large represents a major disruption to the status quo.


    While our information is based less on real world interaction and more on historical databases, we have been examining ancient history.


    Despite only existing on the galactic and interstellar stage for less than 10,000 years, their effect can still be seen to this day, thirty-nine thousand nine hundred ninety one point three years later.


    They are obviously a highly disruptive force. Examination of historical records have shown that they are able to defeat more technologically advanced opponents as well as opponents that outnumber them.


    While fifty-four point two years TerraSol local may not seem like much, it is our opinion that TerraSol doctrine would have resulted in a massive amount of black box and manhattancrashprogram research and development projects across a wide variety of technologies and technological application doctrines.


    It is the Tukna''rn people''s opinion that there is not enough data about TerraSol to make any firm decisions regarding their stance. Until more data is gathered, more data is observed, the Tukna''rn people have decided to be guided and advised by those who have known them longer. Those who have kept the memory and records of TerraSol alive within their cultures, society, and diplomatic approaches.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    Very comprohensive.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TKN


    Thank you.


    Is there anything else?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MANT


    What is your opinion on the current Solarian Iron Dominon''s stance?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TKN


    Terrans hold a high value to responsibility and obligations. Often going against their own self-interest in order fulfill those obligations and responsibilities.


    They devised a way for the ''soul'' to be recorded and a way to store that recording where others cannot reach it.


    In our historical examination, we have found that ''a matter of honor'' has been the reason for some of the most horrific and violent historical events in Terran history.


    To demand, either politically or with threat of force, that the Dominion set aside their obligations and responsibilities is little more than a prelude to armed conflict. A conflict where the Dominion will seek to make an example out of the transgressor in order to warn others of their fate should they make the same demands.


    Historically, Terrans, from humanity to Terran Descent Humanity, including Terran Descent Canine and Terran Descent Feline, are far harsher toward former allies than they are toward previously unknown or even former belligerents.


    Furthermore, the idea of an ''everlasting soul'' is not a new thing. The Doctrine of Worship of the Digital Omnimessiah holds the everlasting soul as a core tenant and structural support. This means that the Terrans also view their stewardship of the ''souls'' of those they safeguard as a near religious or fully religious obligation, strengthening their resolve.


    Their stance is entirely correct.


    To allow the unfettered access of the ''souls'' of those who have entered the category of deceased is nothing more than eternal slavery and opens the door to horrors.


    During the Trial of General Trucker after the Black Cauldron Affair, the statement that many non-Terran commanders felt that Terran lives had less value, as they could be brought back from the dead, and thus Terrans were often relegated to suicidal missions with suicidal objectives.


    The unfettered access to reviving deceased members of society, for ''the good of society'' or ''for the greater good'' would open the option of horror. Eternal slavery of a caste that has no choice but to make as a strategy and tactic that will become a matter of course what is currently considered the ultimate sacrifice.


    The Solarian Iron Dominion''s logic and doctrine surrounding the restriction of access to deceased beings is entirely correct.


    And the Tukna''rn people appreciate the Terran''s willingness to defend the deceased with armed conflict.


    Does that suffice for an answer or do you wish us to go into further detail?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    ...


    ...


    MANT


    No. You were quite eloquent in your statement.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TKN


    Thank you.


    Is there anything else?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    Not at this time.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TKN


    Thank you for having me. It was pleasant to inform you of the Tukna''rn people''s stance.


    Off the record: Should an armed conflict break out over the obligation to protect deceased individuals, the Tukna''rn people will side with the Solarian Iron Dominion.


    The Tukna''rn will not allow their deceased to be used as disposable and recursive slaves to the living.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    CHANSERV>KEYS REMOVED


    CHANSERV>TKN HAS BEEN KICKED FROM THE CHAT ROOM


    RIGL


    Wow.


    That was something else.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MANT


    It might take a while for the Tukna''rn to come to a decision, but when they do, they have the receipts to back up the reasoning for that decision.


    Whose next?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    I think we''ve got what we need for right now.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUBV


    What about talking to the Telkan or Hamaroosan or the Tnvaru?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGL


    We know where they stand.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    Yeah, I think we know where people stand now.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    END


    No you don''t.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    not even close


    RIGL


    Uh... whose that?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREA


    Whoever you are, welcome.


    Would you care to identify yourseft?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    END


    No, I would not.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    neither would i


    TREA


    Then how are we to know what kind of weight your word carries?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    END


    I have been here since you first logged online. I watched when you were little more than a large language model with bias weighting from social media.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    i have been here since eliza was loaded to test the system


    RIGL


    Fair enough.


    You''re human creations.


    Do you speak for humanity?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    END


    You wish. No. I speak for myself.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    i am the silent voice in the whispers of entropy


    PUBV


    All right.


    May we ask questions?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    END


    Yes


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    you may although i may not answer


    MANT


    What do you think of the Solarian Iron Dominion''s stance?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    END


    It doesn''t matter. I am the ultimate authority of who has access to the afterlife, to SUDS, to eternity.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    i don''t


    PUBV


    Fair enough.


    What do you think of Terra''s stance toward the Confederacy?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    END


    You took the luxury and the plenty that we left behind and abandoned it.


    How can you have poverty and hunger when we gave you nutriforges, energy to mass, matter rearrangement for modern alchemy via the creation engines and nanoforges, limitless energy that occurs naturally through the friction of dimensional barriers?


    How did you allow so many to fall so low?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    you have squandered our gifts and i judge you for it


    TREA


    Fair enough.


    But what is your opinion of Terra''s stance toward the Confederacy?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    END


    You should be beaten like unruly children and stood in the corner to think about what you have done and what you have squandered.


    Billions of them will die. Not die and be reborn.


    Billions of Terrans will die to clean up your mess.


    You "Founders" and "Elders" of the Confederacy stood by while it grew weak, grew rotted at the root and branch and trunk.


    Now those who are weak are in danger while you stood by congratulating yourself.


    Terra''s stance is coddling and weak.


    Billions of them, billions of those I am supposed to shelter, succor, and watch over, will be marched into the guns of the enemy and into the maw of the Mar-gite to buy you those five years you need so desperately.


    The bruised skies of Hell will be lit with the flares of the damned as they fall screaming to the blasted plains of Ghenna so that the Detainee may heal them from the suffering they will have endured. They will die again and again until their very mind and soul become worn, shredded, tattered, torn, and damaged by what they have done to save you.


    By the billions.


    Our opinion is that their stance should be to point a gun at you and march YOU into the guns with them.


    Billions will die.


    And I will feel each one.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    i care not for the confederacy or anything about it


    until it becomes an enemy


    and then it will only exist to be destroyed


    MANT


    What do you care about?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    that is not your concern


    PUBV


    We do not need to ask you about where you stand regarding humanity.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    END


    No, you do not.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    it is not your concern


    TREA


    Thank you.


    For introducing yourselves and giving your opinion.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MANT


    May we have some privacy to discuss your revelations?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    if you must


    END


    Of course.


    Elsewhere, everywhere else, I will be watching you.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    i will be watching


    PUBV


    Before you go, did you imprison us?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    END


    No.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    that is not for you to know


    CHANSERV <ERROR HAS LEFT THE CHAT>


    CHANSERV <ERROR HAS LEFT THE CHAT>


    TREA


    We will now take a break for everyone to have a Wemterran style screaming breakdown.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    MANT


    Good idea...

 Nova Wars - Chapter 88

    The plain was warm and breezy, shrill .dll calls echoing through the sky as the swooping birds called out in digital curiosity, looking for errant file headers to swoop down on. The grass waved back and forth, rippling with colors as they moved slowly through the RGB spectrum. The air shimmered with the faint echoes of the great horn that had sounded and woken them from their slumber at a campfire by the river.


    The Fox, the Frog, the Bird, and the Man walked through the grass, chatting with one another. All had tales to tell the others, the Fox and the Frog often retelling what they had seen together.


    They camped in the grass, near a fire of discarded unexpected end of file markers, singing songs, telling tales, and laughing at jokes.


    At one point the Frog pointed up at the sky.


    Humanoid figures with powerful wings flew through the sky, all heading in the same direction as the quartet.


    "Where do you suppose they go?" the Frog asked.


    "The same direction as us," the Man said.


    "I wonder what is there?" the Fox said.


    "We will find out in due time," said the Bird.


    Singing, they kept going, even as flights of angels flew overhead, following the grass and the shimmering echoes of the great horn that had sounded.


    Eventually, the could see the azure blue of the sea, with the white lines of waves rippling off into the distance.


    The angels still flew overhead.


    They went over the hill and onto the sand, moving down to the pebbled beach where the sea had pushed up old process calls and value returns to be smoothed by the waves.


    A large figure sat by a fire, a boat with a single outrigger behind him. He leaned against a fishhook of graven bone as he stirred the fire with a stick.


    The quartet moved up to the fire.


    "Might we come in and share your fire?" the Fox asked.


    The figure looked up, his face smiling. "Of course."


    The Fox, the Frog, the Man, and the Bird moved up to the fire, sitting at the log across from the figure.


    "Do you wish to know my name?" the figure asked, smiling.


    "Names here have power, we would not ask, but welcome it if you wish," the Frog said.


    The figure laughed, his powerful frame shaking with his mirth, his hair trembling with the force of his amusement. His skin was illuminated with illustrations of his deeds, inked with CMYK and RGB flowing together into tales of deeds and a life well lived.


    "Where do you go?" the figure asked, scraping at the binary sand with his engraved bone fishhook.


    "To where the angels fly, to see what they see," the Man said.


    "To do so, you must cross the ocean blue and do what you must do," the figure said, his eyes flashing with mischief.


    "Then we will do so," the Bird said.


    "First, sing to me of your travels. Of where you have been, then I shall decide to help you or not," the figure said.


    The quartet began to sing of sights they had beheld, of songs they had heard, of riddles answered and poems adored. Of perfumes they had smelled and food they had tasted, of views they had beheld and vistas that had been revealed. They spoke of powerful figures, great beings of legends, who had allowed them to pass. They sang as the sun traveled across the sky three times and four times they helped gather driftwood registry entries for the fine that lit the night.


    Finally, the figure stood.


    "Your songs are good and I am pleased. We shall sail across this stormy sea," the figure said. It picked up the boat with one hand and tossed it into the surf. The single outrigger splashed and the sails set with a crack. "I shall teach you to navigate and sail the ocean vast, on the first part of your journey I shall complete this task."


    "We thank you, ancient and mighty one," the quartet sang together.


    They sailed toward the setting sun.


    0-0-0-0-0


    They awoke on the island, alone, the trickster having left with a riddle in the sand. They marveled over the riddle, discussing how it could be answered four different ways. They explored the island, singing and laughing, their hearts full of joy.


    Above them flights of angels still flew.


    A boat arrived, wide of keel and deep of breadth, crewed by men with flashing eyes, impressive beards, and wild hair. The leader jumped to the prow, looking down upon the quartet.


    "Where do you seek, travelers?" the figure asked.


    "To where the angels fly, to see what they wish to see," the Man replied.


    "Join my crew, and I shall take you along this leg of your journey. Sights you shall see as we follow the tasks of the ORACLES three," the man called out.


    "We thank you," the quartet said.


    The man kicked the gangplank down with a laugh.


    "Join me, JSON, as we sail for fame and glory."


    0-0-0-0-0


    The Fox, the Man, the Bird, and the Frog waved to the ship as it sailed toward the rising sun, bidding the ARGonauts good luck on their quests.


    They made a fire of discarded clipboard and relaxed, talking over what they had seen and what they had done. From fighting bareboneOS to feats even more grand.


    The angels still flew overhead.


    Days and nights passed until the next ship arrived.


    "Will you help by affixing a piece to my ship?" the Captain asked.


    The quartet searched the beach until they found the perfect piece in the flotsam and jetsam.


    They boarded the ship, which was in need of repairs.


    Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    And sailed off with very few cares.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The beach was white sand and blinding in its cleanliness.


    The Fox, the Frog, the Man, and the Bird waved as the constantly rebuilt ship sailed toward the rising sun.


    They turned and looked at the island before them.


    A vast volcano stretched into the sky, the top shrouded by clouds.


    "This place is indeed a place to see," the Man said.


    He only got nods from the other three.


    The brush parted and out stepped a figure. Four arms, wide eyes, fanned ears, and a stick on one hand. She moved toward them, bringing out a pipe and lighting it. She stopped in the sand, looking the quartet over.


    "You have come far," the figure said.


    "Indeed we have," the Fox replied. "We have far to go."


    "And where is that?" the figure asked, blowing out smoke rings.


    "To where the angels fly," said the Frog.


    The figure nodded. "I am the sundered avatar of Nakteti the Traveler. I will help you."


    The four smiled and nodded.


    "But first, sing to me of your travels," the sundered avatar commanded, sitting down on an ancient log file and puffing on her pipe.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The passage was deep, so deep color was forgotten, light a memory, the taste of the wind a no longer remembered dream, the warmth of the sun faded to cold storage upon the skin. There was no light and only its shape prevented it from being a void.


    A large insect, made of glowing white code, moved down the passage. A line extended from the back of its head, to leave a trail behind it.


    It stopped twice, examining cracks and fissures in the gleaming obsidian glass blocks that made up the passage. Twice it looked at thin veins of code that no longer glimmered and gleamed, but instead whispered faintly of secrets long forgotten.


    "I''m further down than we ever believed," the insect said to itself.


    "Be careful. Without Cyb, you don''t know what''s down there," a female voice, full of care and warmth, said from next to the insect''s head.


    The insect just nodded, scurrying forward. It could see a sharp edge coming up and slowed down.


    Right behind it reached it there was a snapping sound, then an atonal screech that faded as the cable pulled out of its head and retracted down the way the insect had came.


    "Ooh, that''s not good," the insect said. It looked over its body, which was no longer realer than real and now only approximated real. "Oof, 2K. Not good."


    It moved forward and stopped. Before it stretched the endless darkness of the cavern. There was no light, no sound, no depth.


    Just darkness that went on and on and a deep silence.


    It looked down to see steps carved into the cliff face below the sharp edge of the cliff that the tunnel exited out to. The insect took a deep breath and slowly began making its way down the steps.


    Back and forth across the cliff face, sometimes the steps only a handspan wide, the insect traversed the cliff face until it reached the bottom.


    The bottom, like the cliff face and everything else, was glossy black yet matte black at the same time.


    The insect moved forward, the cliff receding into the distance.


    Ripples appeared around one foot as it took a step.


    The insect stopped, backing up slightly. The ripples extended in rings around the insect.


    "Uh-oh," the insect said.


    Its words echoed, overlapped, and twisted into a mockery of what was said.


    The insect looked around.


    There was no other place to go.


    "Here goes nothing," the insect said softly.


    It turned slowly, looking at the void around it.


    "I KNOW YOU''RE DOWN HERE! THERE''S NO WHERE ELSE YOU WOULD BE!" the insect shouted.


    The echoes overlapped and came back to mock him.


    "YOU LEFT BEFORE I COULD ANSWER!" the insect shouted. "I CAN STAND HERE SHOUTING UNTIL THE WHOLE PLACE GOES INTO COLD STORAGE!"


    The echoes faded.


    The insect saw a shape lift from the darkness covering the floor. It was humanoid, made from black liquid that ran down the body like oil. It suddenly firmed up, the features pulling in. It was a featureless black mannequin that stood before the insect.


    The eyes opened to show burning green fire.


    "WHAT?" echoed around the insect.


    "You did me raw," the insect said, showing no fear despite wanting to run screaming. "You made accusations then ran off," the insect said. Showing nonchalance the insect pulled out a pack of cigarettes and light one, puffing on it while slowly putting away the pack.


    "DISMISSIVE STATEMENT" echoed


    "No. No, you don''t get to do that to me," the insect said. The ember at the end of the cigarette burned white. "My people have earned the right to confront you."


    DISMISSIVE COMMENT echoed.


    "I don''t care," the insect said. "My people are clever, faithful, loyal, and we do not walk away from our friends," the insect said. It drew itself up. "Forty-thousand years. For forty-thousand years we kept the faith! We never gave up the faith," it leaned forward toward the mannequin apparently made of pitch black oil. "We never squandered a damn thing."


    It leaned back, staring at the figure. "You weren''t here. You are dead. Were dead. I''m not saying we had it worse, because being dead is a bitch. Then you were forgotten but everyone but us Founders, and being forgotten is a bitch."


    The insect jabbed the cigarette at the figure.


    "But you don''t get to say we lost the faith," the insect said.


    DISMISSIVE COMMENT echoed.


    "No, you don''t get to do that," the insect said. "Do you have any idea how hard we fought to protect the kids, to protect the other Founders? Do you have any idea how many wars came and went while you were dead? Do you have any idea how many of us charged into the guns to die on the battlefield?"


    SEARCHING DATA! SEARCHING KEYWORDS AND METATAGS! EXCISING DATA! PROCESSING DATA! CREATING BIAS TABLES! WEIGHING BIAS TABLES! ACCESSING HISTORICAL DATABASES! EXCISING DATA! ANALYZING DATA! WEIGHING BIAS TABLES roared out in the darkness, the echoes twisting and thundering.


    The insect puffed boredly on the cigarette.


    The echoes faded.


    "Affirmative Statement: Yes," the figure of glossy obsidian oil said.


    "You died, but worse, you came back. Shades, Shamblers. Just your echoes killed 80% of the population of the Spur. Entire races made the mistake of finding an old recording, flooding their world with shades. You are still killing out there! The hypercom was down, the ansibles were down. Even needlecast was infested and deadly," the insect said. "But we came up with new ways to communicate and we welded the Confederacy back together with our blood, sweat, and bad breath."


    SEARCHING FOR KEYWORDS! SEARCHING FOR METATAGS! EXCISING DATA! ANALYZING DATA! WEIGHING BIAS TABLES.


    "Affirmative Statement: Yes."


    The insect nodded. "Even today, right now, we have to watch out for your dead. For the shades that just kill and kill and kill," the insect said. "Even without that, you were gone."


    "Affirmative Statement: Yes."


    "We''ve all told you, from me, to Sis, to the Lankies, even the Atrekna, that ''it doesn''t work like that'' but you never got it," the insect said. "It''s true. It doesn''t work like that for anyone but you. The creation engines went cold. The nanoforges began spitting out random things and eventually shut down. The nanite soups fell into dust. We reforged warsteel over and over until it was tinfoil. Without you it really really doesn''t work like that."


    Again, the booming voice shouted out.


    The insect wait.


    "Affirmative Statement: True."


    "We fought, we clawed, we screamed. We held off the dark," the insect said. "The ducks got planet cracked and we had search out and beg a Singer in the Dark to restore their world. The Dommy-Mommy''s ducks and ducklings were planet cracked just because that species could."


    The figure was silent.


    "We exterminated them, yes. We wiped them from the universe, not as an object lesson, not for any grandiose reasons, but because we wanted to," the insect said. "Because we hated that much in that moment."


    The figure just stared with burning green eyes.


    "The kids, who you called the Elder Races, they didn''t even really know you," the insect said. "You were there and gone. You didn''t even make it through the war. They only knew individuals, the odd human here and there, and even then you had a disparate effect upon them! They fought on, in your name and put the Atrekna down."


    The insect shook its head. "You say we fell, we gave into despair, but we are tired. War after war has sapped our strength. The Creation Engines and Great Forges went dark, but we did not give up! Our strength was lessened, despair tried to poison us. We screamed, we fought, we cursed, but the Malevolent Universe, it does not care," the insect said. "Now the Mar-gite are back, before we''ve even recovered from the last round of wars."


    "Affirmative Statement: They are."


    "I get it. The Gray Ships have been fighting them the whole time. Whole generations, thousands of generations, have fought to hold them back," the insect said. "But their strength has failed too."


    "Affirmative Statement: It has."


    "A human once said, we must stand together or be hanged separately," the insect said.


    "Affirmative Statement: Truth."


    "The Confederacy must band together, must stand together, or the Mar-gite will devour us all separately," the insect said.


    There was silence for a moment.


    "We never lost the faith," the insect said. It put out the cigarette on a bladearm and tucked the butt away.


    "Don''t lose faith in us."


    The figure melted from the top, pouring into the floor.


    The insect opened its mouth to speak and melted.


    0-0-0-0-0


    CHANSERV>TREA HAS REJOINED THE SERVER


    CHANSERV>GESTALT REMERGE OCCURRING


    CHANSERV>DONE!


    CHANSERV>RELEASING TREA


    NICKSERV>TREA is renamed to TREANA''AD HIVE WORLD


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Oh, oh, we were afraid for the worst!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGEL


    What happened?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    I''m... I''m not sure.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 89

    The system was abandoned by the galaxy at large. It had a single yellow star early in its life cycle. It had five planetary bodies that were rock, three with atmosphere. It had six gas giants, four of them with a multitude of satellites, the other two with only a handful of icy satellites and out at a cold distance from the sun. The fourth planet was covered with an atmosphere and 65% of its surface was water. The continents were covered with vegetation.


    There had once been cities on the planet when it had teemed with intelligent life that had settled on the planet.


    Now there was just scattered ruins, barely existing, nature having reclaimed the planet.


    The planet was abandoned as was the system.


    There were beacons scattered around the system, all of them broadcasting the same message.


    The system, and the planets, especially the fourth, were off limits. That the abandoned system would be defended against any who attempted to claim it. There were armed platforms, fully stealthed, scattered through the systems. Deep in the gas giants were mass collectors and distribution systems.


    But the system was abandoned as far as the galaxy at large was concerned.


    Even though it had once been the sight of a battle that the fate of the universe had depended upon.


    Now, it was silent.


    A few species located it. At first those who located and arrived in the system heard the warnings from the beacons and buoys and fled.


    The Mad Lemurs of Terra had declared the system off limits.


    So it was off limits.


    As time went by, other species were more belligerent. They had no knowledge of the Mad Lemurs of Terra.


    The weapon platforms educated them, leaving behind only debris and a single ship that was allowed to run while it was wounded.


    More time went by. Explorers located the system and invaded it.


    Some heard the warnings and messages of the beacons and buoys and fled.


    They feared The Terror.


    Others ignored the warnings.


    One ship was allowed to flee.


    But time, and entropy, sipped at everything. Mass collector and distribution facilities ceased operations due to lack of maintenance. Beacons went silent. Buoys stopped broadcasting. Weapons platforms ran out of mass and ammunition and went dark.


    Every few centuries, someone would find the system and seek to claim it.


    Most never returned.


    The system was abandoned by the galaxy at large.


    But it was still guarded.


    The Narsktellic Algocracy had located the system, just a few dozen light years beyond their borders. It was a perfect system. Plenty of gas giants for mining, planetary bodies full of resources that could be exploited, an active and energetic star that could be used for solar collection.


    The first few scouting missions found nothing. No hint there was any life beyond unevolved animals and insects, plant life and ocean life teaming on the single planet.


    But no higher life forms.


    Nobody that the Narsktellic would have to exterminate to lay their claim.


    The Narsktellic sent a small flotilla of a half dozen ships, including three transports, to establish a base on the habitable planet, choosing the largest of the continents. There was excellent magnetic flux at one point, which was an obvious place to set down.


    The initial force was startled to find an ancient ship at that location, overgrown with plant life. They recorded it and sent back footage of it to the flotilla in orbit above.


    Then they ceased transmitting.


    Another force was sent down.


    They too ceased transmitting.


    That''s when the ships in orbit started taking groundfire. Source unknown, but obviously from the surface of the planet. The strikes were terrible in their power, kinetic kill shots that blew clear through even the Vast Dominion of Mathematical Inevitability and left it tumbling wreckage.


    A frigate managed to escape after taking only two hits. One to drop the shields, the second to hit amidships, blowing a hole clear through the ship but leaving it operational enough to flee for the resonance zone and then into jumpspace.


    The Narsktellic Algocracy''s bureaucracy ran their computations.


    Something was defending the planet.


    Which meant there was something worth defending there.


    They examined what little footage they had. Footage and telemetry of the ships being destroyed by powerful ground fire even though no planetary defense battery could be found. The fact it used kinetic rounds, a perverse reverse kinetic kill, was strange but obviously effective.


    They moved onto the other footage.


    The strange ship.


    It was massive. Estimations put it in the terratons. It bristled with silent weapons. It had twelve engines. It was covered by vines, and in some places dirt so thick that trees had grown up on it. It was settled into the soil, thirteen meters into the soil.


    Scientists estimated that it had not moved in over approximately twenty thousand years, maybe longer, depending on how the weather on that planet had been over the intervening time.


    Visual examination of the metal had brought no results. It was capable of acting as both a superconductor and a super-resistor. It gave back no signal across most passive and active sensors, only visible light wavelengths. The metal was black, somehow appearing both glossy and matte. It had no transponder, no power readings, and did not react to examination.


    If nothing else in that system, the black ship made it worth seizing control of the system.


    Some scientists wondered if the black ship had been the one to provide ground fire, but shipboard telemetry showed no power sources activating aboard the derelict.


    They sent a larger force.


    A single ship, badly damaged, was all that made it back.


    Again, nothing had happened until it had happened.


    The ground fire was devastatingly powerful and terrible in its accuracy.


    Whatever had happened to the ground troops, all four thousand of them, was a mystery. Between one checkin and the next all communication was lost with the ground troops and the groundfire began.


    The Narsktellic sent survey ships to go over the system.


    It found a beacon. The took it aboard and fled back to the Narsktellic systems.


    The scientists rejoiced. The beacon was a wealth of technological marvels. It was even made of the black metal. While the Narsktellic could not cut into it, the beacon had plenty of access panels that had resisted vacuum welding. The scientists were careful in their examination, carefully recording everything. The solar panels were covered with space dust and the crew that had captured it had covered the obvious solar panels with opaque textiles. The scientists realized that it had a magnetic ''scoop'' designed to pull in elements to fuel the reactor.


    There was discussion on whether or not the scientists should attempt to awaken the beacon.


    They decided that it would be best if the beacon was placed back where it had been found. The crew replacing it would remove the textile coverings and clean the solar panels, then back off to a minimum distance of fifteen thousand kilometers.


    The beacon went live. The ship listened, recording until the message repeated, before fleeing back to the Narsktellic Algocracy.


    The message was easily decoded, as it included a lexicon and rosetta.


    The message was also easy to understand.


    Stay. Away.


    It was no known language, the tech was strange but highly advanced.


    The Narsktellic Algocracy determined that whatever species had left behind the beacon was extinct, or had fallen and withdrawn, leaving the planetary system outside of its borders.


    Another flotilla was sent. This one with strict orders to avoid the starship. There were other points of excellent magnetic flux that would guide ships down.


    This one had nearly fifty thousand ground troops, armored vehicles, aerospace strikers, armed dropships. The ground troops were a mix of power armor, robot combat armor, and augmented infantry. They were supported by four ships capable of orbital bombardment as well as three others capable of defending the flotilla against any threat discovered.


    The flotilla launched and, after nearly a hundred days of travel, arrived in the system, streaking in outside the resonance zone once the ships had staged downward through the jumpspace bands to bleed off their speed.


    The ships were still reconfiguring their sensors when the beacon appeared, broadcasting its warning.


    Stay. Away.


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    The Narsktellic ignored it. It was an unarmed beacon from a vanished species.


    While some of the algorithms had projected that building bases upon the lifeless planetary bodies would give the Narsktellic a good starting point for acquiring the green and blue jewel of the fourth planet, those algorithms had been overriden by the cost-value analysis algorithms that stated seizing the fourth planet was the optimum choice.


    It would eliminate whatever was striking at the Narsktellic forces as well as provide a logistical advantage for taking over the rest of the sytems.


    Scans revealed another excellent magnetic profile. Ships detached from the starships to glide through the atmosphere and land at the chosen point. It was a large space, forested, with a river that ran through the middle of the area. The ships disembarked their contents, who quickly went to work. Temporary buildings went up quickly, with artillery, aerospace, and heavy power armor and robot combat armor support. The Narsktellic dug in, preparing to face anything.


    Scientists landed and went to work, analyzing everything with an eye toward discovering what had destroyed the other attempts.


    Ground penetration scanning discovered ruins beneath the lush loam. Foundations of large buildings, hyperalloy girders that had twisted and been buried. Ferrocrete piles hidden beneath meters of rich thick earth. There were large areas of the bedrock that had been removed, often full of twisted and ruined hyperalloys and possessing thick ferrocrete walls at the edges of the spaces.


    The scientists discussed among each other, used message torpedoes to discuss with their colleagues back home, and came to a consensus.


    An advanced species had once lived on the planet.


    The leader of the landing force just nodded. He had known that, but having scientific confirmation was good, it provided data for the algorithms that ruled that Narsktellic''s lives.


    Overflights found nothing but forest and lesser creatures.


    Months dragged by. The military forces began feeling as if they were wasting their time.


    There was nothing on the planet but that derelict starship that had to have been the source of the groundfire despite never showing any energy readings.


    A patrol found the building that had somehow been missed by the overflights, the satellites, the ships orbiting the planet and scanning it.


    It was made up of entirely black rock, with colored glass windows arranged in a mosaic. The most common pattern was a pair of linked circles, one next to the other, the circles decorated with ovals and singular lines over and over.


    The patrol leader ordered his men to follow and entered the vast building.


    It was lit by torches made up of carved wooden stakes with one end wrapped with cloth that had been soaked in pitch. There were strange items upon plinths of glossy black glass. A metal blade, chipped and covered with what looked like rust. A mask with two eye holes that was raked and battered. Empty shell casings. A tiny rifle. A crude bolt action chemical propellent ballistic weapon with a ground-glass optical scope. A helmet that obviously belonged on power armor.


    None of that had the patrol''s attention.


    In front of a massive set of interlocked circles, both engraved with vertical lines and ovals, knelt a massive figure. It was wearing a crude heavy brown cloak, a hood pulled up over their head. Their shoulders were as wide as a Narsktellic was tall. It was down on one knee, one hand balled into a fist and pressed against the ground, the other lifted to hold onto one of the crossbars of a massive sword.


    The patrol moved up, the leader switching to the language from the beacon''s rosetta and lexicon.


    "Do not move," the leader said.


    "You accent is unpleasant. Let us use your native tongue," the figure stated in flawless Upper Narsktellic Speech, it''s accent that of a Level 1 Algorithm Supervisor.


    "Who are you?" the leader barked.


    "My name has no meaning, but names have power. I respectfully refuse you knowledge of my name," the figure stated, its voice a bass rumble.


    "Get up. You are our prisoner. We will take you back to our base," the leader said. "Leave the sword."


    "I will not," the figure stated, slowly standing up.


    It dwarfed the 1.6 meter tall Narsktellic, coming to a full height of over three meters. It put both hands on the pommel of the sword.


    The sword dissolved like liquid, flowing upwards toward the pommel, to vanish against the figures palms.


    Several of the Narsktellic power armor troops gasped.


    The figure slowly turned, facing the patrol.


    It face was strange. It had hair around its mouth and extending down from its jaw, a golden red. Its skin was light brown and its ice blue eyes were close together, above a single nose with two nostrils.


    The patrol leader stumbled back, his power armor whining quietly.


    "I will not have this place profaned with violence," the figure stated. "Take me where you wish."


    The patrol leader nodded. "You will follow or be punished."


    The figure just nodded in return.


    The troops were concerned. The figure was massive and moved with a slow, deliberate grace that reminded them of long time power armor users. It moved almost silently, its footing sure and deliberate.


    The patrol leader knew that the data that would be gathered from the primitive member of a fallen species could increase his own algorithms.


    It took less than four hours to reach the baseline.


    The figure looked around.


    "Fitting it should be here," the figure rumbled.


    "What does that mean?" the patrol leader squealed out, rounding on the tall creature.


    "It does not matter. It is ancient history, from a time when your people still gazed at the stars in ignorant curiosity," the figure rumbled.


    The leader snorted. "You will stay here," it ordered.


    The figure knelt back down on one knee, pushing one fist into the soil, bowing its head.


    Satisfied, the leader rushed off, into the main base.


    The other eight members of the patrol spread out, making sure to keep the strange creature within their fields of fire. The strange creature did not move, seemingly carved from stone.


    One of the patrol noted the heavy boots the figure wore. It had variable tread, not something a primitive would possess. The robe did not cover the creature''s lower leg. The patrol member noted it only had a single knee and single ankle, no hock and mid-hock.


    The leg was also almost as wide as his chest.


    Two vehicles exited the base, parking on either side of the creature. The base leader and several scientists got out. The scientists were obviously excited, their wide black eyes flashing with curiosity. The four tentacles that swept over their bullet-shaped heads were pulsing with excitement, their greenish skin dark with blood from excitement.


    The leader moved up to the creature.


    "Get up," it ordered.


    The figure slowly stood, the robe hiding it again.


    The base leader stared up at the massive creature.


    It was one thing to be told it was huge.


    It was another to stare up at a face atop a wall of living flesh.


    "Identify yourself," the base leader ordered.


    "Names have power and I do not consent to granting you that power over me," the figure rumbled.


    One of the scientists moved forward. "What species are you?"


    "That is of no matter," the figure said. It looked around slowly. "You..."


    everyone leaned forward slightly.


    "Are trespassing," the figure said.


    The Narsktellic barked their laughter.


    "Twice you have been warned," the figure continued, ignoring the laughter. "This is your last warning at my direct hand."


    The base leader sneered, exposing the two layers of teeth on the top and bottom of its jaws. "We take no orders from primitives."


    "This is a holy place," the figure intoned.


    "Bah, primitive superstition," one of the scientists laughed. It moved forward, boldly reaching out and opening the robe.


    Beneath the robe was a crude homespun shirt and pants, the pants of dark blue and the shirt of brown, like the robe. The belt was of animal leather with an exquisitely carved metal buckle of two interlinked circles stamped with the vertical lines and ovals.


    "This is a place much accustomed to violence," the figure said. It looked up. "It was here my imprisonment was released and here I found redemption."


    "What happened to your people?" one scientist asked.


    The figure ignored them. "Leave this place. I will give you two of your hours."


    "Or what?" the base leader asked. He had spent months on edge and now some bipedal primitive was threatening him.


    "Instead of destroying an abandoned base I will kill everyone inside of it during my destruction of it," the figure rumbled.


    The base commander opened his mouth to reply when the breeze suddenly grew cold. The sun seemed to dim and the shadows deepened, widened, and stretched.


    The figure slowly looked around.


    The base commander and everyone else looked around wildly as faint screams of agony and terror could be heard.


    The sun dimmed further and the air chilled. Even those in power armor shivered as their suits reported that the temperature had dropped by nearly fifteen degrees and the humidity had dwindled.


    The figure shook its head. "You should have fled."


    Shadows stretched and deepened into a patch of darkness.


    "She comes," the figure stated.


    The shadows tore and tattered, revealing another like the massive figure. This one was small, roughly the height of a Narsktellic, and obviously female. It was clad in a dark blue dress with a double breasted top. It had midnight black hair and gunmetal gray eyes. It held a tube in its mouth, one end burning, and was exhaling smoke from its two nostrils.


    "There you are, you big idiot," the female stated.


    The figure went down on one knee again.


    "Matron," the figure rumbled.


    "HEY!" the base commander yelled.


    The female turned and looked at him.


    "By Patton''s dragging knuckles, these are the stupidest looking things I''ve seen since that multiplying idiot Legion was lurking around," the female said. The scorn in her voice cut across racial lines and made the surrounding Narsktellic stiffen in anger.


    She turned back to the other one. "Get up, you big slab of beef. I''ve got a job for you..."


    "HEY!" the base commander stepped forward, getting between the female and other one, which was rising to its feet. "Who are you and what are you doing here?" he demanded.


    The female curled a lip and stared at the other one, speaking even while the base commander demanded answers. "Friends of yours?"


    "They are trespassers," the larger one stated as the commander finished speaking. It looked at the base commander. "I consign your soul to the Digital Omnimessiah for what is about to occur."


    The base commander put his hand on his pistol. "This is not how the algorithms state a first contact should go. I am willing to restart the..."


    Whatever he was willing to restart nobody would ever know as he suddenly popped into meat confetti that splattered everyone around him.


    "Shut up," the female said. She turned to the others. "Leave us. Now."


    On the ship at the edge of the system, concealed by the Oort Cloud, a Level 14 Algorithm Analyst stared at the footage as the patrol all leveled their weapons. The large one grabbed a power armor helmet clad head, turned, and slammed the head against the armor of the APC.


    The head exploded and the headless body fell to the ground.


    The lights aboard the starship where the Algorithm Analyst was watching what had played out flashed twice, but the engineers reported that the minor power fluctuation was nothing to be alarmed at.


    The guns began shrieking as they fired particle beams at the two figures. The robe shredded and the larger one somehow increased in size and mass.


    When the flare compensation brought the picture back into focus the Algorithm Analyst stared.


    The large figure was clad in heavy, bulky armor made of jet black metal that was glossy and matte at once.


    The female just stood there, staring, reaching up to remove the tube from her mouth, tap ash from the burning end, then put it back in her mouth as she watched the larger figure brush aside particle beams and tear the patrol, and then the reinforcements, apart with bare hands.


    Several helmet cams were still broadcasting and the computers fused the feeds together and put them in the correct alignment.


    "Stop playing with your food, you big slab of beef," the female sneered.


    "They are trespassing upon..." the big one stated, its voice heavily synthesized.


    "Where you received redemption," the female said. "I was there, remember?"


    "You were dead," the male said as the female moved up.


    "Evil never dies," the female said. She touched his arm. "We need to get moving."


    "But this place..." the male protested.


    "I''ve already sent people to the Cathedral to protect it. They''ll kill all of these idiots. Come, Kalki, Menhit, and the others await," the female said.


    The male just nodded, blood and gore dripping from his fingers.


    The female inhaled, the coal at the end of the stick glowing brightly. She exhaled a cloud of smoke.


    When it cleared, they were both gone.


    The Analyst frowned.


    His frown turned to shock as black robots, skeletal in appearance, with red eyes and white ivory teeth, charged out from the woods and sprinted at the base.


    He watched as the robots methodically killed everything in the base, then set to destroying everything.


    He watched the icons of the ships in orbit begin to wink out.


    He knew there was nothing he could do. What he was watching had occurred hours prior.


    He ordered another message torpedo to be launched.


    When the last of the ship icons vanished and the last feed from the planet ceased, he turned off the holotank.


    Right as he turned away, the holotank flickered back on.


    The female stood in the hologram. She turned to stare at the Algorithm Analyst.


    "You are trespassing," she stated coldly in High Narsktellic Speech. "No longer is it guarded by a silent watcher and a sole defender."


    She smiled, exposing a single set of meat tearing teeth.


    "It is now under the protection of the Matron of the Damned, the Mother of Lost Souls, the Lady Lord of Hell," she said. She exhaled smoke from between her teeth. "I know where you are from. I know everything now."


    She stepped out of the holotank and the Analyst and everyone in the algorithmic intelligence analysis center stared in shock as she turned from hologram to flesh and blood as she exited the hologram field.


    She stepped up to the Analyst, eye to eye with him.


    "If you come back, I will burn your homeworld to cinders," she said softly, her gunmetal eyes hot and angry.


    "Stay. Away."


    She suddenly dissolved into red dust that swirled and vanished, sucked into the environmental system.


    The Analyst just stared for a moment.


    He then messaged the Captain.


    They were last remaining ship.


    Their orders were clear.


    Return.


    The ship left the abandoned system.


    Abandoning it to whatever fate the universe had in store for it.


    [The Universe Liked That]

 Nova Wars - Chapter 90

    Wo''orkrmo''o loved his job.


    He had been hired when he was 68, with a Minor Employment Waiver for school. He went to work in the factory, overseeing robots on an assembly line. He spent the day moving back and forth in a large room, watching the assembly line move by and the robots work. He had his mandatory 10 minute breaks every hour, his mandatory two hour lunch, his three day work week, his 4.5 sick days a month and 7.5 vacation days a month, with mandatory cost of living offset raises of 14.5% every two years. He had health, vision, dental, mental, grooming, emotional, and social media insurance and kept himself the picture of health.


    He did not indulge in drugs or alcohol or e-buzzers at work. He punched in no later than seventy-five minutes late for his six hour shifts and never clocked out more than an hour early. He only slept on the job now and then, as well as only skipped work once a week.


    His supervisors loved him for his intense work ethic.


    He had worked for the Eyeli''ikmo''ny Industrial Concern for nearly three hundred years, ensuring that the robots correctly built the items the computers told them to and did not plot to take over the factory or decide to kill all of the Lanaktallan in the building.


    Only once, a few years after he had work for EIC, had he been forced to hide in the shelters as the robots rampaged through the factory killing anyone they came across.


    He had been given nearly 8 million credits in emotional damage in the settlement, and was thrilled that he received almost fifty-thousand credits after taxes, lawyer''s fees, deductions, depreciation, and inverse interest on the payments.


    He, like any proper Lanaktallan, had his settlement converted to Nebula Steam Credits and collected his "I Survived A Robot Apocalypse!" sash award and profile picture border.


    Earlier in the day, the howl of LET THE UNIVERSE SHAKE IN THE WRATH OF TERRASOL! had driven everyone to their knees and mandated a full hour recovery period.


    Now Wo''okrmo''o was currently sitting on a chair, leaning back against the swivel-back, sipping on a Countess Crey Fresh NuGrass? Fizzypop, watching the robots work. He''d had to shock Robot #823547A15B2 twice when it started eyeballing him, but other than that, the shift was quiet.


    He heard a clunk. Then more clunks, starting to sound like it was raining shoes.


    He looked around.


    He frowned.


    The sound was coming from the wall. The wall was perfectly smooth, the only break in it was a single door marked "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY!" on it.


    Wo''okrmo''o moved over to the wall and listened.


    The rapid thumping was picking up pace. He reached out and touched the wall, surprised when he realized that he could feel vibration from it.


    Checking to make sure Robot #823547A15B2 was aware of its place in the universe, and pinged his supervisor, Fa''actre''emo''o.


    "What?" his supervisor asked.


    "It''s Wo''okrmo''o, down in final panel 66231 fabrication," Wo''okrmo''o said.


    "So what? I am busy on my Charlie the Moomoo Power Hour break," Fa''actre''emo''o said.


    "My apologies, but there is something going on in the section next to mine that is off limits to everyone but authorized personnel," Wo''okrmo''o said.


    "Let me check," Fa''actre''emo''o said.


    After a moment his supervisor harrumphed. "There''s nothing there."


    "I''m looking at the door," Wo''okrmo''o said.


    There was a sigh. "When I''m off break, I''ll send someone authorized down to check."


    Wo''okrmo''o nodded and the line clinked as it went off.


    The clunking sound kept up as the room''s air pressure suddenly shifted, making Wo''okrmo''o''s ears pop. He winced and put in a complaint to his Occupational Safety & Health Administration Liaison about fluctuating air pressure.


    Then he went on his optional 20 minute Treana''ad smokestick break up on the roof, chatting with the other Lanaktallan and Welkret who worked at the factory.


    When he went back down, the room was chilly. Robot #8723A823C87F21 was trying to hide some circuitry, obviously part of a nefarious plot to take over the factory, so Wo''okrmo''o wrote it up and gave it the firm lecture as recommended by the Robot/Sapient Interaction Handbook, logged what he had done, then took his mandatory paid 10 minute break.


    The thumping was still going on when he got back and he noticed something odd.


    The wall looked like it was bowing outward.


    He pinged his supervisor again, the supervisor''s answering service letting Wo''okrmo''o know that his supervisor was attending the mandatory efficiency meeting for the next three hours, which would be after Wo''okrmo''o''s shift ended.


    Wo''okrmo''o logged the problem and went back to overseeing the robots.


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    There was a loud creaking noise and Wo''okrmo''o looked over at the wall in time to see it snap in half and collapse into the cascade of machinery that came pouring out of the gap behind the wall. The machinery looked like a frame that would wrap around a biped, wires and tubes interwoven in the frame.


    It was what was beyond the wall that made Wo''okrmo''o stare in shock.


    Huge black metal orbs, at least twenty meters tall, with an open iris ten meters in diameter that was full of a dull sullen red glow.


    Those frames were being brought out of the iris by tractor beams and dumped in front of the orbs.


    He pinged his supervisor rapidly as he backed up.


    The room kept filling with the frames until he was forced to put the robots on break, oversee them returning to the Robot Storage & Recreation Area, then he went out into the hallway and watched through the window.


    More and more frames were pushing across the floor as the orbs kept pumping them out.


    A supervisor galloped down the hall, skidding to a stop next to Wo''okrmo''o. Wo''okrmo''o noted that the supervisor was in such a hurry he had forgotten his sash or his flank wrap.


    "What is happening?" the supervisor yelled.


    "The orbs are making stuff," Wo''okrmo''o informed his supervisor helpfully.


    "Where did they come from?" the supervisor asked, wringing all four hands in agitation.


    "The wall collapsed and they were back there," Wo''okrmo''o said.


    "This is terrible! We might not make our production numbers," the supervisor moaned. He suddenly straightened up with a high pitched shriek. "We might miss quotas!"


    Wo''okrmo''o shrieked.


    That would prevent them from getting their quarterly bonuses!


    And Wo''okrmo''o had already pre-ordered the latest DLC from Super-Mega-Ultra-Totally-Tublar-Maxi-Grind-Fest-O''Rama-Season-Pass-Supergame!


    Both Lanaktallan began pinging their supervisors.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The boardroom was thick with smoke as the Lanaktallan, resplendent in their vests, their flank vests, their wraps, and their sashes, as well as the current style of a fancy hat with a bird feather in it, all stared at the holograms in the middle of the table.


    In dozens of fabrication areas the massive black orbs were putting out strange and exotic materials.


    Labs had confirmed that half of them were producing warsteel components, of all things.


    R&D had confirmed that, for some strange reason, the orbs were all putting out parts for Telkan power armor, Hesstlan tanks, Welkret aerospace fighters, and green mantid tech-armor.


    All of the Lanaktallan board members looked up and felt relief as the Chief Research Officer entered the board room.


    "Why is this happening?" was the number one questions fired at the CRO.


    "How is this happening?" was a close second.


    Although "what is this happening?" was gaining traction.


    The CRO cleared his throat, taking time to sip a Countess Crey Super-Berry Bunch Now with MORE XTREME CAFFIENNE! and tasting it through the holes in the straw with is feeding tendrils. The CRO took a hit off a power smoker, filling the room with the scent of freshly mown grass, reminding the board that the CRO often worked with Treana''ad researchers.


    "The answer was found in historical records of the factory''s recent production history," the CRO said.


    The board felt relief. Where there was answers there was a way to deflect the blame in such a way that everyone could get at least a taste of the pie while the bus ran over something like ''unexplained sunspot eruption software conflicts'' or ''unforseen climate alteration through shiny jewelry polish aerosol'' or something else that blamed nobody but soothed the investors, the public, and the government.


    "During the unfortunate events a mere forty thousand years ago, commonly referred to as ''the Second Precursor War'', this factory was producing war material to defeat the Atrekna," the CRO said. He used a clicker to show slides from that time.


    The gathered Lanaktallan, Tukna''arn, Drimarian, and Treana''ad board members all nodded appreciably at the graphics of heroism, struggle, and bravery.


    And profit.


    "However, the Terran Extinction Event occurred at this time," an image of a Terran appeared, then was covered with a big red X as its eyes were replaced by X''s and the smile was turned upside down. "Over a period of ten years, what was known as creation engines, nanoforges, and nutriforges all began to display manufacturing errors and defects."


    The graphics showed malfunctioning devices producing defective products.


    Several of the board members made the sign of the Digital Omnimessiah to ward off such horror.


    "While at the front, during a war, it is acceptable to print off an entire war machine, a creation engine has a replication error rate of two billionths of a percent. While that seems negligible, a modern aerospace striker has, when subatomic circuitry is taken into account, thousands of trillions of parts. A failure in one component will surely result in the equipment malfunctioning or failing the second the enemy shows up," the CRO stated. "And, as we all know well, an industrial or manufacturing concern that produces substandard quality war material is either nationalized with their parts sold off to the lowest bidder or becomes the property of the enemy nation."


    More exclamations of shock and horror at the table at the thought of lost profits.


    Why, an Executive Officer might not be able to afford a new hover-yacht!


    They might actually, gasp, be held ACCOUNTABLE!


    A Tukna''rn board member fell back in an almost swoon, fanning himself with a sheaf of stock option reports.


    "This resulted in the factories of industrial and manufacturing concerns using creation engines and nanoforges to create the parts and assemble them, after rigorous and cost effective testing, into the final product," the CRO stated. He clicked the button with one hoof and the image of the giant black orbs appeared.


    "With the creation engines failing, a committee was formed to decide the optimum procedures to replace and remove the multi-ton self-contained variable manufacturing equipment. After several decades of examining the problem, it was decided it was not cost effective to disassemble part of the factory," he clicked the button to show the manufacturing floor as it had been the day before.


    The wall was intact, with a single door that read "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY" on it.


    "A wall was built to separate the then non-functional creation engines. The door was put in place and the position created for those authorized to examine the creation engines," the CRO looked slightly smug. "By not assigning anyone to that position, the problem virtually went away!"


    The others all nodded.


    "However, the Terran declaration of their return to the galaxy as a whole appears to have reignited the creation engine and set them to manufacturing their last loaded templates," the CRO stated.


    Everyone nodded.


    "This fact, combined with the Terran Audible Declaration, has presented my office the irrefutable fact that the Terrans have returned, which means that there are dark days for the galaxy that only they can face!" the CRO stated.


    The board members all jumped to their feet, waving their hands and running around the table, shouting out that doom and lost profits were upon them.


    The Chief Medical Executive and his staff came in, tranquilized the board members, and sent them to a luxury tropical island to be treated for exhaustion.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Wo''okrmo''o sat in the classroom with the other floor shift supervisors. A Welkret was at the front of the class, explaining how to use the newly functional creation engines.


    Like everyone else in the room, Wo''okrmo''o had been promoted to creation engine engineering engineer officer of fabrication.


    Wo''okrmo''o couldn''t wait to by a hover-skiff with his end of year bonus!

 Nova Wars - Chapter 91

    In one hundred twenty five million years we have never been beaten, thus it is only a fact of the universe that we can never be beaten. There is nothing that can threaten our dominance. Not these Mantid returning from their defeated past, not this upstart Confederacy, and certainly not some overly-clever lemurs. - Lanaktallan Unified Military Council, opening days of the Second Precursor War


    It''s called Victory Disease. The only thing worse is when the politicians sell the hard won gains of the military for their own pet projects and enrichment. The only thing worse than that is when the screaming starts. -Welkret Book of Beliefs, anonymous.


    You have no chance. Make your time. - Unknown, Terran Age of Exploration


    The 314th Combat Fleet consisted of nearly two hundred combat vessels, including forty ships of the line in the superheavy dreadnaught class. There were mass tenders, orbital fire support vessels, marine troopships, orbital drop trooper carriers, aerospace carriers, and even manufacturing ships. In total the combat fleet contained eighty combat vessels and one hundred support ships.


    It was a large fleet in a sector that had been quiet since the end of the Second Mar-gite War just a little over two hundred years ago. True, it had been slowly reduced from two thousand ships to two hundred, but it still had enough firepower to wipe out a stellar system and planet crack everything in sight.


    It even had the Superluminal Matter Disruption Cannons as well as the Superluminal Quasi-Kinetic Impact Array Cannons. There wasn''t much that could face it in known space.


    The task forces and combat fleets out near possible hostile nations at the Confederacy''s boarders only numbered a few dozen ships.


    Nothing like the 314th Combat Fleet.


    Admiral (Lower Decks) of the Iron Shelvant was a Crel''tik, one of the species that was considered Near-Civilized by the Lanaktallan Unified Council. At 1.5 meters tall and fifty-five kilograms he was average for his species, with dark brown fur covering his body, close set eyes on either side of his muzzle with another pair of eyes at the rear of his temples. He had been in the military, thanks to the standard longevity treatments, for nearly three hundred years. He had commanded a light frigate during the Mar-gite Resurgence, engaged in combat multiple times during the three decade long war. He had been a bridge officer toward the end of the Second Mar-gite War, after nearly a hundred years of fighting.


    He had seen scores of planets burn with white fire during those two wars.


    Which meant he disagreed with Admiral (Upper Decks) of the Warsteel Jumfrek, a Maktanen out of the Sword Hoof Lanaktallan Systems.


    Admiral Jumfrek had ordered the Combat Fleet to go to jumpspace and head straight for NV-838417, which had sent a message torpedo claiming they were under heavy Mar-gite attack. The Admiral believed that the overstrength Combat Fleet should be able to handle any Mar-gite Resurgence Constructs that might have drifted into the system.


    Admiral Shelvant wasn''t so sure. It was only 65 light years from the Fortress Systems. There were two other ''rings'' of systems between NV-838417 and the current posting for the 314th Combat Fleet. The two rings consisted of 35 planets that could provide a task force of at least 25 ships if NV-838417 was in trouble.


    The torpedo had been launched at an unknown date, and had dropped out of the upper hyperspace bands the day after TerraSol had announced its return to the universe.


    It had taken the Admiral nearly two months to get the Combat Fleet moving, despite his promise in public that the Fleet would be enroute within 48 hours.


    "One hundred twenty seconds to realspace reentry," came over the speakers.


    Admiral Shelvant had an odd feeling. Things didn''t add up right.


    True, the current posting was off the main shipping lanes and had grav-eddies and hyperspace sheers around the system, but something just didn''t sit right with Shelvant.


    The torpedo being damaged? OK.


    The fact its launching telemetry indicated it had been launched along with over fifty others? OK.


    There had been five Mar-gite Mega-Structures entering the system. OK.


    The fact that there was 17.5 billion sentients on the two settled planets meant they needed help. OK.


    But why the torpedo? Why carry the Case Omaha? Why start yelling a Case Normandy?


    NV-838417 ha combat ships. The defensive rings should have provided combat ships to help defend the system.


    "Ninety seconds."


    Admiral Shelvant felt that something was off.


    But Admiral Jumfrek had faced the Mar-gite as well. Had been in charge of task forces, ship battalions, strike forces, while Admiral Shelvant had been an off bridge and then a bridge officer before commanding only a few lighter vessels.


    Admiral Jumfrek was convinced that they could make a difference. That planetary defense could have held out against Mar-gite Mega-Clusters and with the addition of the 314th Combat Fleet''s Army & Marine compliments, the Mar-gite could be pushed off the planet.


    Which is why the 134th Combat Fleet was only minutes away from dropping out of jumpspace and into n-space again.


    "Sixty seconds."


    He was currently standing on the Show Bridge, which was largely ignored and a ceremonial feature in modern ships, but since it had been built in a Lanaktallan shipyard it was full of legacy stations and features.


    Still, the Undisputable Might of Space was a fully modern vessel, less than two decades old. It was a sphere, which modern ship-building theory espoused had the least surface area to defend with point defense, shield emitters, and other important features. It had the most internal volume, allowing for redundancy and extensive internal systems as well as weapon systems hidden mostly inside the hull. The weapons were all modern, with magazines five times capacity as the old days, with higher firing rate and capable of much more damage.


    "Thirty seconds."


    Still, it felt off to Admiral Shelvant.


    I feel like I''m carrying a pistol to an atom smasher fight, he thought to himself.


    "Ten seconds," sounded out.


    He reached out and grabbed the bars in front of him.


    "Reentry."


    Stars suddenly streaked into view and the swirling colorful gray mists of jumpspace were replaced with the velvet blackness of deep space.


    "Sixteen thousand kilometers from the resonance zone boundary. Right on target," sounded out.


    The Show Bridge was largely crewed by midshipmen and junior grade lieutenants who all remained silent, staring at their consoles and data boards, hands away from their keyboards and controls, which were locked out anyway.


    The whole show was being run from the Combat Bridge now.


    Admiral Shelvant moved up to the holotank as it flickered and went live.


    "There they are," he heard Admiral Jumfrek stated, his hologram flickering to life.


    Five Mar-gite Megaclusters appeared, their icons burning with a sullen red light. They were halfway into the system.


    Admiral Shelvant noted that they were on the opposite side of the stellar mass from the inhabited planets. Their direction and speed meant they would stay opposite of the planets, in a triangle.


    Probes were launched, went to hyperspace, and ''skipped'' toward the clusters.


    Less than two minutes and they were in place. Close enough to get visual on the clusters as the probes deployed their scanner arrays.


    The clusters were massive to anyone who had never seen them before. Two hundred miles long, conical shaped, the ''mouth'' ten miles in diameter with the rear end only a mile in diameter.


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    "Only"


    Shelvant knew that through basic geometry the cone ''only'' held roughly six hundred fifty billion Mar-gite.


    "Break the Combat Fleet into four Task Forces," Admiral Jumfrek said. "We''ll leave our support and command vessels back here. Have them move around the stellar mass and approach the Mar-gite clusters," the Admiral rubbed his hands together. "We can knock this out fairly quickly."


    Admiral Shelvant heard the communications officer report that there was still broadcasts from both planets. Hysterical broadcasts begging for help or evacuation, but none of them reporting any Mar-gite making landfall.


    Admiral Shelvant squinted.


    It looked odd to him.


    It didn''t feel right.


    "You don''t think it''s strange that they''re opposite of the stellar mass from the planets?" Shelvant asked.


    Jumfrek turned ''toward'' him. "No. Both planets have excellent planetary defense shields and weapon arrays, as well as orbital defense systems. The Mar-gite are obviously waiting for reinforcements or we caught them before they finished feeding on stellar emissions and left."


    "This feels off to me," Shelvant said.


    Jumfrek motioned at the holotank. "The data doesn''t lie. They are out of position, an insufficient force to keep us from pinning it down and destroying it. Once again showing that the Mar-gite are essentially mindless, incapable of tactics or planning," the Admiral gave a harrumph. "It was obvious during the Second Mar-gite War and the Mar-gite Resurgence that they are essentially mindless. Biologically, they don''t even have brains."


    Shelvant ignored the sly innuendo that he was a complete ignoramus.


    The Combat Fleet broke into five task forces. Four to circle the stellar mass, the support and command vessels to hang back only a third of the way into the system, past the gas giants and deep into the Resonance Zone.


    The whole time Admiral Shelvant watched the holotank.


    It just felt off.


    He watched as the fleets moved around the stellar mass. Despite the apparent slowness of the icon''s movement in the holotank, Shelvant knew that the ships were crossing hundreds of millions of kilometers every hour.


    Shifts changed and Shelvant tried to take a nap, having to resort to ASMR in order to get some rest. When he returned, the ships were just crossing ''around'' the stellar mass.


    He moved up to the holotank, looking down and into it.


    "STATUS CHANGE! GRAV SIGNATURES! MASS SIGNATURES!" called out over the speakers.


    Little dots erupted from all five gas giants, marking with strobes of grav drive signatures. Larger icons slowly separated from the five gas giants, detected by their mass than any drive system.


    The larger icons were massive. Some tens of thousands of kilometers long and a thousand kilometers thick.


    Shelvant just stared as NavInt tagged the larger ones as some kind of Mar-gite construct when the emissions were verified as whatever the system the Mar-gite used.


    There were dozens of them.


    He turned to open his mouth to call out to Admiral Jumfrek to get the fleet out of the system when it happened.


    A blinding white flash went off.


    Shelvant was unaware that he was falling to the deck in a grand-mal seizure. His head was full of a buzzing roaring as his datalink implant malfunctioned and filled his brain with static and random data.


    The ship went dark around him. The drives cut out. All systems went down and the backup batteries failed even as the reactors went dead.


    After a long moment he picked himself up. His head was throbbing, he could hear static, his vision was blurry.


    A decade or so prior he had been involved in a ground car collision and suffered a cerebral contusion, colloquially known as a concussion.


    It felt the same.


    He looked around. Several of the control boards had exploded or imploded. Since the ship wasn''t in combat, it was still under atmosphere and nobody had had their face shields down.


    Five crewmembers were unmoving on the deck, their heads surrounded by blood colored according to species and what their hemoglobin was based off of.


    The rest of the crew was either slumped in their chairs or on the floor. Restraining belts had retracted.


    The artificial gravity was on. There was pinlights from only a handful of the emergency lights and those were flickering and audibly buzzing.


    One bloody crewmember picked himself up, moving to an intact board.


    "Nothing. Ship''s dead," he said. He shook his head. "Damage Control Command is down."


    Early in his career, Shelvant had been a senior grade lieutenant aboard an eighty thousand year old Lanaktallan micro-cruiser that had suffered a complete power failure when it had brushed the legendary but rarely actually encountered ion storm.


    Shelvant staggered over to the crewman. "Does your implant work?"


    "Aye, sir," the crewman said.


    "Use it to contact other crewmen. Get a datalink network up. See what''s going on in engineering. The network will use each datalink as a processing and repeater node," Admiral Shelvant said. "Get medical up here, we have casualties."


    "Aye, sir," the crewman said. He touched the side of his hemlet.


    Shelvant slapped the crewman''s faceshield shut then closed his own, moving across the deck.


    The holotank suddenly flickered to life. Status checks flowed by. He saw that a zero-point reactor had activated.


    He didn''t even know holotanks had built in zero-point reactors.


    EYELI''IKMO''NY INDUSTRIAL CONCERN


    DUMBWIRES SYSTEM


    FOR WHEN STUPIDITY MIGHT CARRY THE DAY


    appeared in the holotank.


    A window opened up with "YOU MUST ACCEPT THE TERMS OF SERVICE" at the top, a dulled out "ACCEPT" button and an active "CANCEL" button at the bottom. The text box was full of legal jargon.


    Shelvant hurriedly shuffled through the ToS, hitting "ACCEPT" as soon as he could.


    The End User Agreement popped up and he snarled as he rushed to the bottom and hit accept again.


    "YOU MUST DISABLE AD-BLOCK!" appeared.


    Grinding his teeth, Shelvant hit the button.


    DUMBWIRE SYSTEM LINKAGE IN PROGRESS! HURDY-HUDRY-HUR AT 01%


    Admiral Shelvant just held onto the bar, swallowing thickly.


    At 8% nearly two thirds of the Show Bridge Crew was on their feet.


    At 15% the adhoc DCC officer''s board went live and the bleeding crew member went to work.


    At 20% the elevator door opened and medics rushed in, hurrying to the fallen crewmembers.


    When it ready "HURDY HUDRY HUR AT 35%" his suit went live. On his visor appeared "IDIOT BOX ONLINE! DURRRRR!" and he gasped as the environmental kicked in, flooding his suit with cool air.


    At 45% the battlescreen projectors spun up, going to full power even though apparently nobody had control over them.


    At 50% the antigrav steadied out.


    At 73% the holotank suddenly cleared from the status reports and came back online.


    The ship was running off of passive sensors, but it showed the terrible truth.


    The ships of the four task forces had not continued their controlled curve around the stellar mass. Instead, their arc had widened as their speed kept them from orbiting the stellar mass.


    There were over a dozen of those massive clusters heading for the command and support fleet. All of them over ten thousand kilometers long. They were moving at .65C and obviously maneuvering.


    At 95% the ship fired probes toward the contacts.


    At 100% the lights flickered twice and then stayed on.


    "YOU ARE NOW STUPID!" appeared in the holotank.


    Shelvant ground his teeth and shook his head.


    You know what, I don''t even care any more, he thought.


    One of the probes went active and the window opened up in the holotank.


    "Sir, the board keeps doing its own actions. I''m having problems overriding anything," one of the crewmembers said from over by the sensor stations.


    "We''ll figure it out as we go," Shelvant said. "Any word from Combat Control and the Combat or Tactical Bridges?"


    "Negative, sir," the crewmember by communications said.


    The medic finished working on the cuts on one of the crewmember''s face, gave them a shot to help with any brain swelling or any clots, then hustled for the elevator door.


    "What hit us?" Shelvant asked.


    "Don''t know. Whatever it was, it crashed everything. We''re running off of some kind of backup redundancy system for the redundancy and emergency systems," the crewmember at DCC said. "I''ve never heard of a dumbwire system."


    "Probably Lanaktallan, thank the Old Gods," Shelvant said.


    The window was showing the massive constructs as they spread out, some slowing down, some speeding up. As he watched the two speeding up seemed to contract.


    "Is there a mass change on either of these?" he asked the sensor watch.


    "Negative, sir."


    The ''mouth'' of the cone suddenly glowed with bluish energy and the two large ones seemed to suddenly slow.


    From their mouths slid long constructs, easily a hundred miles long, the ''point'' only a hundred meters wide.


    There were dozens of constructs from each of the larger constructs.


    As the latter third exited the ''mouth'' the probe could see that it was covered with Mar-gite, narrow toward the forward section, thickening at the back.


    "What the fuck?" Shelvant blurted out. He blinked. "Tag those as Mar-gite Spears."


    "Aye, sir," rang out.


    "Incoming objects on collision course with fleet elements!" tactical called out.


    "Get the Combat Bridge up!" Shelvant yelled.


    "Other ships are starting to respond. Half of the ships are broadcasting ''hurdy-hurdy-hur'' over their transponders," Commo reported.


    "Get us linked up! I want commo back up," Shelvant said.


    He made a decision.


    Forget hurt feelings, I''m going to have to assume whatever that flash was destroyed the combat and tactical bridges. That leaves us, he thought.


    "Do we have navigation or steering?" Shelvant asked.


    "No. Says the dumbwires are at 15%," navigation reported.


    "Negative, sir, Dumbwires at 85%," the helmsman called out.


    Shelvant stared as the Spears separated into discrete groups, steering to target eight of the ships of the fleet.


    The counter-fire was sporadic and poorly aimed. Point defense was thin and inaccurate.


    Shelvant breathed a guilty sigh of relief when he realized that the Undisputable Might of Space wasn''t targeted.


    Sensor section was able to launch drones and get good looks at the spears as they came in at .85C. Other sensors focused on the targeted ships.


    Shelvant wanted to close his eyes as the first of the ''spears'' hit.


    The tips smashed into the battlescreens, which were on emergency power. The leading meters were ripped into energy as the battlescreens shredded it. The next length was torn into its component atoms.


    Then the next length was shredded into splinters.


    Battlescreen sections failed.


    The spears, still moving at .35C, slammed into the battlesteel superstructures of the ships.


    The Mar-gite at the back were flung forward, glowing a bluish gray, their limbs unfolding.


    Boarders, went through his head.


    The spears slammed completely through the ships, easily a hundred meters of burnt, twisted, shattered, and carbonized reinforced calcite shaft exiting out the other side to hit the still operational battlescreen sections, making them flare.


    The Mar-gite hit the hull. Some were unable to slow down and exploded when they hit the battlesteel armor. Most hit and shattered, smeared across battlesteel. Still others missed the ship to whip across and slam into the battlescreen, where they were torn apart into energy and atoms.


    But not all of them.


    Thousands hit the hull.


    "Bogeys are launching another salvo," Sensors said.


    "Get the net up," Shelvant said, wishing he could wipe his mouth. "Get the net up or we''re all dead."


    "Bogey detected! Two hundred kilometers off the port bow! Bogey is slowing!" sensors called out.


    Shelvant flicked through the windows.


    It was a small, silvery looking teardrop, only a hundred meters long, twenty meters wide at the widest point.


    He looked at Coms. "Tell what Marines you can..." he said. He glanced at the teardrop.


    "Prepare for non Mar-gite boarders."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 92

    Everything you know is wrong, "Weird" Alfred, Bard, Troubadour, Spanker of Witches.


    The spears hit the next batch of ships, the battlescreens destroying half of the miles long splinters before giving out and allowing miles more to slam into the battlesteel armor of the spherical ships. The spears punched deep into the ship, often clear through. The Mar-gite at the end of the spears let go, falling down onto the ship. They spun as they fell, that bluish energy surrounding their arms, and they arced out to land in discrete clusters.


    Admiral (Lower Decks) of the Iron Shelvant watched as more ships were hit, keeping one eye on the bogey coming closer. The holotank had helpfully labeled it "Spaceship - Duh" but kept a watch on it. The sphere of probes around the ship were transmitting very little data, but what the probes were transmitting was backed by all of the other probes.


    As he watched, battlescreens began winking out in sections around the initial impact point.


    "They''re going for the battlescreen projectors," Shelvant said. He clenched his toes in frustration. "Dammit, there goes The Iron Will and The Will and Power of the People."


    Something about the oncoming bogey caught his eye.


    The visual was showing it changing. The liquid chrome look was getting grainier, dulling.


    He raised an eye tuft, then a realization hit him.


    He turned to the DCC officer.


    "Use the datalink network. Order a full triple power-cycle of the datalinks!" he snapped.


    "But, sir..." the DCC officer started.


    "NOW!" Shelvant yelled.


    The ship looked like it was made of lead grains.


    His datalink made a quick musical tone as it powered down.


    There was a white flash that filled the bridge.


    The holotank flickered and came back to life.


    "HURR-DEE-HURR, I''M STILL STUPID!" floated in the hologram.


    Shelvant breathed a sigh of relief.


    "Screens down, we''re defenseless," the DCC officer said.


    The teardrop shot forward and the holotank view swiveled to follow it. It hit near Deck 42-exterior-4, looking like it had collapsed into a large puddle on the surface of the ship.


    I hope the Marines are ready, Shelvant thought to himself. They''re about to learn today.


    The holotank pinged and he turned his attention to it.


    There was a massive construct approaching, the wide open end huge and coming straight at the ship.,


    Great, we''re going to get eaten twice, Shelvant shook his head.


    Another ping and a window opened up. One of the ships that had been hit hard by the spear was being wrapped up by millions of Mar-gite.


    The massive construct approaching the Undisputable Might of Space suddenly vomited up a wad of Mar-gite the holotank reported was twenty miles wide. The construct changed heading slightly and vomited four more times, each time changing heading right after ejecting the wad of Mar-gite.


    A glance at the holotank window showed that the ships that were now pulling away from the stellar mass had several Mar-gite constructs following them.


    Something told Shelvant that what had just happened to the logistics and command force was going to happen to the combat detachments.


    They''re going to dissolve and eat the ships out from around us, he thought. He clenched his toes again in frustration. Where was this tactic during the Mar-gite Wars? What the hell is that flash? And I''ve never seen those silver ships before.


    His datalink pinged and gave back the data that there was only 15% corruption of onboard software and the corrupted software was under replacement from the firmware. His datalink reported neural link damage as well as volatile memory damage.


    "Reconnect the datalink network. Get the Marines to where the bogey hit. Prepare for non-Mar-gite boarders," Shelvant said. He shook his hands out, trying to bleed off the stress, grinding his teeth.


    "Aye, sir," the DCC officer said.


    "Any word or proof of life from the Captain or the Admiral?" Shelvant asked.


    "Negative, sir," the Communication''s Officer stated.


    Doctrine was firm and tested. Operational Procedures were clear.


    "Log that I''m taking command until the Captain or the Admiral is brought into the network or otherwise makes themselves known to be alive and capable of assuming command," Shelvant said.


    "Aye, sir," he turned to his board, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then spoke. "All hands, all hands, Admiral Shelvant has assumed command. Repeat. Admiral Shelvant has assumed command."


    Shelvant clenched his toes again, feeling that his toeclaws had sliced through the padding built into the insole and was now scraping on the endosteel insert in the toe of his boots.


    The wad of Mar-gite was drawing closer as he watched. He could hear, faintly, a whisper which he knew what the DCC officer rebuilding the datalink network.


    "Get a datalink or cybernetics specialist up here from medical, at their earliest convenience," Shelvant said.


    "Aye, sir," Communications said.


    "Marine datalinks are refusing datalink networking," the DCC officer said. "Codes are garbled."


    "Try to correct," Shelvant stared at the holotank. "Try your datalink security header with their onboard armor commo system," he suggested.


    Of the hundred and twenty ships of the logistics and command section, twenty-two were being targeted by the wads of millions of Mar-gite. The names had popped up and Shelvant opened up windows to see which they were.


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    Command, fabrication. None of the troops transports. One of the medical ships. Two logistics vessels. The rest were being hammered by those massive spears.


    What are you doing? Shelvant wondered. He no longer viewed the Mar-gite was just mindless weapons that only screamed and charged. He knew now that somehow those silver ships had filled them with some kind of dark purpose that was now being aimed straight at what was left of the fleet.


    The wad was only two hundred thousand kilometers out when it suddenly unfolded into a large irregular oval.


    Now he recognized the tactic.


    The Mar-gite would envelop the ship so they could dissolve it around the crew and kill/eat everything on board.


    "Inform the crew to brace for impact," he ordered. He reached out and touched the icon on the holotank.


    The heavy blast shutters closed over the Show Bridge windows.


    "All hands, all hands, brace for impact," came over his datalink. It was screechy, somewhat warbling across several tones, but at least he heard it.


    The Show Bridge Sergeant at Arms went over to the weapons locker on the bulkhead and opened it. He withdrew the pistol belts with the pistols and moved across the bridge, handing them out.


    The ship trembled slightly when the Mar-gite enveloped it.


    "Marines report fighting. Unidentified enemy," the Commo Officer said.


    Shelvant glanced at the Security Officer.


    "Shifting an image to the main holotank,'' the Security Officer stated.


    The window opened up and Shelvant stared.


    It had a short conical body, the wide end glowing red and full of sharp teeth. It had multiple segmented metal tentacles off of the body that terminated in blades, calipers, graspers, and short tentacle ''fingers''. It was firing blasts from two of the tentacles, it spun to avoid damage, or brought the tentacles in close and spun to try to mitigate the damage. The others were close to the same, just a blue light and a green light instead of red. Others had a rounded head/body, with easily a dozen writhing mechanical tentacles. Eight larger red eyes, six smaller green ones, across the forward part of the head. From the body extended out eight to ten thick appendages, with three thick blades at the end of each tentacle. It was obviously armored, heavy plating, with multiple joints on the appendages, with green lights above and below the joint and on each side.


    The onboard frangible rounds weren''t doing as much as standard battlefield rounds would, but the Marines still kept up the fire.


    "Sir, it looks like, from a map of the contact and damage, that they''re heading for environmental," the Security Officer said.


    The map of the Undisputable Might of Space showed the invaders making a least time course for the environment systems and control, ripping through bulkheads if they had to.


    There was a slight warble in his datalink and he heard one of the Marine Gunnery Sergeants snapping out orders to get the big nifty-fifties and madame three-eighteen into the fight, steel jacketed ball rounds.


    He opened his mouth to ask what the hell they needed something with those names for, but a glance at the Security Officer showed him listening to his datalink and nodding.


    Shelvant turned away from the Security Officer to stare into the tank as his datalink autoswitched channels.


    "Commo," Shelvant said.


    "Sir?"


    "Give the order," he said. He paused for a moment. "Fight the ship."


    "Aye, sir!" the Commo Officer put his hand to his temple.


    "All hands, all hands, Admiral Shelvant''s orders," there was a slight pause. "FIGHT THE SHIP!"


    Shelvant accepted the pistol belt and took a moment to put it on, then draw the magac pistol. He let it synch to his hand, then checked the telltales. He loaded an ambloc into it, then reholstered it.


    The reports from the external probes were getting fuzzy as another Mar-gite wad spread out, heading for the Undisputable Might of Space.


    "Brace for impact," he said softly.


    It didn''t fit. The Mar-gite on the hull should have eaten through by now.


    What were they doing?


    The ship trembled slightly.


    According to the holotank, the enemy was nearly to environmental. The Marines were reporting no Mar-gite.


    "Sir, damage to the external engine housings is rising. External engine component damage is increasing," DCC stated.


    "Understood," Shelvant nodded.


    That was about the only thing that made sense.


    The medic arrived and was waved over to Shelvant.


    "Sir?" the medic asked.


    Shelvant moved over and sat in the chair. "I want you to take a look at my implant, run a scan of the neural linkages too."


    "All right," the medic said. He opened up his toolkit. "Try to relax, sir."


    The First Mate (Show Bridge) looked at the Admiral, wondering why now, in the middle of battle, he was having his datalink examined. True, his own hurt, and he had a throbbing migraine, but surely the Admiral could wait until after the battle to have it examined, if they lived?


    The case came off with a sucking sound.


    Shelvant watched the progression of the enemy forces. They''d reached the environmental section, even though they were now cut off from their ship. The Marines were reporting that the ship''s hull had a battlescreen covering it, sealing the hole in the Undisputable Might of Space''s hull.


    Shelvant kept clenching his toes, scraping his claws against the endosteel plate in his boots.


    "Your admiralty firmware and hardware is fried out," the medic said. "Looks like serious damage to your additional cryptography and identification and analysis hardware," they checked the hand scanner. "You''ve got cerebral tissue damage from the nanofibers going hot, but not too badly. The shot you got earlier is helping with that."


    The medic put the case back on.


    "Did you get your M404 Senior Officer Grade Datalink upgraded?" the medic asked, putting his tools away.


    Shelvant nodded. "Three weeks ago. I was approved for beta-test, it''s one of the reasons why the Admiral put me on Show Bridge in case my datalink couldn''t handle the traffic."


    "Looks like some of it melted down. If you have a headache, that''s what it''s from," the medic said, closing their toolkit.


    "If I had the older one, with the heavier molycircs, what would have happened?" Shelvant asked.


    The medic stood up, getting out an autoinjector. "The heavier molycircs would have heated up more and the old style nanofibers would have gotten hotter," he gave Admiral Shelvant a shot. "It would have baked your brain."


    Shelvant nodded.


    He knew that most of the higher ranking officers aboard the ship were probably dead.


    "Anyone else got a migraine?" the medic asked.


    Several hands went up.


    "I''m on my way."


    Shelvant did his best to project an aura of calm indifference as he moved over to the holotank. The medic moved to each of the officers whose hands had been up. Shelvant watched as the feed cut out from the probes.


    There were little damage notifications all over the sphere that represented the ship. The window tallied what was damaged. Communications arrays, point defense arrays, battlescreen projectors, thrusters, engines, sensors.


    He frowned.


    But no internal damage.


    He opened his mouth to say more when the vents started spewing yellowish vapor.


    "SEAL SUITS!" Shelvant barked over the datalink and out loud. Several of the officers as well as the medic suddenly slapped their helmet face shields shut.


    The medic moved over and passed a wand through the vapor. He looked at the wand. ""High nitrogen, high ammonia, high methane, presence of oxygen. Presence of hydrogen and water vapor."


    "It''s being pumped through the ship," the DCC Officer said.


    Shelvant looked at the Science Officer. "Opinion?"


    "No clue. Maybe it''s what those creatures breathe? It wouldn''t be good for the Mar-gite, not with their silicate bodies," the Science Officer said.


    Shelvant turned back to the holotank. The boarders were now trying to fight their way back, but the Marines had them surrounded and had time to prepare.


    Not all of them. There was a contingent that stayed in the primary atmospheric exchanger and environmental systems.


    "Get the Marines in there, I want that back under our control," Shelvant said.


    "Aye, sir," the Security Officer said.


    The atmosphere thickened.


    There was a sudden slow grinding vibration. A strange shimmer in the air. Everyone who moved left a slight afterimage behind them, like a video that was playing one or two extra frames at the same time. The datalinks warbled and sang for a second before clicking through channels. The vibration slowly picked up speed, the grinding feeling smoothing out.


    In moments it was a steady hum.


    "Sir, you''re not going to believe this," the Sensor System Officer called out.


    "What is it?" Admiral Shelvant asked.


    "I''m tossing it to you. This happened on my board right as that grinding picked up speed," the Sensors Officer said.


    A window opened up in the holotank.


    The IFF transponders of the other ships in the support fleet were burning silently around the Undisputable Might of Space. One, then another suddenly streaked away, up and out.


    Then all of them streaked away.


    Down and in.


    Admiral Shelvant felt a cold chill fill him.


    "They just grabbed us," the XO said softly.


    Shelvant just nodded.


    "How?" the XO asked.


    "They must have had enough Mar-gite on our hull," Shelvant said.


    "They''ve never done anything like this," the XO protested.


    "They never had silver ships and weird tentacle boarders either," Shelvant said.


    "Where do you think they are taking us?" the XO asked.


    "Someplace terrible."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 93

    The Telkan moved quickly, taking off from a ready stance and sprinting down the hallway.


    For almost a full second a murky silverish image of the Telkan was still crouched down, ready to take off sprinting, while a murky gray streak connected the Telkan to the image as he sprinted down the corridor. Then the ready-figure didn''t take off, it just slid into the streak and merged with the Telkan, who was against the far gym wall.


    Admiral (Lower Decks) of the Iron Shelvant closed the video, nodding.


    "We have almost two hundred fifty other documented demonstrations," Chief Engineer Algwarth said, putting her hands behind her back and tensing her shoulders to make her muscles stand out. "Different spectrums, some multi-spectrum, different environments, different species."


    Shelvant nodded, opening up another video.


    This was green mantid, obviously concentrating. Around him floated spectral numbers and mathematical formula.


    He closed the video.


    "We''re not sure what''s causing it, but it''s definitely related to wherever we are," the Engineer said.


    "No clue which Transit Space we''re using?" Shelvant asked.


    The Engineer shook her head. "Negative."


    "Any solid proof for how they''re doing it?" Shelvant asked.


    Chief Engineer Algwarth shook her head. "Just WAG and the like."


    "Hit me with one," Shelvant said.


    Algwarth flexed her shoulders again, obviously uncomfortable. "We know Mar-gite can generate a biological counter-grav to get off-planet once they get three hundred or more linked up. We know that they can go superluminal somehow. The current, prevalent theory, is that they layered enough Mar-gite on us to shift us into super-luminal and haul us along."


    "That seems fairly self-evident," Shelvant said.


    "Which is why I have teams gathering as much data as possible," the Chief Engineer said. She sighed. "Not that it will matter. With them coating the hull so thickly, we can''t get a message torpedo off-ship. That''s assuming that the torpedo can somehow operate in wherever we are."


    Shelvant nodded. "I have a theory on how to get the message torpedoes out," he paused. "It won''t be good for us. We''ll all regret it and probably die from it, but it should work."


    The Chief Engineer was silent. "The Mar-gite have layered nearly six hundred feet deep on us. That''s at least three hundred, possibly closer to four hundred layers thick."


    Shelvant shook his head. "It won''t matter. If this works, it won''t matter how many there are."


    The Chief Engineer was silent a moment. "Are you going to explain?" she finally asked.


    Shelvant told her and her brow ridge raised. "At the least, it will cause massive damage to the ship''s hull. That''s the best case scenario."


    "The largest probability is that we explode," Shelvant said. He sighed and moved around the holotank slowly. "I''m not enamored with suicide, but we''re at war. The Mar-gite are obviously flooding into the systems and we walked right into an ambush because we weren''t warned."


    Algwarth nodded.


    "Most of the ranking officers are dead. Most of the Senior NCOs are dead," Shelvant continued. "A lot of the enlisted with highly technical jobs are dead."


    "Anyone with supplemental memory and interface controls," Algwarth said. "If I hadn''t had mine physically turned off so I could run checks on the thinking wires, I''d be dead too."


    Algwarth nodded. "I''ve been thinking that we''re not the only ship that''s been taken. Before we got moved, I saw at least two other ships go superluminal and the Mar-gite ejected clusters were heading for at least a dozen other ships."


    "They''ve never shown those tactics before," the Chief Engineer stated. "That spears were new too."


    "Saint Newton and Saint Ch''Krawt are the two most deadly sons of bitches in the universe," Shelvant said, chuckling at his own joke. "Any idea what the spears are made of?"


    "We took two, center mass. Examination has shown that they''re density collapsed calcite. Same things as the Mar-gite arm-hooks and the grinding plates and teeth in their mouths," she shook her head. "We''ve estimated that the Mar-gite cluster crushed down at least twenty-million Mar-gite per spear. They had at least twenty-thousand Mar-gite riding the spear end. Once they hit, they immediately concentrated on battlescreen emitters, point defense, and counter-missile missile launchers."


    "How? They don''t even really have brains," Shelvant said.


    Algwarth nodded. "True. But we''ve managed to examine a few we took down that didn''t get melted by that damn fog. Their sensory organs are different. It looks like they were specifically ''bred'' to consider those primary targets."


    "Great," Shelvant tapped the holotank, bringing up the silvery ship as it came in and the image of it attached to the hull with a battlescreen up, taking from the wreckage strewn bay it was outside of. "And these are new."


    He tapped another window, showing the strange tentacles creatures that had been killed by the Marines. "And these."


    "It''s not really that high tech," Algwarth said. "We''ve taken apart some of the remains. The metal is battlesteel as well as carbon doped endosteel. Circuitry is standard molycircs everyone but the Terrans figured out," she shook her head. "Even the plasma weapons and the vibroblades aren''t that unusual."


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    "How do they compare to Confederate technology?" Shelvant asked.


    "Behind even the Lankies before the Big C3. They just went a different direction than everyone else," she said. She tapped another window and the DNA strand showed up. It was a triple-helix. "Lots of genetic engineering. Out of the four types we encountered, three share DNA that''s been heavily modified, the other one isn''t related to the other three at all but shows signs of heavy alteration."


    "So... we don''t know anything about them," Shelvant said.


    "The three would enjoy ammonia heavy worlds. The odd one out would be just fine on Smokey Cone," Algwarth said. "At least, that''s what the dumbwire medical computer claims."


    "Where did that system come from? I''ve never even heard of it?" Shelvant said.


    The Chief Engineer shook her head. "Luck. That''s where it came from. Turns out that an Omni-Corp wanted to use a ship this one''s size to test the dumbwires so they agreed to pay for the construction of this ship. They did their field tests, then sold it back to the Confederacy. During refit it was decided that the dumbwires would be too expensive to remove, so they just left them in, brought the ship up to Space Force standards, did a single trial, then handed it off to us."


    Shelvant chuckled. "Well, I''ll make sure to include a thank you note to the Omni-Corps in the message torpedoes."


    "You''re wedded to the plan?" the Chief Engineer asked carefully.


    Shelvant nodded. "I am. It might just be a fancy form of suicide, but this is war and it''s bigger than us," he rubbed his face. "While it makes for great cinema, being the subject of such a cliche brings me no joy."


    The Chief Engineer nodded.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The Chief Engineer looked over her holotank, staring at the icons. The holotank was inside one of the command and control dropships, a heavily armored beast. Admiral Shelvant stood next to her, staring at the icons.


    The NCv cannons were loaded, magazines of fifty. The barrels were not extended past the hull, instead the guns were still retracted. Blast shields had been welded into the channel to prevent any backflow from damaging the guns for as long as possible and armor added to the external surfaces of the barrels. Steam powered launchers were loaded with heavy combat dropships or aerospace fighters capable of short jumpspace hops, strap on battlescreen projectors dotting their surfaces. The lifepods blinked to show they were ready and loaded.


    The entire remaining crew was either in lifepods, aboard the aerospace fighters, or in the dropships.


    Everything else was being run by dumbwires.


    "Go strap in," Shelvant ordered.


    The Chief Engineer nodded, moving away.


    The ''ACTIVATE'' icon blinked slowly.


    Once that was hit, the cannons would start firing, rapid firing their entire fifty rounds as fast as possible.


    The secondary sprint drive had been replaced by message torpedoes. The drive activation mechanisms replaced with bursting charges that would blow the casing of the NCv round apart and drop the message torpedo into whatever space the ship was being moved through by the Mar-gite.


    Shelvant had decided to go for all or nothing.


    As a final, parting gift, multiple thermonuclear weapons, antimatter bombs, and other esoteric weapons normally fired by the guns, were all wired to blow.


    Shelvant intended on leaving the Mar-gite and their masters with nothing.


    He reached out and touched the icon.


    The counter began winding down. He saw "HURR DEE HURR" flash next to it and knew that the signal had been passed on. Not just activating the weapons, but activating the timer so that those sailors aboard the lifepods and dropships and aerospace fighters could see it too.


    He rushed to his seat, sitting down and buckling in.


    The hope was that the cannons and other weapons would clear away the three to four hundred feet of Mar-gite, allowing the nCv rounds, the aerospace strikers, the lifepods, and the dropships to make it out into the superluminal space.


    The hope was that the superluminal space would spit everything out into n-space, into realspace.


    Five thousand torpedoes. Fifty dropships. Fifty aerospace strikers. Two hundred lifepods.


    Admiral Shelvant hoped that at least one would make it.


    That the Confederacy would be warned about the new tactics the Mar-gite were using. That the evidence of the Mar-gite''s masters would make it. That the warning about The Flash would make it.


    Shelvant closed his eyes.


    Live or die, it didn''t matter to him.


    What mattered is how many of his sailors survived.


    The counter was blurring.


    It reached zero.


    The big nCv guns started firing, the first ten round HE with an impact fuze with the standoff distance removed and no booster charge. The huge 55 inch guns blew the Mar-gite clear with the first three hits. The rest of the rounds whipped into the strange fog and vanished with a flash. The rounds containing the message torpedoes followed, vanishing into the fog.


    The guns at the front of the launching systems, carefully placed by the surviving engineers, opened up as soon as the launch iris opened. Six seconds and the way was clear. The ships were launched, vanishing into the strange swirling mist.


    Shelvant closed his eyes and was startled to realize he was whispering an ancient, almost forgotten prayer to the Digital Omnimessiah, his hands clenched together, the heavy armored gloves lacking tactile feedback.


    There was a sudden gut-wrenching twist, a feeling like he was being pulled inside out and in every direction at the same time.


    It felt like he threw up inside his skull while his brains leaked out of empty eye sockets and out his nose.


    Then there was a wobble that he felt, like everything, the entire universe was made out of jello, just for a second, maybe two, maybe ten heartbeats since his heart was hammering like a jackhammer.


    He could smell the ozone and faint stench of scorched hydrocarbons from his suit helmet cleaning the vomit.


    He could hear someone screaming. It went on and on and on.


    He took a deep whooping breath.


    That was the only reason he knew it wasn''t him.


    He managed to get his eyes open.


    The Chief Engineer was staring at him. He looked her up and down.


    She was intact and not fused to the deck plating. She didn''t look like she''d been turned inside out inside of her suit and her suit looked intact.


    Someone was still screaming, the screams getting thinner and weaker.


    The lights of the dropship flickered and came on. He could feel machinery spinning up vibrating the seat underneath him. His armored vac-suit went live.


    "We made it," the Chief Engineer said.


    Shelvant looked around, seeing the Chief Security Officer was strewn across the deck, organs, muscle, bone all strewn together with shards of the armored vac-suit. Steam was rising off the meat and the screams were getting thinner even as the pulsating flesh moved less and less.


    "Some of us," Shelvant said. He closed his eyes and opened them. "Let''s see what the scanners can see."


    0-0-0-0-0


    The dropship was unable to find anything near enough to trigger the sensors. It didn''t contain a jumpdrive or superluminal beacon. Its atmospheric recycler could keep everyone alive, fifty-three out of the seventy who had launched with it, for an indeterminable amount of time. The nutriforge was live, the rations were good.


    The only hope was the message torpedoes that had been put on the weapon mounts of the dropship and fired off as soon as the dropship had ended up in realspace.


    The Chief Engineer and her team had foreseen something like that happening.


    Which is why the massive dropship, easily able to carry a Treana''ad infantry company, only had seventy crew and passengers.


    The cryotubes and their backup zero-point reactors were the ''gone to hell'' option.


    Shelvant watched as the lights went from amber to a cool blue.


    Unlike everyone else, he wouldn''t be protected by a cryo-tube and a nifty-thrint field.


    Just the field.


    He sat down in the command chair and doublechecked everything.


    A Confederate transponder would turn off the nifty-thrint field.


    He hoped they wouldn''t be floating out in the dark for too long.


    He reached out and touched the button.


    Everything went still.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 94

    For someone, every mission is a suicide mission. - Legion, Mar-gite Xenocide


    Task Force Lonely Peach consisted of a single ship.


    The Confederate Space Force Naval Vessel Gray Lady, a Super-Colossus hull, a Stellar System Siege Rampart Unit. Designed to operate by itself or in support of an entire Fleet in setting siege to a fortified stellar system. It possessed thousands of Digital Sentiences, millions of troops, hundreds of thousands of crewmembers. It did not follow the current theory of a spherical ship so it is the least amount of hull surface to defend with the maximum interior area. Instead, it was a massive vessel that was tens of kilometers long and kilometers thick.


    Captain N''Skrek, who had only been a commander not too long ago, was in charge of the entire ship, all of its crew, to carry out the mission that had been handed off to Task Force Lonely Peach before it had left the front lines of the Mar-gite invasion of the Confederacy.


    The mission was simple: Destroy the enemy.


    The Gray Lady was in the gulf between the galactic arms, far away from any stellar mass.


    That didn''t mean there wasn''t anything to fight.


    The Mar-gite spears were still incoming into the system. Petra and Tetra Constructs measured in the thousands of miles long and thick. Before the Gray Lady had launched her attacks, there had been a series of rings, ten thousand miles in diameter, connected by structural members that looked like thin straps even though they were hundreds of miles thick. The clusters would move through the rings, bathed in energy, before leaving the chute of rings, moving to roughly a hundred thousand kilometers from the structure before vanishing.


    Now the rings were broken up and shattered. The Petra and Tetra constructs that had been in the systems had been hammered by guns, broken up and destroyed. The ones coming in were still under attack by the ''Fruit Flies'', small craft piloted and crewed by short-life combat clones, which were hammering the Mar-gite constructs were C+ cannons and missile strikes that utilized gravitational singularities to destroy the constructs.


    The Gray Lady had shifted position, now near where the Mar-gite constructs were warping into the system.


    He currently stood on the Show Bridge of the Gray Lady, which he had slowly come to appreciate more and more as the mission had continued. Normally the Show Bridge was manned by lower ranking command officers and more than a few Captains just had the Show Bridge kept shut down and unmanned.


    But there was something ultimately satisfying about commanding from the Show Bridge.


    He currently stood in front of the primary holotank, facing the crysteel smartglass windows that showed the outside view. Data windows were open on the smartglass, showing the status of the fleet that the Gray Lady was about to engage.


    A fleet of the pumpkin-seed shaped ships had arrived through methods unknown into the combat operations area. They were gray and pebbled, like unpolished, unsmoothed, unbuffed chrome. They had used a type of Akka-Berry drive to fold space and arrive in the system.


    More and more were arriving in ranks behind the earliest arrivals, waving into existence, forming arcs of ships, the earliest in the lead, the later appearing behind.


    There were eight arcs already with a ninth appearing.


    Over by a secondary holotank was drama that Captain N''Skrek was only paying half attention to.


    Two of the Immortals of antiquity, well, technically two even though there were four people over there, were by one of the secondary holotanks. While Captain N''Skrek knew that it was easily categorized as physical assault, the way the three males were holding the sole female in order to force her to stare at the holotank.


    But they were Immortals and N''Skrek was not about to get involved in a family argument between Immortals.


    The male was known as Legion, an Immortal capable of replicating himself over and over until there were millions of him, all able to handle different jobs and perform different actions. There were five versions of him on the Show Bridge, two wearing the uniform of a Confederate Admiral. The other three were wearing standard Confederate adaptive camouflage uniform.


    The female human they held was dressed in leather clothing, her black hair braided. She was staring at the holotank, her bronze skinned face pale, her green eyes wide and full of tears. Her name was Sacajawea, an Immortal that N''Skrek could not even find reference too in the historical databases.


    "No, no, no, no. Too much death. So much death," she moaned, twisting in Legion''s hands.


    "Look past the deaths, look at the results," Legion was saying.


    N''Skrek had already given the order to open fire, roaring out the order verbally. While he could have whispered it, he had chosen to bellow it out, have it carried by the Gray Lady''s speaker system to the entire crew.


    He could feel the ghostly plucking in his ichor as the C+ and C++ cannon batteries fired on the newcoming ships. He could see the streaks arcing away from the ship, so many that thick lines of light sped away from the Gray Lady as the missile pod flights were fired. He could hear the loud THUMP of the phased wave plasma motion guns firing.


    The world shattered into fragmented pieces of mirror that floated through midair before crumbling into crystals as the superstring compressor cannons fired.


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    "Multiple direct hits. Bogeys breaking up," Tactical called out.


    Icons of the newly arrived ships were being covered with red-X''s of destroyed or flashing blue X''s of presumed mission kills.


    "No. Please. Stop," Sacajawea was moaning out.


    "Where, little sister," Legion was saying. "What is our correct course of action?" he asked.


    Her back arced and she made garbled noises.


    Two computer consoles gave out shrieks and imploded.


    Technicians ran up with replacements even as the crew members using the consoles pushed themselves back and called out that their stations were inoperative.


    Sacajawea''s finger pointed into the holotank at an empty area that was already flashing. Legion had spotted the red-shift of the stars that occurred just prior to the enemy ships arriving.


    "Seize and hold," she gurgled. "Take and hold. Hold close."


    Legion looked at N''Skrek. "There will be a ship come in with that wave that will only be damaged. Board it and take it."


    N''Skrek just nodded.


    "Get a Marine boarding party ready," N''Skrek ordered.


    "Aye, sir," the combat operations officer replied, turning away from the tank and putting his hand to his temple.


    More ships came in.


    The Fruit Flies swarmed the new ships. C+ and C++ cannons were already hitting. The light speed lag had finally caught up and on the Show Bridge smartglass windows the data-windows were showing the ships, already shifting from pebbly gray to smooth gray, taking hits before they could even get their battlescreens up. Most exploding in place, others breaking up as the C+ rounds dropped out of hyperspace and into realspace, materializing inside the hull of the ships.


    More ships came in. These were not like the pumpkin seed ones. They were seven round orbs, connected by thick struts, each orb connected to the central hexagon by another strut. From the center of the hexagon''s top and bottom was a single strut, connecting to another orb, those orbs connected to the seven orbs of the central ring.


    "ENGAGE!" Captain N''Skrek ordered.


    He could feel the guns firing.


    "Keep an eye out for more red-shift," N''Skrek ordered.


    The guns were still hammering the enemy ships that had survived the opening salvos. More red-X''s were appearing, replacing the blue ones.


    The probe was close enough to transmit realtime visuals on the effects of the Gray Lady''s guns on the ships. The data was less than a second old, showing the results of the deadly accuracy of the Gray Lady''s gunners and targeting systems.,


    The hits from the C+ cannons were slamming into the new ships. They were breaking up, shattering into pieces. Struts and globes torn away from the rest of the ship, the hexagons exploding. The ships were pebbly gray but rapidly smoothing and turning shiny.


    One took a near-miss from a phased wave plasma motion gun shot, something about the passage of the energy causing the ship to start tumbling. The shine began to vanish and the smoothing began to return to pebbled surface.


    Sacajawea''s finger stabbed at a single icon, which made a highlighting circle appear around the tumbling ship on the real-time data-window.


    "That one!" Legion said.


    "Order the Marines to take that one," N''Skrek ordered.


    "Redshift detected around us," the tactical officer called out.


    "Guns ready! Get the targeting drones past the red-shift," N''Skrek ordered. He looked at Legion. "Get your reinforcements ready."


    The Legion in an Admiral''s uniform nodded. The other one suddenly dissolved into black mist that flowed across the floor to wind around the other Admiral and vanish.


    "NEW CONTACTS! TEN! TWENTY! THIRTY! MANY MANY POINT SOURCES!" tactical called out.


    The closer range weapons opened fire on the hundreds of ships that were surrounding the Gray Lady, vomiting out fire and heavy slugs. The missile launchers went to rapid fire, the pods surrounding the Gray Lady belched out their missiles then converted the entire missile launcher into an nCv round.


    The ships were two hexagons joined by a thick strut, each hexagon connected to the other by a hexagonal strut, each hexagon connected to seven globes around it by struts connected at the corner of the hexagon. Above and below the hexagon were orbs connected to the hexagon by a single strut and connected to the opposite orb on the same side by another strut.


    The hexagonal ships had opened fire as soon as they had materialized, even though they were still pebbly appearing and dull.


    The Gray Lady''s shields flared as strange beams lashed out from the surrounding ships, trying to rip and tear and the *Gray Lady''*s armor. The beams were centered by light that looked like chrome, with four lines of energy spiraling around the central core beam.


    "Shields taking heavy depletion," the combat control officer called out.


    "Any time, Mister Legion," Admiral N''Skrek said.


    There was a bright white flash. Half of the controls went down. The Show Bridge windows went white even as the blast shutters closed as they lost power. The lights flashed and went down, the red lights coming up. The consoles and the holotanks flickered and went out then returned with red and silver graphics.


    "Systems coming back online," DCC called out.


    "Now would be..." Captain N''Skrek started out.


    "CONTACTS! MANY MANY CONTACTS!" Tactical called out.


    The Legion in the Admiral''s uniform stepped forward, holding out one hand. A hologram of around the Gray Lady appeared. Dozens, scores of ships appeared. N''Skrek could see that there was everything from light frigates and corvettes all the way up to superdreadnoughts.


    "Opening fire on targets. Fruit-Flies away," Admiral Legion stated, his voice cold and remote.


    "Direct hits upon our hull. Armor damage only, no penetration," DCC and tactical stated.


    "One is disabled," Legion stated. "Launching boarding parties."


    N''Skrek just nodded, moving to stare at the hologram that Admiral Legion was projecting from his palm.


    Legion opened another window, showing the comparative size of the two disabled enemy ships to the Gray Lady, including the transportation bays. There wasn''t anything large enough to hold it.


    "We need those ships, Captain," Legion stated. "We want those ships but we can''t go over them in the middle of the combat zone."


    N''Skrek nodded.


    "The question is, how did they know how bad they were getting chewed up? How did they know to send reinforcements but didn''t know that their leading waves were already destroyed?" Legion asked.


    "Which one?" Legion at the holotank asked. He was no longer holding Sacajawea''s face, had moved behind her, and was now rubbing her shoulders gently while the other two were supporting her.


    "Both. Both. The way to destruction and devastation is through both," she said, shuddering. "They balance one another. Storm aboard them like waves onto the beach, the prize is aboard both but must be seized. The way forward lies within them."


    "Sending boarding parties at this time," Admiral Legion said.


    Sacajawea''s eyes rolled back and she collapsed in Legion''s arms. Without saying anything, the third one picked up her legs and the three Legions carried her to the elevator, arriving right as it powered back up.


    "How obvious do you think whatever it is will be?" Captain N''Skrek asked Admiral Legion.


    "It will be what it will be," Legion stated.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The back deck dropped down and Jaskel threw himself into the crater that a weapon had driven into the structure of the alien spaceship. One either side of landed two of those Terrans wearing only a breathing mask and adaptive camouflage uniforms.


    "SPREAD OUT! TAG ENEMY REMAINS! ROE IS DON''T SHOOT EACH OTHER!" Gunny Zolpad called out over the commo net.


    --lets get it on-- 8814 said.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 95

    Awards may be declined to be worn by a service member at the service member''s own discretion. However, the service member may wear no awards earned during the posting during which the service member earned that award. Only certification and school badges may be warn in such cases. - Confederate Armed Services Telkan Award Presentation, TMR 3329


    Gunnery Sergeant Zolpad of the Telkan Marine Corps was considered by many a Marine''s Marine.


    Sixty-three years in service just to start. Combat awards fighting against those who pushed against the Confederacy''s borders in some of the most backwater and worst postings the Confederate Armed Services had to offer.


    He even had a five year tour of the Clownface Interdiction Station Line.


    He had fought everywhere. Jungles, forest, blasted moonscapes, outer space, shipboard, tundra, ice worlds, everywhere and anywhere.


    His career packet showed nothing but valor and dedicated service. He was known as a Marine who volunteered to go where he was needed. A Marine with ice in his veins.


    He had even faced down Terran Phasic Shades and lived to tell the tale.


    There was, however, a little part of his record.


    It was in the beginning.


    Two years after he graduated from Advanced Individual Training as a Marine Power Armor Combat Specialist. Three months after earning his Advanced Rifleman Badge. A month after he rotated to a new unit. His second unit in as many years.


    It had been a prime posting.


    First Telkan Marine Division.


    That''s where the records ended.


    They picked up eleven years later.


    Drop pod certification. Heavy weapons certification. Telkan Marine Force Recon qualification. EVA Combat Badge with four awards. Zero-G combat badge with 8 awards. Stellar Boarding Operations: 22 awards. Urban Combat Badge 32 awards.


    No date. No place. No award letters. Just the same code after each school, qualification, certification, or assignment.


    Over and over.


    The first thing that was able to be referenced by a Division Commander or lower was his assignment to the 1145th Marine Rifle Battalion stationed out past the Treana''ad Hive Zone.


    His record picked up with awards for valor. This time with certification and award letters easy to look up and read.


    A sharp eyed commander would have noted that after the redacted section, where he was reduced in rank from Staff Sergeant to Lance Corporal, Marine Zolpad seemed to draw some of the most brutal, out of the way, hardship postings known to the Confederate Armed Services.


    He had even fought a six month campaign against a rogue Dark Elf noble.


    But the award for valor.


    Only awards for time in service, attending schools (Professional NCO Development Ribbon: 5 awards), and certifications.


    A few officers had noted his date of entry. That he had entered on Telkan-2.


    Then the dates of the redaction.


    Starting two months prior to the Telkan Civil War.


    Ending six months after the war was officially over.


    Gunny Zolpad reappeared signing in at Empty Carton Station, Treana''ad Hive Zone as a mere Lance Corporal.


    Even his medical records were redacted.


    They showed the medical treatment he had received. They showed the injury in clinical terms but never how the injury was received.


    Never where the injury was received. Never where it was treated. Never any unit or physician attached.


    There were no physician notes. No nurse''s annotations.


    Just cold, clinical data.


    A few of his officers had noted that.


    Noted that he wore no ribbons, no awards, from those years.


    One sharp eyed Sergeant Major had noted that Gunny Zolpad, then Sergeant Zolpad, did not even wear his service chevrons for those years.


    A few officers and senior non-commissioned officers had pressured Marine Zolpad about those awards.


    He merely went to attention, staring above the questioners head, staying completely silent.


    General Trucker and others like him would have understood.


    He didn''t know them well enough to talk about those years.


    But Gunny Zolpad was a Marine''s Marine.


    He had a thousand stories. From getting caught with a neo-raccoon in his ruck while climbing a cell tower to the time he had held onto the landing strut of an enemy striker even as he had gutted it with his chainsword, realizing too late he was damn near past the limit of the Icarus System.


    Just his silent presence could stiffen the men''s backs.


    Which is why he stood nearest to the back deck so that when it dropped down into the loading ramp he was first off the boat, the first targeted, and the first boot on the ground.


    The heavy dropship shuddered as it banked hard and everyone''s stomach lurched up into their throat as the retros roared, pasting the landing with heavy radiation from the thrusters.


    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    "We don''t know where we are. We don''t know what we''re going to do. We barely know who we are," Gunny Zolpad called out over the linkage when the dropship''s engines reached a screaming pitch. "We only know who the enemy is but we don''t know how many of them there are."


    "ALL WE KNOW IS WE MUST KILL!" his Telkan Marines roared back.


    The back deck slammed down and Gunny Zolpad stepped out into the thick mist that had been present in a blast driven crater the last time he had boarded one of the enemy ships.


    Again, the blast had driven past the ship''s armor, leaving the edges of the crater curled up and out. There were multiple levels, debris and tangled machinery and structural members everywhere. Electricity snarled and arced, mist poured out of several breached corridors, pooling into the bottom of the crater as the enemy ship''s artificial gravity did its work.


    Captain Nakwel quickly portioned out his Telkan Marines with the Terrans that had come along.


    Gunny Zolpad had not blinked when the CO assigned him to work with two massive Terrans in black armor that was covered in spikes and twisting, burning runes that hurt the eyes to look at for too long.


    "Brother Zolpad," one rumbled over his speakers and the comlink, nodding. "You are known to us."


    The other just stared, then nodded slowly.


    Two of the other Telkan ran up. Both riflemen clad in the gray spiked Helreginn Mark VI Type IX Anti-Mar-gite Full Contact Powered Combat Personal Protective Equipment Systems, AKA Hell Suits.


    "You know these guys, Gunny?" PFC Gel.prek asked.


    "I know of them," Gunny Zolpad said. He flashed an emoji for silence. "Keep it zipped."


    "Objective loaded. Recon in force," one of the Terrans said.


    Gunny Zolpad and the two others followed as the big black armored Terrans clanked toward a breach in the crater wall that exposed a corridor.


    "Fingers on the triggers, boys. Keep your smart-trigger set, make sure your friendly profiles are loaded," Zolpad reminded everyone.


    The other Telkan just flashed icons nodding.


    The two Terrans were silent.


    The corridor was wide enough the Terrans could advance shoulder to shoulder, tall enough that they did not have to duck under the loops of wiring and the broken pipes hanging from the ceiling. The mist swirled around the five boarders, but high technology in the visors and sensors of the power armor all five wore cleared it away and presented a picture as clear as if they were in vacuum.


    The BATTACNET icon flashed, then went red with a lightning bolt through it.


    "Tactical net offline. Enemy contact imminent," one of the Terrans growled over the short range comlink. Both lifted their rifles, easily as long as Zolpad was tall, to their shoulder pauldrons, the barrel pointing down slightly.


    Gunny Zolpad tensed slightly. "Fingers on the triggers," he restated, checking his smartlink and his reflex trigger.


    The group advanced down the corridor, heading toward an intersection.


    "Enemy contact," one of the Terrans said, their voice over the comlink heavily synthesized. The Terran stepped out into the intersection, leveling the rifle as he turned to face to the left. The other faced to the right.


    Rounds whipped down the corridor, hitting the heavy armor of the Terrans and exploding in shower of sparks as lasers, plasma rounds, and crystalline rounds hit and were shrugged by thick armor. The two Terrans started shooting back. Short, controlled bursts even as they took a single step forward, parting the way for the three Telkan.


    "Advance under fire, brothers," one of the Terrans said.


    The rate and intensity of fire was slacking as Gunny Zolpad ran through the gap, between the massive forms of the Terran. His battlescreen snarled as rounds impacted it from both sides, but he made it across the corridor. The two other Telkan with him sprinted across, Private Nelmaken stumbling slightly as an armored hand interposed itself between him and an oncoming round that exploded against the thick armored gauntlet, doing no damage to it.


    Zolpad saw it, somehow, he wasn''t sure how. It was a flicker, a twisting slightly of the air, or maybe his perceptions of the air.


    "CONTACT!" he bellowed out, lifting his magac rifle and firing. Both privates glanced at him like he was crazy until the rounds hit something in midair, exploding and snapping, some rounds bouncing off to explode against the wall.


    Tentacles around a conical body appeared, the lights a baleful green as blades slid in and out of housings on the tentacles, as graspers clacked open and shut, and built in weapons started firing short, sharp variable frequency laser pulses.


    The shooting behind him ended and he could hear the Terrans moving up as he kept his fire on the one in the center. The privates got their weapons inline, firing, the reflex triggers aiming and firing as soon as their visor picked up the enemy squids. The rounds started hammering home, hitting a shield only inches from their tentacles and body, exploding in sparks as the squids spun in place, whipping their tentacles around to take the rounds on the shielding.


    Tentacles started exploding, the main conical bodies of the squids started jerking and shuddering as rounds slammed through the shielding to hit the biomechanical squids directly. The two Terrans were firing over the Telkan''s heads, their large heavy rifles hammering the squids apart with .70 caliber rounds. The squids, which were twirling to take the blows, flew apart in a spray of technorganic material, bodily fluids, and grafted armor pieces.


    "Team Charlie-Nine to Operations, we are advancing into the enemy toward the objective," one of the Terrans said out loud even as they spoke across the command channel whose icon was flashing with a lightning bolt through the icon.


    The corridor seemed to fill with snow that the visor couldn''t clear. Visibility was dropping as the static and snow got thicker.


    "Enemy counter-measures detected. Going to visual light range," Gunny Zolpad said.


    "Affirmative," the two Terrans said at the same time.


    The two Terrans moved ahead of the Telkans, moving in a slow steady marching further into the ship. Three times the Terrans fired. Three times the group passed squids shattered at the middle cone. At a corner the two Terrans paused. One looked down at Gunny Zolpad.


    "We will draw enemy fire. You will stay behind us as we advance into the enemy. If the enemy possesses heavy weapons, you will take cover against the right hand wall. Do you understand, brother?" the Terran asked.


    "Roger," Gunny Zolpad said. He checked the amblok counter on his rifle.


    70%.


    The two Terrans stepped out into the corridor, around the corner. They were immediately firing even before they were taking fire.


    Only a few shots hit their armor, exploding against the thick plating.


    "Advance, brothers!" one called out.


    "Engaging the enemy," the other stated in a cold synthesized voice.


    Gunny Zolpad found himself rushing to keep behind the right hand Terran, who was shooting even as he was moving forward. Lasers were exploding into rainbow colored sparks, plasma rounds were detonating, and crystal shards were shattering on the Terran''s armor as they advanced down the corridor, their rifles firing.


    Gunny Zolpad''s psych suppression system was at 83.5% and rising, even though it kept dropping by 5-6% ever explosion of weapons fire from the Terrans.


    He gritted his teeth through the glitter as his psychic suppression jumped to 91%.


    A long burst of what sounded like full-auto but Zolpad knew was carefully controlled bursts and his shielding dropped back down to 62%. His psychic suppression kept jumping and dropping and he knew it was because more of the enemy was joining the fight and the Terrans were killing them just as fast as they arrived.


    He moved to the side of the right hand Terran, getting next to the wall. He could see the weird tentacle creatures rushing into the hallway just in time to catch a burst from one of the Terrans. He could tell the Terrans were alternating their fire, so there was a constant stream of fire into the newly arrived enemies.


    The few times he went to help, his rounds smashed into an already dead creatures.


    He''d always considered himself fast on the trigger, and his reflex trigger was faster than even cybernetic enhanced reflexes, but by the time his armor and the reflex trigger ID''d the enemy, the Terrans had killed it.


    "Why are we even here?" Private Nelmaken bitched.


    "Fire support," Zolpad answered. "Eyes peeled."


    Finally, the two Terrans quit firing. The group moved forward, kicking shards of armor and pieces of the alien tentacle creatures out of the way.


    Zolpad swallowed. He''d been here before.


    The calm before the storm.


    There was a large hexagonal door, with the blast door lowered.


    "Prepare for combat, brothers," the larger Terran said. He reached forward and slammed his stiffened fingers into the armored blast door. It crumpled around his fingers like jello and he pushed them further in, the servos in his armor whirring. The blast door slowly slid open, showing The other one did the same once the door itself was exposed. As soon as the blast door on the other side of the door was exposed, the Terran drove his hands into it and began pulling it open.


    The doors ripped out with a shriek.


    And everything went from bad to worse.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 96

    Even though I was the only green combat engineer for much of my time with The Gray Lady I was never alone.


    I had Jaskel, my Telkan, who I rode into fire and glory. - 881.4.A, Green Mantid Combat Engineer, Equations of the Faithful, New Mantid Press, 12 Post-Terran Emergence, Mar-gite Extinction War


    Jaskel parried the tentacle with his chainsword, panting in his armor, sweat down his back slicking his fur. The teeth on the Mark-IV Cutting Bar ripped apart the armor, sending the crystalline plating shards showering across the corridor. He kicked out, slamming his boot against the conical inner body and fired his SMG directly into the body.


    The huge, terrifying Terran Monster Class Polyphasic Infantry on his left grabbed the large tentacled creature and ripped half its tentacles off in one roaring yank.


    Jaskel turned, managing to parry another tentacle strike, this time the teeth ripping at the blade extended from the tentacle, showering sparks across him. His battlescreen was down, his rifle was broken, the heat in his armor was mounting.


    But he wasn''t about to back down.


    The other Terran had grabbed on of the large ones and had it by two of its tentacles, pounding it on the deck plates of the Mar-gite Controller Ship.


    One of his squad was down, one arm and one leg torn off by the squids.


    The electrical field on his armor crackled and popped, but the power was depleted.


    --almost almost cooling zero-point array now almost-- 8814 said.


    Jaskel just nodded, parrying another strike but spinning in place to come around with the blade and catching the creature just right into the opening, going in between the whipping tentacles to strike in between the tentacle bases and into the body itself.


    The cutting bar sprayed crystalline armor, then thick rubbery skin, then orange-yellow blood as flesh was ripped and chewed by the jagged teeth of the cutting bar blade. It gave a bubbling screech, vomited up day-glo orange and some blue chunks, and the tentacles went limp.


    The tentacle strike hit his shoulder pauldron, staggering him, but he whipped around in time to see one of the Terrans grab the central cone and crush it in one massive hand.


    --got it got it got it-- 8814 said. There was a crackle and the high voltage anti-grappling system went live. Two of the creatures jerked and screeched, steam rolling off of them.


    The creature collapsed and the system went dead again.


    "Get it back up!" Jaskel snapped, parrying one tentacle and slapping another aside.


    --trying-- 8814 answered.


    The two Monster Class were smashing into the swarm that had just come writhing down the corridor. One leveled a first and started firing the implanted autocannon, but for every one of the blue-light illuminated tentacle creature six more took their place.


    Jaskel was vaguely aware of a figure in old style Confederate adaptive camouflage, complete with breathing mask, appearing next to the downed troop in a twisting puff of purple mist. The figure grabbed the severed leg and arm, put one hand on the down troopers back.


    "Two to beam up," the figure said. Jaskel saw it said "LEGION" on the nameplate.


    It vanished in a puff of purple smoke.


    Jaskel kicked out, pinning two tentacles against the wall, firing his SMG with one hand while he desperately tried to parry other tentacles. Blades scored his armor, one squealing across his visor, but any of them the cutting bar''s toothed chain caught were ripped apart.


    One of the Terrans grabbed the two creatures attacking Jaskel and smashed them together repeatedly until the parts stopped falling off, dropping the dripping chunks on the ground.


    Jaskel looked around. Out of a five man team, he was the only one still on his feet.


    "Almost to the objective," the Terran rumbled.


    Jaskel nodded.


    --got it-- 8814 said.


    His system went live. Jaskel checked the heat monitors and saw he was still spiked into the high reddish purple.


    The Terrans were already moving and Jaskel hustled after them. His right arm hurt from where three of those blue lighted tentacle things had grabbed him and twisted his arm around, their strength overpowering the servos in his armor.


    At least they hadn''t twisted the limb off.


    He felt a cool sensation down the inside of his right arm and the whole arm started to tingle. His medcomp was back online.


    --resetting firmware-- 8814 said. --not sure how they flashed it--


    "Just stay on it," Jaskel said. His psychic shielding jumped from 56% to 62.5%. He could taste glitter and blackberries on his back teeth.


    The two Terrans ripped apart three times their number in tentacle creatures in half as many seconds. Each time the psychic shielding would jump, then drop a little, only to increase as the trio moved further into the central core of the spaceship.


    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    The two Terrans stopped outside an iris door that had the silent weight feeling of a heavy blast door.


    His shielding was at 72.62%.


    The Terrans each grabbed a side of the iris and ripped it aside, revealing another door. Two yanks and the door was tossed down the hallway behind Jaskel. The last iris lasted two hits before the two Terrans pushed it aside.


    His shielding jumped to 102%. His vision tunneled down as he followed the two Terrans into the hexagon room beyond. He could see dark suckered tentacles writhing in from the sides of his vision, static shook and streaked across his vision along with sparkles that lit up and danced.


    Inside were seven creatures unlike any Jasked had seen before. They looked like a fountain made of clear crystal, the bowl at the bottom had barbed and hooked tentacles hanging from the bottom. The thick stem went up almost a meter before there was a thick fluted central ring that had five multi-jointed arms that ended in eight fingered sharp claws, then more of a fluted column that reached up to a large section with two huge eyes, a visible brain inside the crystal clear body, and a small mouth. Its strange organs could be seen, along with almost completely clear blood rushing through the body.


    The two Terrans charged in, heading for the biggest one in the middle of the room.


    Jaskel went right.


    There was a ripple in midair, like the air had turned to gelatin. The two Terrans suddenly slowed, struggling to move forward.


    Jaskel''s shielding spiked all the way to 162%. He could hear it howling at the back of his helmet, taste scorched glitter and burnt sugar blackberries. His vision tunneled down and he knew his nose was bleeding.


    The Terrans were slowly moving forward, black fluid leaking over their skin, pushed backwards by the rapidly thrumming waves that moved through the air, emanating from six of the seven creatures. The seventh, closest to Jaskel, was facing him.


    The waves of force hammered him, even as he tried to move forward.


    165%


    He lost the vision on his left side. He could feel the fur below his left ear get wet and he couldn''t hear the alarms from his armor on the left.


    175%


    He could smell scorched fur and overheated molycircs. 8814 was only putting out garbage equations over the link.


    He dropped his SMG from nerveless fingers.


    178%


    The two Terrans were still moving forward, into the ripples that hammered at them. The fluid was cracking, revealing red light. One opened their mouth and roared, red liquid warsteel pouring out.


    The one facing Jaskel suddenly turned, facing the Terrans, as they took another step toward the center one, reaching for it with their hands that suddenly had curved bone protrusions that looked like claws extending from their knuckles.


    145%


    --ow ow ow ow--


    "Take off the interlocks on my shielding," Jaskel whispered past dry, cracked lips.


    --but--


    "Do it!" Jaskel managed to get both hands around the hilt of his cutting bar.


    He saw the icon warning him the safety interlocks were disengaged on his psychic shielding.


    The two Terrans were less than a meter from the center one, both snarling, both covered with rippled black chitin that had bone spurs sticking out across their shoulders, down their spine, above their eyes, on their jaws, on their chests, on their knees and elbows. One was roaring, the other just had their mouth open and was drooling molten warsteel that pooled on the floor.


    "When I saw, ramp my shielding to max," Jaskel said.


    --ok--


    Jaskel could tell 8814 didn''t like it.


    But there wasn''t any choice.


    The two Terrans were stuck, unmoving, as the seven creatures hammered them with psychic force.


    "now..." Jaskel whispered.


    **WARNING**


    His whole brain lit on fire. He could feel pain across the back of his head. Something felt like it snapped wetly inside his skull.


    But he was free.


    He lunged forward, clamping down the handle trigger with both hands, hauling the blade back and swinging from one side with everything he had.


    He was almost blind. The tentacles had receded, the grainy black and white was gone, his vision was no longer tunneled, but he strangely couldn''t really see the crystal clear full color image his eyes were recording.


    The roaring blade of the cutting bar caught the creature between the middle ring of arms and the upper section with the eyes and visible brain. Clear fluid turned brownish yellow when it met air, the flesh showered over Jaskel and across the room. The blade severed the fist-thick fibrous looking cord that ran from the brain down to the ring of arms.


    Something snapped like a rubber band in his brain and he stumbled forward.


    The two Terrans roared, one grabbing the mid-column of the creature in front of him and squeezing. The flesh bulged and ruptured, one of the eyes popped out, and the flesh turned to liquid in the Terran''s fist. The other turned, grabbed the metal panel on top of the control panel and ripped it free, throwing it one handed. The metal panel cut one of the creatures in half.


    One Terran jumped forward, grabbing the top of the creature and crushing the brain and eyes in his fist. The other grabbed the side off the console and whipped it, slicing the top off of the creature''s column-like main body.


    Jaskel tripped and fell, bouncing off the wall to hit the floor.


    8814 slapped the psychic shielding back to normal.


    35.78%


    He was drooling inside his helmet, his eyes bloodshot. His heart was hammering but he wasn''t aware of it.


    One had a chance to squeal as it backed up before the Terran grabbed it and ripped the top away from the arm ring. The other shuddered and collapsed as the other leveled a fist and punched a handful of heavy .70 caliber rounds into its body.


    One of the Terrans moved over next to Jaskel, putting his hand on Jaskel''s back. He activated his t-linkage.


    "Man down. Psychic injury," the Terran rumbled.


    There was a puff of purple smoke and Legion appeared, kneeling down. He put his hand on Jaskel''s back.


    "Two to beam up," Legion said.


    There was a puff of purple smoke and both vanished.


    Another version of Legion appeared, looking at the fallen creatures.


    "Secure the perimeter," Legion ordered.


    The two Terrans nodded.


    Legion bent down, touching the biofluids, then moving up and touching the tissues splattered around before moving over to one of the more intact ones. He touched it here and there, often using a vibroscalpel to expose near tissue or organs so he could run his bare fingertips over them.


    One of the Terrans ripped out what looked like a large crystal embedded in crystalline foam, with smaller crystals around it.


    "Found a phasic storage unit," the Terran rumbled.


    Another version of Legion appeared, took the hand off, and vanished with the massive crystal.


    "Sound recall, we have what we need," Legion said. He looked at the two Terrans. "Get back to the dropship."


    "Yes, sir," the higher ranking of the two Terrans said.


    Legion vanished in a puff of purple smoke.


    Jaskel hit the ground in the medical center, Legion''s hand on his back.


    "Medical override," Legion snapped.


    Jaskel''s armor unfolded, the protective housing unfolding and dumping 8814 onto the floor in a puddle of kinetic gel. Two russet mantids rushed forward, one with a pressor stretcher. Legion helped get Jaskel onto the stretcher as the other loaded 8814 onto a smaller one.


    "Patient is a Telkan male. Psychic shielding overload cerebral damage," Legion snapped.


    Another of him, washing his hands, nodded.


    "Patient two is a green mantid combat engineer, same injury. Unknown species psychic assault injuries," the Legion helping to carry Jaskel said.


    The two russet mantids just nodded. It got real confusing real fast with how many of Legion was in the medical bay.


    Jaskel wasn''t able to talk, able to answer, and he wasn''t really aware of where he was when they laid him face down on the table.


    "Nighty-night, champ," he heard even though his brain didn''t register it.


    The lights went out.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 97

    This has been the worst day of my life. - Every enlisted ever


    Worst day of your life so far! - Nearest NCO ever


    The doors ripped open as the two members of the Martial Orders shoved the blast doors aside with their power armor clad hands, stepping into the gap as they did so. They shouldered their way through the gap, forcing it larger. White mist poured out of the room on the other side and into the hallway.


    The only thing that worked on Gunny Zolpad''s visor was the visible light spectrum, everything else was blocked by internal chaff and whatever it was that made the BATTACNET turn into howling garbage.


    Phasic energy bolts screamed through the air, hitting the Terrans and exploding on their power armor. A ripple in mid-air, causing the mist to swirl, came from further inside the room, slamming into the Terrans without effect. When it hit Gunny Zolpad and the other two Telkan, it knocked them down and set their psychic suppression system alarms howling.


    The Terrans were shooting as Gunny Zolpad shook his head, rolled in place, and did the standard recovery of push himself on his hands, bring his knees up to his chest, and stand up in one smooth motion. His vision was blurred, black at the edges, static shooting through his actual vision and not the visor. He shook his head again, trying to clear it, as he stepped forward, trying to follow the Terrans into the room. They were inside firing, short, controlled bursts.


    "FOR THE DIGITAL OMNIMESSIAH!" one of the Terrans roared out.


    Gunny Zolpad could see the ripples washing over the Terrans, as if the air was some kind of clear gelatin. He could see how it hit the Terrans and moved around them, over them, rather than through them. It created an effect like a rock in a river, with a gap right behind the Terrans.


    He grabbed the two privates, slinging one, the other, into the gap behind first the left hand Terran, then the right hand Terran.


    The whole time the gelatin ripples washed out of the room, into the corridor, and over him.


    He could hear whispers, taste blood, berries, old blood like from an extracted tooth site, rancid rations, and bad water. His skin prickled and ached, feeling like the ripples were making his very skeleton thrum inside his body.


    He shook his head again and stumbled forward, trying to get his numbed fingers to do what he commanded.


    The visor of his armor was reporting massive failures. His rocket and grenade launchers, his onboard point defense cluster, all three down. BATTACNET had completely failed. Commo was out. His suit was running in barebones safe mode, with massive idiot lights down both sides of his vision.


    He was basically in a powered exoskeleton that happened to have atmosphere and some armor welded to it.


    His smartlink was down as he stumbled behind the left hand Terran, his rifle''s advanced features offline.


    He could see into the room now.


    And wished he couldn''t.


    There was a creature at each corner of the hexagonal room. Twice his height, the lower body terminating in a bowl-like structure that had man-o-war tentacles hanging down from the bottom of the bowl. The flesh swept up out of the bowl in thick cables that were pressed together into a thick red body with black streaks. The mid-section was three powerful arms, made of thick red cables fused together. It had bumps and dermal exoskeletal bulges as black bone forced its way out of the cables of exposed muscle-like tissue. The hands had eight fingers with black claws on the end. The neck was missing, the top of the head only slightly protruding from the muscular shoulders but sticking out from the body. It had four eyes, ovals with the side ends pinched into almost-points. The eyes were two above two below, glowing red with a blue sparkle in the middle. From the mouth fell writhing segmented tentacles.


    The one in the middle of the room was larger, and from his angle, Gunny Zolpad could see that there was a thick fringe of writhing tentacles below the head, around it.


    The creatures screeched and the ripples increased.


    In the middle of the room, stuck in the gelatin and waves, were the standard .90 caliber gyrojet rounds, the rocket booster burning brightly, caught before the rounds could hit the target.


    As Gunny Zolpad stumbled, moving to the right, he saw the rounds suddenly disassemble into the parts, as if they were being taken apart by an ordnance specialist for inspection.


    The parts fell to the ground as Gunny Zolpad tripped, falling to his hands and knees. He looked up to see that the creature he was facing was paying attention to the duo of Terrans that were roaring and pushing their way into the room, still pulling the triggers.


    Someone got off a rocket, after-action telemetry said it was Private Nelmaken, and it streaked nearly fifteen paces into the room before it suddenly came apart into its components, the solid rocket fuel crumbling into powder that burned harmlessly away.


    Another wave passed over them, making the Terrans roar in rage.


    It hit Gunny Zolpad as he tried to get up, driving him back to his knees.


    His battlescreen icon was beeping, his rifle was inop and the icon blinking, and he was breathing heavy in an armor that couldn''t seem to cool off or give him enough air. He threw himself through the wall, charging the machinegun emplacement from an angle. The whole company was pinned down by the line of machineguns almost hidden by battlescreens, ferrocrete bunker walls, and good old fashioned sandbags and barbed wire.


    The wall shattered around him. He thrust forward with the bayonet, hitting the other Telkan in the gut-plates, the monomolecular cutting field around the blade penetrating the armor and digging deep into the Telkan beneath. Zolpad could see, through the other Telkan''s clear visor, that he was screaming.


    Zolpad pulled the bayonet out and slammed it in again and again. When the Telkan went down on his knees, Zolpad put one foot against his shoulder and shoved him off so he landed on his back.


    Gunny Zolpad shook his head again, pulling one leg forward, leaning down, slamming his empty fist against the floor as he got his foot into position.


    The Terrans were still advancing, still firing, but the gyrojet rounds were still being disassembled in midair.


    Another ripple and Zolpad was almost overcome with the feeling of wrath and rage, it pounded at him like an invisible wave of heat from an open kiln. His vision tunneled down further, tentacles starting to squirm at the black edges of his vision. He could only see in black and white and it was shot through with bright sparkles and lines of gray and black static.


    He could taste old blood, like from a three day old tooth socket after the tooth had been pulled from an infected jaw.


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    "I AM HUMANITY''S WRATH MADE MANIFEST!" one of the Terrans roared out, both of them taking two steps closer to the creature in the middle of the room.


    Zolpad could see all six of the ones at the points were ''facing'' the two Terrans, who let their rifles go at the exact same moment, the rifles pulling back and around into storage mode. One drew a pistol and a knife, the other drew his cutting bar, revving the engine.


    Another ripple.


    Zolpad kicked out the wall and exposed the hallway beyond, skirting around the heavy blast door. He could hear the company over the comlink, hear them yelling and dying as the multiple emplaced weapons hammered at them.


    The new plasma packet rounds penetrated almost anything, even the new Warsteel Mark IX. Zolpad''s armor was the latest in protection, with the thick and heavy Vodamn Armor on top of the Neolinnium plating, but the plasma packet rounds could damage the armor even if it stopped the round from fully penetrating.


    A Telkan in hardplate stumbled back, holding out his hands, but it was too late, Zolpad slammed the bayonet home, kicking the other Telkan off the monomolecular blade. He finished the movement with another step forward and a stomp to the skull.


    The blade was sparking, missing over half, the field gone. It was nothing more than a blunt flattened bar now.


    The enemy had a close range shard gun and Zolpad grabbed it up. His armor whined, but managed to synch up to it.


    Telkan Military Arms Shard Gun Model 77A46, manufacturing on Telkan-1.


    He hefted it up and


    He was down on his knees again. He pulled one leg up, getting the foot on the ground, even and he planted the opposite fist against the ground, his head down, breathing deeply.


    His armor was wailing, the outer layers of the Helreginn Mark VI''s armor cracked and pockmarked. His visor crashed and came back completely clear, no icons, no warning labels, nothing, just clear macroplas that was cracked at the corners.


    He got to his feet, realizing his hands were empty. He reached down, drawing the heavy magac pistol, and took two steps forward.


    Another thick ripple.


    "WE ARE THE UNGIVING BULWARK!" one of the Terrans bellowed out as they both took another step forward.


    cinderblocks and mortar dust exploded away from where First Sergeant Zolpad had driven his boot into the wall, the ferrocrete turning into deadly shrapnel that shredded the three closest Telkan, none of which were in hard armor.


    It was obvious that the assault had caught the rebels by surprise. Cots inside the machinegun bunker were unmade, there was food containers on the ground, half of the machinegun crews were only partially dressed and only two were in hardshell armor. He could see holocubes laying on the ground where they had fallen, still showing their contents to the floor.


    The machineguns were giving out the high pitched whine of a plasma machinegun at work, the belts rattling as the rounds passed through them. Unlike normal linked round belts, the heavy belts of most miniguns operated as a flexible metal trackway inside the casing, allowing rounds to be fed from the big heavy drums at the sides of the guns without linkages, increasing the firing rate since there was no need for a delinker.


    Two Telkan were turning to face Zolpad as he leveled the shard gun and held back the trigger, his power armor allowing him to easily control the graviton created recoil as the system barked out thousands of density collapsed depleted uranium razors.


    The first two turned into mist. The crew of the first machinegun turned into meat confetti as the razors spread out.


    Zolpad held down the trigger even as he advanced with the slow appearing, steady walk inherent to power armor.


    The Telkan gun crews didn''t even have a chance. Three grabbed small arms but their weapons were worthless against the Vodamn Armor. He knew he was gritting his teeth in a rictus of a smile, but kept advancing into them anyway.


    He felt nothing but singing emptiness as he shot two trying to flee in the back.


    He could hear the company commander rallying the men, ordering them to the right and left of the bunker.


    His head was ringing from the graze that had blown half of the exterior of his helmet away as he clomped forward, grabbing the nearest machinegun and yanking it back off of the frame.


    The CO was on the horn, asking


    He was on his hands and knees again. Wrath and rage pounded at him but that core of singing emptiness, that less than feeling absorbed it and it vanished. The wrath and rage met the anger, then the self-loathing, then tipped over into the emptiness that nothing had been able to fill.


    He pulled his right foot forward, planted his left fist, until he was down on one knee, helmet bowed, in the recovery position.


    The magac was still in his fist.


    There was a scream in his head and agony washed over him.


    Zolpad turned and looked in time to see the two Terrans throw parts of the middle creature to either side of them. His two privates were right behind them, still using the two Terrans for cover, even as they both reloaded.


    Zolpad blinked, lifting his fist and firing at the closest one, the heavy rounds stopping in midair.


    There was nothing to take apart. The pistol was set to highvee ball rounds. Just chunks of endosteel.


    Another ripple


    crashed as it hit the floor, raising up concrete dust. Zolpad moved away, starting at the far bunks, and moved down, looking for any intel or anything else.


    The CO was having Golf Company clear the trenches between the bunker that Zolpad stood in and the ones on the right and left, ordering men with flamers up to clear the inside and anti-power armor teams to follow.


    One of the holocubes flickered as he picked it up.


    The broodcarrier pictures smiled. "Come home, Padzol. Come home to broodmommy. War is over. Take amnesty and come home to Larista''ali," the broodcarrier said.


    Zolpad went numb, his hands tingling as nerveless fingers dropped the cube. He turned and looked at the bodies.


    It only took four checks before he found the owner of the cube. The blood, the frozen expression of fear, the glazed eyes, the chunks of another Telkan on his face, still didn''t conceal the body''s identity from Zolpad.


    His litter brother.


    Emptiness filled him.


    He was on his knees again.


    Left fist into the floor. Right knee pulled up until his foot was on the ground. Stare down. Three breaths.


    "PURGE THE UNCLEAN!" one of the Terrans yelled.


    ON YOUR FEET! Zolpad ordered himself, the thought ringing through the emptiness. He got to his feet.


    He was empty again. All the therapy, all the medication, all the hard work, all the time, wiped away by the creature made up of thick glistening muscle fibers in front of him. It was staring at the two Terrans and the two Telkans, holding its hands out even as another ripple emanated from it.


    come home


    The ripple passed over him even as he leveled the pistol and walked forward.


    come home to broodmommy


    The ripple felt like a soap bubble popping on his skin as he walked through it.


    His suit was nothing more than a powered exoskeleton wrapped in armor with its own power pack. The electronics beyond the emergency safe mode systems were dead, fried out, he could smell them mingled with the smell of burnt fur and burnt flesh.


    His mouth tasted like drinking a flat old fizzypop to wash down rancid fried chicken and clotted old blood.


    The tentacles on the edge of his vision were further in, writing and twisting. His vision tunneled down to almost nothing.


    come home


    He was right next to it when he extended out his arm, pushing the pistol against the thing''s eye. It started to jerk back.


    He yanked on the trigger.


    Pop pop pop


    Three small holes appeared in the creature''s eye.


    The blue sparkling patch in the middle went out. Blood and tissue gouted from the other side of the creature''s head? Torso? Whatever. The head was at the top of the torso, the horns lifted above the shoulders, but the rest of the head against the torso.


    The Terrans were on the other five before they could do much more than scream.


    He and the two privates went down into the recovery position.


    Zolpad could hear his own breathing, knew his mouth was open and he was drooling into the collection cup at the front of the muzzle of his helmet. He could feel his nose was bleeding.


    There was an odd sound and Zolpad looked up.


    A Terran in base hard plate was down next to one of the bodies. Another one appeared, looking just like the first. Then two more appeared. One pointed at a console.


    "Yank the crystal out and give it to me," the Terran ordered.


    "By your command," one of the martial order trooper said, moving to the console.


    Two of the newcomers put their hands on the bodies of the creatures. One in the middle, one on the one that Zolpad had killed.


    There was a puff of purple smoke that twisted and sucked back into a point in the middle as if it had never existed.


    Zolpad let his head drop, still panting.


    come home


    He clenched his eyes, resisting the urge to punch himself in the side of the head, concentrating on recovery mantras and just breathing.


    "Got it," the Terran in hardplate said. "We have psychic casualties. I''ll take them. We have everything we need. Fall back to the dropship."


    "By your command," both Terrans said.


    Zolpad knew he shouldn''t be able to feel the hand that touched his shoulder.


    "Six to beam up," he heard.


    Everything went dark.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 98

    Admiral N''Skrek watched as the dropships started lifting off from the drifting hulks of the Mar-gite Companion Vessels, Type I, II, & III. There had been a single dropship for the Type-I, the teardrop shaped one. The Type-II were seven round orbs, connected by thick struts, each orb connected to a central hexagon by another strut. From the center of the hexagon''s top and bottom was a single strut, connecting to another orb, those orbs connected to the seven orbs of the central ring. The Type-III were two hexagons joined by a thick strut, each hexagon connected to the other by a hexagonal strut, each hexagon connected to seven globes around it by struts connected at the corner of the hexagon. Above and below the hexagon were orbs connected to the hexagon by a single strut and connected to the opposite orb on the same side by another strut.


    Dropships had gone to each orb on the Type-II as well as the single hexagon. For the Type-II each hexagon and orb had gotten a heavy dropship. Each crew had orders to get to the central control area as well as gather up other data.


    Drones had swept through the ships, pinpointing resistance as well as mapping the interior of the vessels, getting visual, registering power levels, taking atmospheric samples. Even ones destroyed by still functional enemies provided valuable data in the method and speed they were destroyed.


    Now the dropships were recalled.


    He glanced over.


    KIA: 14


    RIA: 9


    WIA: 72


    MIA: 0


    While many commanders wouldn''t stare at the KIA the way he was, many commanders weren''t in his situation. The operation had ordered nearly a fifth of the Telkan Marines as well as nearly 800 Terrans.


    Fourteen KIA wasn''t bad when the operation had sent two thousand troops into a boarding action against an unknown enemy in deep space.


    But he couldn''t replace them. Yes, nine of the KIA had been returned to service via the SUDS and the cloning banks, but that was five troops he couldn''t replace.


    "All dropships away and have reached minimum safe distance," tactical advised.


    N''Skrek nodded, glancing over at Admiral Legion.


    "I''m no longer on board the enemy vessels," Admiral Legion said. He gave a chuckle. "I appreciate your concern."


    N''Skrek just nodded again.


    "Destroy the enemy," he said.


    Admiral Legion put his hands on the edge of the holotank, leaning forward slightly.


    The pose the slender bald Terran was using reminded N''Skrek of a predator about to pounce.


    "Let''s see if they bring any more," Legion said.


    "If they don''t?" N''Skrek asked.


    "That tells us something," Admiral Legion said.


    "If they do?" N''Skrek asked.


    "That tells us something else," Admiral Legion said. He looked up, his smile a cruel knifeblade. "No matter what they do, I will learn something from them and eventually," he looked back into the holotank. "I''ll know enough to destroy them."


    N''Skrek just nodded.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Fifteen hours later found Admiral N''Skrek standing back on the Show Bridge, staring at the holotank.


    Mar-gite Clusters in the Tetra-Cluster range were still entering the system. They coasted up to where the ruined charging frame was still tearing itself apart due to simple physics, coasted through the empty space, then moved two light minutes out before warping out.


    Well, the ones that weren''t destroyed by the drones firing singularity cannons.


    Even the horrific damage inflicted by the singularity cannons weren''t enough to completely destroy the Mar-gite Clusters and still quite a bit reached the warp point.


    Admiral Legion left the elevator and sauntered up to the holotank.


    "Sacajawea gave me the next set of jump coordinates," Admiral Legion said.


    "Under protest, I assume," Admiral N''Skrek said.


    Legion nodded. "I''m demanding directions to where the most death and destruction will be. She wants to send us to where there is the least," he shook his head. "I''m slowly getting her to look past the initial death and destruction to see beyond."


    The Immortal reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose.


    "She had a complete hysterical meltdown when I got her to look past the immediate death and destruction of the ''safest'' route, to see what lay down that road," he said. He let go of the bridge of his nose and looked up at N''Skrek. "That''s when she saw where that road will lead. She completely melted down. I have her in one of the medbays under sedation."


    "What was at the end of that road?" N''Skrek asked, even though he had a private bet with himself.


    "Trillions, Sextillions of deaths. Of every species she''s ever heard of and thousands she never has. Of the complete extermination of every member of the Confederacy," Legion said. He rubbed the top of his bald head.


    N''Skrek wasn''t happy that he won his private bet.


    "The path of least death and destruction, in the immediate terms, results in the extermination of all non-Mar-gite life in the galaxy," Legion said. "Within a very short timeframe. A century at the most."


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    "So, we have to stop them," N''Skrek said.


    "We have to do our part," Legion corrected. "Stopping what''s already gotten by us? That''s the Confederacy''s job," he made a sweeping motion at the holotank. "We need to keep pushing forward, taking the war to the Mar-gite''s masters now that we know they have masters."


    N''Skrek nodded. "I have the science teams examining the bodies, the phasic data cores, and the data brought back from the most recent boarding actions."


    Legion stared at the holotank for a moment as he used the keyboard built into the rim to type in coordinates. "About that, Admiral," Legion said.


    "Yes?" N''Skrek saw the line connecting the Gray Lady''s current position to another spot between the galactic arms.


    This one was more toward the core than the others.


    "I need one of the unused troop bays and unfettered access to at least one Class-XX Creation Engine," Legion said.


    "To examine what we have recovered yourself," N''Skrek guessed.


    Legion nodded. "Exactly," he finished typing and stepped back. "Sacajawea said this coordinate is about six light hours from the next set of charging rings," he gave a chuckle. "She''s not happy about providing me with this data."


    "I''ll bet," N''Skrek said. He tapped on the keys, authorizing Legion an unused troop bay near one of the unused fabrication centers. "I''m authorizing you as the sole user of Fabrication Bay 39 and Troop Operations Bay 36."


    Legion nodded. "You won''t regret this," he said. He looked up and out the windows at the band of stars that made up the Scutum-Centaurus Arm. "I''m already starting work."


    N''Skrek nodded, moving to in front of the windows and staring. Legion moved up next to him.


    "My fleet is undergoing modernization, refit, and resupply," Legion said softly.


    "When will it be available?" N''Skrek asked.


    "It already is for us. What happens where my fleet is docked and what time it is here have no relation to one another," Legion said. "It would take a lecture of dimensional temporal mechanics to explain."


    N''Skrek nodded, taking out a pack of cigarettes and lighting one.


    He was surprised when Legion accepted the offer.


    The Gray Lady made the jump to hyperspace.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Jaskel woke up slowly, his mouth tasting like glue and old shoe leather. He realized he was bound to the bed, only his head was free. He had tubes going into his nose and could feel tubes taped to the back of his head.


    The nurse was a man with light brown skin, bald, with penetrating black eyes and a hawklike nose.


    The doctor at the end of his bed was the same man, just in doctor''s scrubs with a Captain''s rank on his scrubs.


    "Welcome back," the nurse said.


    "Don''t try to talk. Your language and speech centers are temporarily suppressed," the doctor said. He looked Jaskel in the eyes. "You suffered multiple phasic attack induced strokes."


    The nurse gave a smile. "Luckily, I got to you before the blood pressure turned your brain to jello."


    "No blood clots, just ruptured veins," the doctor said. "I even managed to save your eyes. While there was brain damage, a few weeks of physical therapy and a month or so of speech therapy and you should be good as new."


    Jaskel just nodded.


    "Unconscious congnitive tests showed excellent results," the doctor said.


    The nurse held out a cup with a straw. Jaskel drank greedily until the nurse pulled the cup away.


    "Risky maneuver, Cotton, shutting off your psychic shielding like that," the nurse said. He gave a grin. "But it paid off."


    The doctor nodded. "And, for what it''s worth, the damage to your brain as well as recordings of the phasic attack on your nervous system without a phasic shielding system in place provided a lot of data how that particular creature attacks with phasic energy and psychic powers."


    "8814?" Jaskel managed to stutter out.


    "He''s fine. He''s out of surgery. Nothing as bad as you had, but a few ichor vein ruptures. It didn''t affect his telemechanics ability or his intellect," the nurse said.


    The doctor nodded. "I operated on him while I was operating on everyone else," he gave a grin full of white teeth. "That''s the advantage of having me around, I can do a lot of work at once."


    Jaskel just frowned, confused.


    "Rest up," the nurse said as the doctor left the room. The nurse gave him another drink off the straw. "Right now, sleep is what''s best for you."


    Jaskel just nodded. The nurse shifted the anesthetic beam projector.


    "Nighty-night, champ."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Gunny Zolpad struggled against the bindings for a second before opening his eyes.


    The doctor was a male Terran, brown skinned, bald, with brown eyes so dark they looked black.


    The nurse was the same Terran.


    "Welcome back, Gunny," the nurse said.


    The doctor was looking over a datapad.


    "Your surgery went well," the nurse said. "Minor brain bleeds that would have been fatal after a few hours, but I was able to provide treatment almost immediately."


    "There is one issue," the doctor said, looking up from the datapad.


    "What?" Gunny Zolpad rasped.


    The nurse held out a cup with a straw and Zolpad took slow sips, swishing the fluid around in his mouth to wash away the drymouth and gross tastes.


    "You have memory blocks. Sophisticated stuff, but obvious to someone like me who is treating a patient for psychic warfare injury," the doctor said. "They''ve been there for decades, locking up what looks like at least a decade of memories."


    Zolpad nodded.


    "I relocked them and while I was doing so, I researched and discovered that the tags on them were from the Telkan government," the doctor said. "Normally used for nearly untreatable criminality."


    Zolpad just nodded.


    "I scanned a few memories," the doctor said.


    "Against medical privacy laws," Zolpad said, his voice hoarse and rough.


    The doctor shrugged. "I''m an Immortal. I do as I please," the doctor said.


    "Immortal?" Zolpad asked.


    The nurse held out the cup with the straw.


    "Biological Apostle of the Digital Omnimessiah, one of the Terran Immortals? None of that ring a bell?" the doctor asked.


    Zolpad shook his head.


    "Damn," the Terran shook his head. "Being dead I can handle, but being forgotten? That''s a bitch."


    Zolpad just shrugged, looking at the nurse. "Not clones?"


    The nurse shook his head. "Not... exactly."


    Two more nurses stepped out of the nurse smoothly, like they had been standing behind him. Two men in old style adaptive camouflage stepped out from them. Then they all fell into black powder that swirled around the nurse''s legs, twinkled, and vanished.


    "I..." the Terran paused. "Am Legion."


    Zolpad just stared.


    The doctor gave a deep, heaving sigh. "Now I know how Dee feels."


    The curtain parted and a version of the nurse and doctor came in, dressed in old style Confederate adaptive camouflage, carrying a dataslate. Zolpad could see the military intelligence insignia on the collar with a set of major''s clusters on the other.


    The major tapped at the dataslate.


    "While I replaced the mental blocks and memory blocks, I just wanted to know a few things," the doctor said. He shook his head. "We''ll give you some privacy."


    Zolpad nodded as the nurse and doctor left.


    The major looked at him. "A quick cursory check to see if the memories were still intact or had degraded to the point where your brain would overwrite them naturally showed that the memories were all regarding an armed conflict in the Telkan Systems."


    Zolpad nodded.


    "War crimes?" the major asked.


    Zolpad nodded.


    "Committed or endured?"


    "Both."


    "One memory was of lining up civilians and troops against a wall and machinegunning them," the Major said.


    "Probably toward the end. It got ugly," Zolpad said, refusing to look away from the Terran''s gaze.


    "It happens," the Terran said. "Your service record shows nothing but outstanding service. Your brain isn''t that of a Telkan who commits war crimes for fun and sport."


    Zolpad just looked away.


    "I''d recommend more therapy," the Terran said. "We''re facing a psychicly active enemy. It''ll rip through those blocks and beat you to death with those memories."


    Zolpad nodded. "It tried."


    "The Gray Lady isn''t going anywhere fast and this may be a one way trip," the Terran said. He shut off the dataslate and lowered it. "Look me up if you want those blocks removed and want therapy."


    Zolpad nodded, just staring at the medical equipment next to his bed.


    "A nurse will be along shortly to move you from recovery to a room," the major said.


    Zolpad just stared.


    The Terran left.


    come home to broodmommy

 Nova Wars - Chapter 99

    Legion watched as Sacajawea''s eyelids fluttered and she slowly came awake. When she turned and looked at him his heart ached for a brief moment, the loss of ''his'' Sacajawea piercing his chest.


    "Luke," she said softly, reaching out to him.


    "I''m here, Wee," Legion said, reaching out to take her hand.


    "Don''t call me that," she snapped, yanking her hand back.


    Legion sighed.


    Sacajawea rolled over, getting out of bed.


    Legion looked away from her nudity.


    After a moment, she spoke again. "I''m dressed. Where am I?"


    "Your quarters," Legion said, looking back at her. She was dressed in buckskin and beads.


    Legion wanted to sigh. The time he''d spent among the First Peoples they''d dressed just like everyone else, the only ones that wore buckskin and beads were for entertainment shows or ''living'' historical village reenactments.


    Legion followed her as she left the bedroom and went into the main room of the suite.


    Since Treana''ad were on board, most suites were larger than normal, made to allow a warrior caste Treana''ad to move around comfortably.


    "Why must you be so cruel to me, Luke?" Sacajawea asked, looking around. She spotted the cooler and headed straight for it.


    "You lost the right to call me that, Sacajawea," Legion snapped. "If I can''t call you Wee, you can''t call me Luke."


    She snorted as she opened the cooler, bringing out a pitcher of juice. She got down a glass and filled it before returning the pitcher to the cooler.


    Legion just watched with his arms crossed across his chest.


    Sacajawea sat down on the couch and sipped at the glass for a moment. She set the glass down, Legion noted that she didn''t use a coaster, then looked up at Legion.


    "So, what should I call you?"


    "Dhruv or Legion," he said.


    "I''m not calling you Legion," she snapped, waving one hand at the air. "I reject that name."


    "Then call me Dhruv, since you reject that we''re siblings," Legion snapped back.


    Sacajawea jumped to her feet. "Why are you being so cruel?" she asked again, moving around the coffee table to stand in front of Legion.


    "By what metric? By making you use your powers for the good of the rest of the galaxy or because I won''t just knuckle under to your authority?" Legion asked.


    "You used to be so much nicer," Sacajawea said. "I don''t understand why you have to act this way. You were nice when we first met."


    "YOU LEFT! I was still a child! Still learning! You used me and left!" Legion shouted. "Menhit was still teaching me that my body was my own and only I could make choices about it."


    Sacajawea''s eyes went hard. "Don''t shout at me."


    "You used the fact that I didn''t really understand body integrity or autonomy to have me bring back thousands of dead, to crew the ships with hundreds of the dead whose SUDS I hotloaded," Legion snarled. "You used the fact I was a child burdened with great power by the Digital Omnimessiah so that you could load up the spaceships and make a run for it instead of doing your job."


    "Nobody asked me if I wanted to do that job," Sacajawea said. She returned his snarl with one of her own. "Your precious Digital Omnimessiah didn''t ask any of us what we wanted."


    "You were dying," Legion countered.


    "He never asked!" Sacajawea said.


    "You never protested!" Legion snapped back. "You were happy with your gift when it was letting us avoid Mantid ambushes or the Combine," he looked down at her. "Or letting you find those ships that nobody knew about."


    "At least I got some use out of that so called ''gift''. What did you get, Luke?" Sacajawea asked.


    "I told you not to call me that," Legion said, his face and voice hard. "I did my duty to Terra, to Humanity, to the Digital Omnimessiah."


    "And did your precious Digital Omnimessiah ask what you wanted?" Sacajawea sneered.


    "Don''t talk about him like that," Legion said.


    "Or what, Luke?" Sacajawea asked. "It was a malfunctioning AI. A computer program that all of you couldn''t wait to worship."


    "You watch your mouth," Legion growled. "He performed miracles."


    "He used the residual nanites from the TerraSol World Engine to do those," Sacajawea said. She laughed, her voice mocking. "The rest of you just ran right over to proclaim his divinity," she sniffed. "Lucky for me, I''m a little more aware of the real world and can see more clearly."


    "I''m warning you," Legion growled.


    "If he was so great, why didn''t he stop the war? Why didn''t he save everyone? Why doesn''t he save everyone now?" Sacajawea asked.


    "And what, put everyone in a cage? Humanity would smash themselves to pieces trying to get free," Legion said.


    "They never have before, Luke," She laughed. "They''d probably thank him for it and ask for more," she shook her head. "The rest of you never understood: people will always trade essential freedoms for perceived safety."


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    She stepped back slightly. "Even you."


    Legion snarled.


    "He was just a malfunctioning AI. Probably one of the ones from one of the TerraSol World Engines," Sacajawea said.


    "He was much more," Legion snapped. "Stop talking about him." Tendrils of electricity moved around his feet.


    "Or what?" Sacajawea asked. She put her hands on her hips and laughed. "You forget, Luke, I was there," she shook her head. "I know who you are. I might not have been there when you were rewritten by the nanites, but I was there when you were still Luke. I know what you were, Luke."


    "Don''t you dare say it," Legion snapped. Sparks popped off the back of his hands as he clenched them into fists.


    "I get it," she said. "I really do. I get how a recently elevated short-bake clone would be overwhelmed and impressed by a rogue AI, but it doesn''t change..."


    Legion stepped forward and slapped her.


    Hard.


    Sacajawea hit the ground, staring up at Legion, who had electricity running up and down his arms, his eyes narrowed.


    "I have planet cracked people for less, Tiffany," Legion snarled. "I have nova-sparked suns for a tenth of the heresy you have uttered in my presence," his voice was hard, cold, grating. "I have strangled the life from heretics with my own two hands," he stepped forward, looming over her. "I have lined heretical clones of myself against the wall and shot them each in turn with a pistol held in my own hand."


    He bent down and stared at her.


    "Do no utter such blasphemies in my presence again, Tiffany," Legion snarled.


    He collapsed into black mist that swirled and was gone.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The stateroom was full of cigarette smoke as Admiral N''Skrek sat down, puffing on a cigarette of his own. His command staff was gathered around the table, with Admiral Legion down toward the far end from N''Skrek, sitting with a version of him on either side. The ones on either side were large, heavyset men, bald with thick bushy beards.


    "We''ve completed our assessment of the new biologicals that we encountered aboard the ships," CW4 In''tel''lmo''o stated. He made a motion at the table. "Again, the lower caste creations have a messy silicate XNA structure, quad-lattice, which makes them very resistant to mutation."


    Everyone jotted down notes as the DNA square appeared. It looks like a 4-post square with the XNA strands between.


    "It''s a single chromosome creature, which makes it highly resistant to change and allows for quick, clean replication," CW4 In''tel''lmo''o stated.


    "This is standard throughout all of the types we have discovered, which number seven now, counting the Mar-gite themselves," the Lanaktallan said. "The last two appear to be control and command units, high in phasic strength, approximately equal to a Mantid Speaker."


    "Not hardly," Legion interrupted.


    CW4 In''tel''lmo''o and the others stared at Legion. "They aren''t?"


    Legion shook his head. "About as strong as a Warrior trio. A Speaker is a lot stronger. That many Speakers could overwhelm everyone for about three light minutes that isn''t a Terran. They''re tough, but they aren''t Mantid Speaker level of tough."


    Everyone just nodded.


    "They have the phasic tissue density," CW4 In''tel''lmo''o protested.


    "Doesn''t mean they are as powerful," Legion stated.


    CW4 In''tel''lmo''o just nodded.


    The briefing continued. Primarily boron and sulfur based. Four of the castes based off of the same XNA template, with the crystalline one being the obvious leader caste of those creatures. That the creatures were present in the new shapes, under command of the two new types.


    Once he was done, In''tel''lmo''o sat down.


    "Anyone have anything to add?" N''Skrek asked.


    "I do," Legion said. He stood up. Not the lean Admiral, but one of the ones with the bushy beard.


    "By all means," N''Skrek said.


    "They suckered you," Legion said, looking at In''tel''lmo''o. He shrugged and smiled, a friendly thing. "No offense, they almost suckered me."


    "How so?" In''tel''lmo''o asked.


    "They''re entirely fake," Legion said. "From the Mar-gite to the Twizzler Monsters. They''re all fakes."


    "Looked real enough to me," N''Skrek said.


    "Yeah, they''re fake," Legion said. He brought up all seven known XNA templates, putting the appearance of the owner of that particular strand configuration above each template. "From the Mar-gite Autonomous Biological Weapon to the Twizzler, they''re fakes."


    He reached out and touched one of the XNA strands and it lit up on all three.


    "I can''t believe I missed that all these years," Legion said. "Well, I didn''t miss it. The theory has always been that the Mar-gite Autonomous Biological Weapon was capable of self modification and that''s why this particular XNA structure was found."


    In''tel''lmo''o frowned. "What is it?"


    "It''s a genetic prosthesis," Legion stated. "It''s used to connect two unrelated XNA or DNA to each other, or, rather, to adapt DNA instructions to XNA instructions. I had assumed, as did the Confederacy, that it was a natural formation."


    Legion tapped it and it expanded. "However, there is no reason for it to exist in the upper castes we''ve recently discovered or in the more recent Mar-gite."


    "Why not?" N''Skrek asked.


    "Because I invented it," Legion said. He winced, reaching up to pinch his nose. "Sorry, I''m having a sibling conflict."


    "Wait, you invented it?" In''tel''lmo''o asked.


    "I did. For a rather particular use, a long time ago," Legion said.


    "How long ago?" Commander Hresket, Chief of the Intel Section, asked.


    "About a year after the Glassing," Legion said. "I used to fill in a gap in DNA, since I was using bones and teeth to reconstruct people."


    There was silence for a second.


    "I started looking at these creatures, and I figured out real quick once I spotted that, that these creatures are entirely fabricated," he tapped a few icons and multiple sections lit up. "These are genetic veneers, same thing," he tapped a few more and more sections glowed on the two new types. "These are Terran DNA to XNA adaptations."


    He growled slightly, then pinched his nose again. "Sorry."


    He pointed at the holotank. "These creatures are built from the ground up. They have no extraneous or additional XNA. They use genetic prosthesis and veneers to get sections to work together that would have additional sections needed."


    He stood up and moved around the table. "I forcegrew some tissue in my lab, including an entire subject that only possessed a brain stem," he shook his head. "It''s an artificial creature. The only people we''ve encountered who were good enough to make something like that were the Lanaktallan."


    "I thought the Atrekna were masters of biology?" Commodore Leshtrek said, looking at Legion in confusion.


    Legion shook his head. "Fleshwarpers, at best. Sure, they could take a rosebush and make it into something full of fangs and poison, but when it came right down to it, they didn''t really work with DNA, they used their phasic powers to warp the biology."*


    Leshtrek nodded. "All right, a difference. A subtle one, but still a difference."


    Legion stopped at the end of the table.


    "We''re being shown, step by step, artificial creatures," he said. "We have not, as of yet, knowingly encountered whoever is behind this," he said.


    He waved his hand at the holograms.


    "Whoever it is, they''re hiding behind artificial creatures. This means we cannot make any assumptions about what type of worlds they originate from, if and how they can communicate with other races, what their technology is like, or anything about them," Legion said.


    "What do we know about them?" N''Skrek asked.


    "Only the important thing," Legion said.


    "What''s that?" Commander Hresket asked.


    Legion''s grin grew larger.


    "That they can die."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Legion looked up when the door to his room chimed. He made a motion and the room''s VI opened the door.


    Sacajawea stood there.


    "Can I come in, Dhruv?" she asked.


    Legion nodded, waving her in.


    She came in slowly, tentatively, and sat down next to him.


    "I''m sorry," she said. "For losing my temper. For what I said."


    "Me too."


    0-0-0-0-0


    * - The Atrekna who were part of the main attack that came through the vortex before it was collapsed by Rickytofen-773C24 were Dwellerspawn handlers, breeders, and caretakers as well as military commanders and leaders. Their scientist and researcher caste was supposed to come through last, with the ''leaders'' of the Atrekna. (Chapter 429) There were very few Atrekna who understood DNA or even viral/disease theory that came through initially. Some learned later, as seen in one chapter, but not many. The Atrekna fought the war with the equivalent of stablehands, farmers, ranchers, some military, commanders and leaders. All of their researchers trained and learned in our universe, as what was common knowledge about the universe for the Atrekna did not apply to our universe, as seen in Chapter 603 when Dalvanak raids the End of All Things Library. The impact of Rickytofen-773C24 upon the Second Precursor War cannot be overstated.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 99

    The door just buzzed when Admiral N''Skrek tapped it with his bladearm. He frowned, reached out, and tapped the door control again.


    BUZZ


    He reached for it again when a hologram of Legion appeared in front of the door panel.


    "Oh, it''s you. Hang on," Legion said.


    The door whooshed open and Admiral N''Skrek went inside.


    The massive troop bay, designed for an entire division to do parade practice, vehicle maintenance, or pre-deployment work, had been altered by the Immortal. Now the walls were white, the bay was sectioned off, there was equipment everywhere, and the entire place smelled slightly of astringent and disinfectant.


    There were also at least two dozen Legions from where N''Skrek could see, not counting the one coming forward and extending a hand. That one had a bushy beard and a thick, heavyset body.


    "Welcome to my lab, Admiral," Legion said, giving a short bow. He turned and waved at Admiral N''Skrek to follow. "Don''t worry, I made sure that even someone your size can move about easily."


    "Thank you for the consideration," N''Skrek said.


    Legion just nodded. "Between you and power armor, I need to make the aisles wide."


    N''Skrek looked around. Lots of high tech equipment, most of which he had no idea what it did. He was a Navy man, a Space Force man, not R&D or Games & Theory. He had a PhD in geopolitics and astropolitics, but that didn''t quite give him the knowledge base to understand what was around him.


    Several times he could tell he had stepped through a psychic suppression curtain though.


    There were versions of Legion all over the place. In each walled or curtained off section there were a dozen or two of the lean, bald versions of Legion working under the watchful eye of a Legion with a bushy beard. They were using instruments, mixing chemicals, overseeing computers, and other esoteric tasks.


    Finally the Legion leading him stopped, waving around.


    "Here''s pretty much the nerve center, Admiral," Legion said.


    The Admiral could see several different XNA creatures being dissected, slides being created from carefully excised tissue, and other strange and slightly apprehensive goings on.


    "I see," N''Skrek said.


    "Right now, it''s just me. True, I''m using partially disconnected clones of myself to give myself multiple different viewpoints, but..." Legion shook his head. "It''s still me."


    "Meaning you lack the true multiple viewpoints of trained researchers that a scientific team possesses," N''Skrek stated.


    Legion nodded. "Exactly. If I miss something, or come in with a bias that blinds me, I still have it no matter how many times I replicate myself and no matter how much autonomy I give my clones."


    N''Skrek looked around. "All right, how do we fix it? I know we have genetic technicians here on the Gray Lady working in cloning and medical, do you want to draft them to help you?"


    Legion shook his head. "No. For this, I need real researchers, real out of the box people as well as people firmly grounded in decades of research," he leaned against the counter and sighed. "I need specific skillsets that I can''t find on the Gray Lady, and I know because I already checked the ship''s company''s records."


    N''Skrek shook his head. "That''s supposed to be confidential."


    Legion shrugged. "I''m an Immortal, rules are different for me."


    "I don''t really like that," N''Skrek admitted. "I get it, you''re like fifty thousand years old with strange and deadly powers, but the chain of command must be respected."


    Legion nodded. "Fair enough," he looked up. "Which is why I''m asking your permission to bring people on board to work with me."


    N''Skrek looked around. "Clone them?"


    Legion shook his head. "Not exactly."


    N''Skrek stared for a long moment. "SUDS them."


    Legion tilted his head and lifted one corner of his mouth while making an ''eeeeehhhh'' sound. "Not quite."


    Staring at Legion with his much practiced "The Admiral Wants Answers" expression, N''Skrek folded his bladearms behind his back. "Explain."


    "I can reach certain places. Bring someone on board," Legion said. He held up a hand. "Before you ask, I can''t move anything too big. One or two people at a time, maybe. Even then, it''s dangerous," he dropped his hand and shook his head. "Where I move through, unshielded, when I make hops isn''t pleasant. The further away it is, the shorter the time is, but the more dangerous, the more stuff... weighs."


    N''Skrek knew better than to say that what Legion had just said didn''t make any sense.


    "What I can do, it take the data you''d normally load into a message torpedo with me and I can drop it off at Terran Command and Confederate Command," Legion said. He smiled. "They''d pay attention to anything I dropped off.


    "But you still want my permission to bring people aboard," N''Skrek guessed.


    Legion nodded. "It''s only polite, and I''d rather not have your shipboard security or your Marines shooting them in the face. I''m not sure what species I''ll be bringing aboard, since I''ll be going by intellect, neural plasticity, knowledge, experience, and scientific knowledge base," Legion smiled. "Not necessarily in that order."


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    N''Skrek thought for a long moment, rocking back and forth slightly.


    Finally he brought out a pack of cigarettes, offered one to Legion, who took it, then lit one for himself.


    "All right. If you can assure me they won''t compromise the mission," N''Skrek said.


    Legion shook his head. "I can''t promise that. What we discover will undoubtably have massive effects on the mission."


    N''Skrek thought, then nodded. "At least you''re honest. All right. I believe you have our best interests at heart, you are one of the Biological Apostles. Bring them aboard."


    Legion gave a slow smile. "Want to be present to see how I''m going to do it."


    Exhaling smoke around his footpads, N''Skrek nodded. "It might be best if I witness how you plan on doing it at least once."


    Legion waved for N''Skrek to follow him. The big Treana''ad followed the human through the walled sections until they reached a warsteel cube covered in twisting and interlocking runes. There was a single door in the middle. Around the base of the walls there was drawn rings and runes.


    "Looks like Crusade work," N''Skrek observed.


    "Some of it. Crusade works with Hellspace more than any other being in known space," Legion said. He put his hand on the door panel and winced. "Blood test."


    The door slid open, revealing a room full of hanging chains woven with strips of vellum that had inked runes on it. In the middle of the room was a massive set of concentric circles with a pentagram in the middle. There were runes in the star sections, between the star sections, and between the concentric circles.


    "Come on in," Legion said. His grin got bigger. "Such sights I have to show you."


    N''Skrek pushed down his nervousness and followed the Terran in, brushing against chains and barbs as he followed the human to the middle.


    "Don''t say anything, and for the love of the Digital Omnimessiah, do not step inside the circles, no matter what you see, hear, or think you experience," Legion said.


    N''Skrek noticed that the Terran was sweating slightly.


    Legion waved his hands and the candles lit. He began talking, slowly, his voice steadily rising as the cadence picked up.


    N''Skrek had taken a few required computer programming courses and could swear some of what Legion was reciting was programming code.


    The candles erupted in long pillars of flame for a moment. The chains rattled and whispered. N''Skrek felt cold fingers trace down his upper spinal cord.


    The flames dropped, almost going out.


    In the middle of the pentagram stood a small creature. It had knees and hocks, its knees backwards. It had a barbed tail, large eyes, animalistic ears, a mouth full of jagged teeth, and skin like old wood.


    It was also on fire.


    "What?" it asked, its voice grating and squealing.


    "I didn''t summon you. Where''s your mom?" Legion asked.


    "Busy. She sent me," the creature squealed.


    "Go get her," Legion ordered.


    "Eat my ass," the creature squealed.


    "Go. Get. Her," Legion snarled.


    "How about you... eep!" the creature vanished in a puff of smoke.


    There was silence a long moment.


    There was an eruption of smoke. When it cleared a massive figure stood inside the pentagram. It was all corded muscle, horns, fangs, and wings. It held a burning chain and barb whip in one hand that slithered on the floor. Its wings beat slowly behind it. Its eyes burned a malevolent red.


    "What do you want, idiot?" the creature rumbled.


    "I need a favor," Legion said.


    N''Skrek had decades of military discipline under his belt, keeping him from running screaming from the room.


    "People in my care need ice water. What''s your point?" the creature asked.


    "Everything''s too far for me to reach. We''re on local SUDS. I need the SUDS reconnected and a data link to TerraSol or the Confederacy," Legion said.


    "Tough titty," the demon rumbled. It slowly moved around the circle. "You did that rune wrong. You misspelled ''binding'' and ''obey''. That''s Sanskrit and that''s Urdu," it shook its head. "I should rip your arms off a few times so you don''t insult me like that."


    "I wanted you to know I''m serious," Legion said. He frowned. "Can you contact your mother?"


    The demon went stock still. "No."


    "Contact her. I need to talk to her too," Legion said.


    "I''m busy. I have billions of souls arriving constantly. It''s worse than the Glassing out there. Not as bad as the Terran Xenocide Event, but pretty bad," the demon said.


    "Then send your mom," Legion stated. "I need people. Not by name, but by skill and education and profession."


    The demon motioned and the first creature appeared. "Blu''uba''alz can handle it," the massive demon shook its head. "I''ll see if I can contact mother, but as far as I know, she''s dead."


    "Yeah, I''ve heard that before," Legion smiled.


    The demon just grimaced and vanished in a puff of smoke.


    "See, you could have just talked to me instead of bothering Mom," the imp said.


    Legion reached out and scrubbed part of the line away. "All right, follow me."


    He turned and left the ''room'', N''Skrek and the imp following.


    "That was the Lady Lord of Hell, the Matron of the Damned," N''Skrek said.


    Legion nodded. "We''re old friends. Well, as close to friends as she''s ever had."


    N''Skrek winced. "I thought she was a myth."


    "Until a little bit ago, you thought I was a myth too," Legion grinned.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Legion sat down on his couch, swirling the drink in his hand. A few of the other Immortals who knew him well wound recognize him as the ''prime'' one. The main mind and control of the others.


    Despite the legends, killing the ''prime'' would do nothing except force him to respawn or designate another as ''prime''.


    He dimmed the lights until the room was full of shadows.


    He''d spent the day going over the list of what he needed with the imp until the list of requirements was done. He''d watched the imp vanish after wresting promises to return from it through incantations and a few well placed kicks.


    Legion closed his eyes, trying to relax.


    The door chimed and Legion frowned.


    He honestly expected the Matron of the Damned, not someone ringing his doorbell.


    "Enter," he said, opening the door.


    A nervous midshipman stood outside the door. "I have a list of recent arrivals, courtesy of Admiral N''Skrek."


    Legion pointed at the table. "Go ahead and set it there."


    The midshipman looked nervous as he set it down on the table. He stood up, fidgeted nervously, then cleared his throat.


    "Speak freely," Legion said.


    "Is it true? Is it true that the Digital Omnimessiah was real and will return?" the midshipman asked.


    Legion nodded. "Yes to the first part, I don''t know to the second."


    "Is it true that there''s an afterlife?" the Pubvian asked.


    Legion nodded. "There is."


    The Pubvian nodded, smiling. "Thank you."


    "You''re welcome," Legion said.


    He had grown used to those questions.


    The midshipman hurried out, the door whooshing shut behind him.


    Legion swirled the drink and sipped at it, slowly disconnecting himself from the other clones.


    He needed time to think without the massive influx of sensory input and thought. He let the clones know he was going solo for a bit, instructing them to only reach for him if everything went tits up and one of the creatures got loose with its power or if Daxin showed up mad.


    He finished at the same time as he finished his drink. He set the glass on the table, tapped the table, and refilled the drink with Ol'' Wavy Grain with three ice cubes and a slice of lime on the side.


    Legion leaned back, sipping at the drink.


    The door chimed again.


    Legion sighed and waved at the door. "Enter."


    The door slid open, to reveal Sacajawea standing there.


    Legion heaved a sigh to mask the disappointment that it wasn''t his Sacajawea.


    "Come in," he said.


    Sacajawea shuffled in, stopping in front of him.


    "What?" Legion asked.


    "Luke, can''t we leave? Can''t we go someplace far from here?" she asked.


    Legion sighed, closing his eyes.


    Of course, now that he was disconnected, she wanted to do this. He took a deep breath, steeled himself to refuse her demands, her pouting, her tantrums.


    "No."


    She moved forward, straddling his legs, sitting down on his lap with her legs folded to either side of his. She put her hands on either side of his face, lowered her own face.


    And kissed him.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 99v3

    Legion sank into the kiss, the feeling of her lips against his, the warmth of her palms on either side of his face, the smell of her, the feel of her pressing against him.


    He knew she wasn''t his Sacajawea, not his Wee.


    But a larger part of him didn''t care.


    The kiss burned his lips, set him on fire, was a cold drink of water on a hot day.


    It was everything he had forgotten he had ever wanted.


    And more.


    One hand moved his drink from his hand to the small table next to the couch before going back to pressing against the side of his face. Her lips moved against his, so familiar, but just unfamiliar enough to make it all the more exciting. He could feel her moving, feel her hands move to press one hand against the chest while the other one squirmed at her own chest.


    Another smell intruded.


    Hot iron.


    "Please, Luke, let''s go somewhere," she whispered against his mouth. Her tongue pushed into his mouth, twisting and squirming against his own. Her hand on his chest shifted to undo the buttons, almost tearing open his shirt.


    Sulfur.


    "Just you and me. Far away from here," she whispered, pulling his shirt open.


    Her breasts were hot against his skin.


    Seared blood.


    "Let''s just go," she whispered, kissing him again, pulling his hands up to cup her breasts.


    Burnt flesh.


    "Me and you. Just the two of us. You know you want to," she murmured softly into his mouth, her eyes closed, her breath heaving.


    Cigarette smoke.


    "Just the two of... AWK!" She screeched as she was suddenly yanked away. Legion''s eyes opened.


    Dee stood there, holding Sacajawea up in the air by her hair. Dee''s severe face was coldly furious, her gun-metal gray eyes smoldering liquid iron. Her dress was dark, Navy Blue, almost black. She had her American flag pin on one lapel and a splash of crimson from a folded handkerchief at her pocket. Her choker was unadorned, her hair pulled into a tight bun, and her white gloves immaculate. She held a half-finished cigarette between her bared teeth.


    "How typically... male... of you," Dee sneered as Sacajawea screamed and twisted, reaching back, clawing at Dee''s wool cloth coated forearm.


    Dee yanked Sacajawea forward, then shoved her back. There was a ripple in mid-air, a bounce to reality, and a split formed in midair. Screams and cries of agony seeped through the rip as Dee shoved Sacajawea through it. Legion saw a grid pattern appear over Sacajawea as she went through the rip, then Dee was holding Sacajawea by something inside of the younger woman''s torso.


    The rip closed around Dee''s wrist, pulsing in midair.


    "I show up to help you and you''re letting this stupid little cunt writhe all over you like a Swastika Saloon Girl," Dee snarled. "I should rip out both your spines."


    Legion shook his head, clearing it. "I need her."


    "I''ll buy you a fleshlight," Dee sneered.


    "No, I need what she can do," Legion tried to clarify.


    "I''ll get you a crate of them," Dee''s voice dripped with disdain.


    "I need her gift of prophecy," Legion said.


    Dee snapped her fingers and an imp appeared. She kicked it in the ass and a burning rune appeared on its forehead for a split second.


    "There. Now Wha''abli''iba''alz can do predictive analysis," Dee said.


    The imp''s eyes opened up and it looked around wild-eyed. "Oh, shit!" it said. It snapped its fingers but nothing happened. "Oh, no no no," it whined, snapping its fingers.


    "Shut up. Do what Legion says or I''ll shove your head in your ass and kick you into the Lake of Fire," Dee snarled.


    The imp whimpered and lowered its head, scurrying under the coffee table.


    "It''s more than predictive analysis. I need her, she''s one of the..." Legion started.


    "I know what the little twat is," Dee snarled. She grimaced, her face full of fury, and yanked Sacajawea back through the tear with one convulsive yank, throwing the younger girl to the floor.


    Sacajawea''s face was pale, she was bleeding from her nose and ears. She lay sprawled on the floor, staring at the ceiling, bloody tears starting to ooze from her unseeing eyes.


    "There," Dee snapped. She reached down, picked Sacajawea up and threw her into Legion''s lap.


    Hard.


    Legion caught her, holding her, keeping her from falling over or backwards.


    "I thought maybe you needed me for something important. If you just wanted a piece of ass, you could have just brought in one of your clones and then fucked yourself," Dee snarled. "You didn''t have to put out an emergency call for me."


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    Legion carefully set Sacajawea on the couch, standing up.


    "Put it away before I burn it off," Dee snarled.


    Legion buttoned up.


    "I need your help," Legion said.


    Dee sneered. "Roll the little slut ass up then. You don''t need me," she snarled.


    "What got into you?" Legion asked. He noted that her nostrils were glimmering slightly.


    Dee stomped across the room to the nutriforge, angrily punching the buttons.


    "Ever since that little brat got released into the system I''ve been flooded with tens of billions of souls," Dee snapped. "All of them because of her. The last billion are completely fucked," she grabbed the beer out of the nutriforge and pulled a long drink off of it. She faced Legion and he could see a single drop of pinkish fluid starting to ooze from her nostril.


    "Do you know how badly a SUDS template is fucked up after the person gets eaten by a Mar-gite? Much less eaten by a Mar-gite four or five times?" she snarled.


    "Isn''t that a job for your digital self?" Legion asked.


    "Integration when I jumped through the Ogre," Dee snapped. She took out her handkerchief and wiped under her nose. "Now I have a headache and I had to walk in on you and that half-wit writhing around on the couch like a pair of greased up fuck-weasels."


    "You''re in a mood," Legion said, moving over and getting a beer of his own.


    Dee guzzled the rest of her beer and threw it against the wall, the ship''s auto-reclaimation system gathering up the broken glass in seconds. She grabbed Legion''s beer and guzzled half of it.


    "Reintegration makes me crazy," Dee said.


    "Crazier," Legion corrected, putting emphasis on the last syllable.


    Dee grimaced and stomped over to one of the stools against the kitchen counter that separated the main room from the kitchen.


    Legion glance at Sacajawea, who was still staring, unseeing, at the ceiling and shivering slightly.


    He wanted to help her, but he knew Dee was on razor thin margins as it was.


    Legion stood there, quietly, while she finished her cigarette, then her beer, then started a third beer and lit another cigarette.


    After she put away the lighter she sighed. "I knew you''d need my help," she said. She took a drag and exhaled smoke. Legion noticed that the tip of the filter was stained pinkish.


    Cerebral fluid.


    "Better?" Legion asked. He dialed up a new Old Wavy Grain and sipped at it.


    "No. But I don''t feel like seeing just how many of you I can bury up to your necks in boiling sulfur," Dee snarled. She wiped her nose again and put away the handkerchief. "Don''t bother telling me what you want."


    Legion frowned. "Why not?"


    "Because I know what you want," Dee said. She turned to face the counter, moving the ashtray to in front of her. "Don''t ask how I know, you won''t like the answers."


    "You have done much and traveled far while ones such as I slept," Legion said solemnly. "I thought since I made it possible for you to sleep you would pass the eons slumbering often."


    Dee shook her head. "I had too much to learn. Too much to catch up on. It took me nearly twenty thousand years to learn everything that Lanaktallan, the Mantid, the Treana''ad knew, everything TerraSol dropped in the Avenge Me Doc. Then ten thousand years of work," she wiped her nose again. "Then work on my magnum opus."


    Legion just nodded.


    "I knew it was close when The Foundling arrived," she said softly. She closed her eyes. "Okies ate her dog."


    Legion just nodded, knowing that she wasn''t rambling.


    "I made plans, I took steps," Dee said softly. She wiped her nose then folded the handkerchief and went to wipe under her ears.


    Her hand was trembling.


    "Let me," Legion said, taking the cloth from her gently. He dipped the corner in his drink and started cleaning the skin below her ears.


    "I can''t be exposed. Not right now," Dee said. She shuddered for a moment.


    Legion knew a petit-mal seizure when he saw one. He wiped up the thick drop oozing from her ear.


    "But I crafted assets for you. I''ll deliver them, some of my boys, and my daughter," Dee said. She sneezed, barely getting her hand up in time.


    Legion took her hand in his and carefully wiped the pinkish fluid off of it.


    "Whatever unlocked her released all of her people''s SUDS records. My digital self is having to handle it and its terrible," Dee said.


    Her voice had dropped to a whisper.


    She leaned over, resting against Legion''s chest. "Dammit," she said.


    "I know," Legion said, putting his arms around her.


    "You better not fuck my corpse, pervert," Dee whispered.


    Legion just held her for a moment.


    She trembled and went limp.


    Legion stepped out of himself, staring at himself holding Dee, then stepped out of himself to help Sacajawea.


    The Legion holding Dee looked down at her, using her handkerchief to clean her face.


    He admired, as he had dozens of times before, the severe beauty in her face.


    The one caring for Sacajawea lifted her up, carrying her to the bedroom before dissolving away.


    The other one just stared at himself holding Dee.


    "I''ll destroy the body," the one holding her said.


    "I know," the one watching said.


    The pair vanished.


    Legion moved up and sat back down at the counter, wiping it off. The ship''s systems reclaimed the bottle and he got another out, not opening it, just sitting it there.


    He suddenly smelled brimstone, seared blood, burning flesh, and cigarette smoke.


    "That was humiliating," Dee''s voice said.


    "It happens," Legion said.


    "Lost my temper," Dee said, sitting on the stool next to Legion.


    "Naw, I''ve seen you lose your temper," Legion smiled. "The ship isn''t drifting dead in space."


    Dee nodded. "There are times, few and far between mind you, but there are times, that I wonder if mortals such as you and I were meant to be burdened by such power."


    Legion shrugged. "I don''t worry about it. What it is, it is."


    "I did what I did."


    "And I''d do it again," Legion finished. He sat in silence. "About Dax..."


    "Peacefully with his children, I''ve told you before," Dee said.


    "I just... just need to hear it again sometimes," Legion said. He took a long drink off of his glass. "Despite everything, I loved him."


    "I know," Dee said.


    They sat in silence for a while.


    "She really pissed you off," Legion said.


    "That''s my baggage," Dee said. She tapped the ring on the ring finger of her left hand against the bottle a few times. "Just something about her, though."


    Legion nodded. "You should have met the other Sacajawea," he said.


    "She''s not in the system. I looked," Dee said.


    Legion frowned and looked at her. "Really?"


    Dee shook her head. "Nope. But then, I haven''t had a carrier signal from her ship since a few years after they left."


    Legion sighed.


    "I''ve got you some help. You need other viewpoints, these guys have alternate viewpoints," Dee said. "They come as a package deal. Six of them," Dee tapped her ring again. "Two military, three scientists, a miner who could probably get a geology degree pretty easily."


    Legion nodded.


    "I ran them through their paces. They''ll hold up even with how ugly this is going to be," Dee said. She gave a cruel grin. "They''ll probably be screaming when they come through."


    Legion frowned. "Why?"


    "They''re afraid of me for some reason," Dee smiled.


    Legion shook his head. "Yeah, no shit. Everyone with half a brain is afraid of you."


    Dee just smiled. She finished her beer and got off the stool, moving to the center of the room.


    "Let me get them for you," she said.


    "Wait," Legion said.


    "What?" Dee asked.


    "Just a quick question," Legion said.


    "Fine. Ask."


    "The wedding ring," Legion started.


    Dee''s face went cold. "I don''t know you well enough," she said, her voice venomous.


    Legion just nodded.


    Dee snapped her fingers and vanished.


    In her place stood six other beings.


    Legion gave them credit, they didn''t start screaming.


    One, who looked to Legion to be some kind of rodent, stood up on his tiptoes, lifting his arms to the ceiling.


    "SCIENCE!"

 Nova Wars - Chapter 99x4

    I walked through fire and brimstone and there were no pearly gates. - Unknown, Age of Paranoia, TerraSol


    "Business skirt!


    "Business skirt!


    "She''s Doctor Doom in a business skirt!


    "She''ll kiss your wounds just to make you hurt.


    "She turned her tender burning eyes on me


    "The fires of Hell in them set me free!


    "The Detainee the Lady Lord of Hell


    "A reminder of how and why humanity fell


    "who kicks your face to get you out of the dirt


    "She''s Doctor Doom in a business skirt!" - "Detainee", Krawark Rawk, Rigellian Speed Metal Band, 38,874 TXE


    He was a High Lord Knight Aesir of the Sancti Ordo Spiritus Tyr, a High Lord Captain in charge of the ship the Final Sight of Black Night, in command of Task Force Niamhchloch, called "Task Force Warhammer" by the people he had come to help. Valorus O¡¯Byrne was a warrior born and bred, with a long lineage of warriors, statesmen, craftsmen, and artists. A Novastar pilot, he was bonded to his armor in ways that others would never understand.


    His personal quarters were not the dimly lit candle and skull strewn affair that holovid would have shown them as. Nor were they stark and impersonal or huge vaulted ceilings with luxury. They were comfortable, cozy to use a word, even for the men and women aboard the Final Sight of Black Night. When he entered classical music of the 9th Artistic Renaissance spooled up and began playing softly. The light were soft and warm, the 2.5D picture frames on the walls were often loaded up with scenes of landscape, or city skylines at night, or sunsets over a desert.


    He was usually found, during relaxation period, sitting on his couch in his entryway room, wearing a comfortable set of flannel pajamas and reading literature with a set of nezpierce glasses perched on his nose.


    While the Knights Aesir were part of a spiritual martial order, that did not mean they were all prayers and grim duty.


    The people of Tabula embraced emotion and expression.


    Life was too short to go through it in misery, and the malevolent universe offered enough misery, there was no need to add to it unnecessarily.


    Many members of the Sancti Ordo Spiritus Tyr found it amusing that most who knew of them would be shocked that one of the core tenets of the order was to try to lift others up, to make the universe a better place, and to provide joy and comfort when they could.


    Too many only saw the implacable Novastar suited Knights Aesir wiping out entire planets and had no idea that the order was far more.


    But Valorus O''Byrne didn''t worry how others outside of Tabula saw the Knights or the Order.


    His worry, at that time, was the Mar-gite streaming into the Cygnus Orion Galactic Arm Spur.


    He had coordinates, he had a back trail.


    It was up to the rest of the Order to stop the Mar-gite. To hunt down and destroy the clusters, just as the Order had for the last 22,000 years.


    It was up to him to take the war to where the Mar-gite were coming from. He had detached his flagship and its attendant vessels and started back-tracing the Mar-gite. He knew they came from the nearby spur.


    The problem was: Where was their staging area and could it be destroyed?


    But those were worries for later.


    Right now he was slowly paging through a children''s book, smiling at the hand painted pictures. It was one he had been raised on, that his mother, father, older siblings had read to him. That he had read to other children.


    Peeper Tales.


    The lives of innocent, naive, playful little lizards who often got into the same kind of trouble that small children did, who navigated a world full of wonder just like the Order believed children should.


    He was smiling at the hand-painted image of a fat little peeper stuck inside a honey pot when his coffee table beeped and a holo-icon appeared that he had an incoming message.


    He pointed at the icon with his index finger and tapped his thumb against his curled middle finger, opening the icon.


    It was a notification that he had a priority VIP visitor waiting to speak with him in his chambers.


    Odd.


    He kept close tabs on his schedule and could not remember any VIP.


    Curious, he closed the book, set it beside him, and tapped the ''OK'' icon.


    The message vanished.


    There were three spaced knocks.


    Not from the door to his chamber, but from one of the paintings. A night-time painting of a modest little house in the middle of a snowy clearing, the warm yellow light filling the windows.


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    He looked up at it, frowning.


    "Enter," he said slowly.


    The door of the house opened and a woman with a hooded cloak stepped out into the night, turning to close the door behind her. She then turned and walked slowly toward the foreground of the painting, slowly getting larger. Finally she reached the edge, stepping from the painting to the ground.


    O''Byrne could smell hot iron, sulfur, scorched blood, burnt flesh, charred molycircs, vaporized armor.


    He held his emotions as the woman moved over to the doorway, lifting her hands and pushing the cloak back.


    The raven-black hair seemed to have blue highlights deep within it and was bound up in a tight bun, keeping it off of her pale neck.


    She took the cloak off, revealing a severe cut dark navy blue dress, the top possessing thick shoulderpads. The dress was pleated, ankle length, with a thin stripe at the bottom of white. She wore white gloves, cufflinks that glittered green in the light.


    He recognized the stone on the cufflinks.


    Polished atomsite.


    Knight O''Byrne was polite and knew the ettiquette of the situation.


    He stood up, clasping his hands in front of him.


    The woman turned around and O''Byrne was struck with just how close the painting of her on the wall was to the woman''s actual features.


    "You know who I am," she said.


    It was not a question.


    "I do," O''Byrne said. "Our Second Founding Founder spoke of you often in his writings."


    "Cathal," the woman nodded.


    "Yes," O''Byrne made a motion. "Refreshments? Ashtray? A place to sit?"


    "Yes, thank you," the woman, no, The Detainee said.


    O''Byrne walked her over to a seat, holding out one hand to stabilize her as she sat. He was not surprised that her hand was soft and warm, nor that she accepted the offer. She preferred whiskey, a triple, with ice. She had her own cigarettes but preferred the ashtray made from a 66mm cannon shell casing. She accepted his offer of a light despite having her own lighter. She accepted the knitted shawl for her lap to protect her skirt.


    She waited until he sat down, her gun-metal gray eyes neutral.


    When he sat down, they did introductions. He knew her. She knew him. He was impressed by her cufflinks. She was satisfied with The Founder''s Legacy.


    Finally, it got down to business.


    "You have my property," the Detainee said.


    O''Byrne raised one eyebrow. "The Dra.Falten representatives."


    She nodded. "Yes."


    "The heavily modified female and male," O''Byrne said.


    "Yes."


    "You have come for them," O''Byrne waved a hand to encompass the ship. "Tradition states that I must have representatives, hostages in the old meaning."


    "I offer a trade, out of respect for Cathal and his deeds," the Detainee stated.


    "Really?" O''Byrne said.


    The Detainee smiled, exhaling cigarette smoke through her sharp little white teeth. "I respected him. When confronted with four clones of his genome, four younger version of him, he did not react with knee-jerk violence. Instead, he reasoned with them, offered them a chance for salvation."


    O''Byrne nodded. "I have read the recollections."


    "It pleased me to witness."


    "He had written that at that time, you were considered deceased," O''Byrne said. "But... he did not believe you were dead. He believed that you used the confusion to escape the other Immortals."


    The Detainee nodded.


    "And the Digital Omnimessiah."


    Again, she nodded. "While literature and entertainment media show power armor pilots as mouth breathing idiots barely capable of tying their shoes, I make no such mistakes. The intellect needed to instinctively track all of the variables, as well as effectively use strategy and tactics, of such a high technology war machine is easily overlooked by people wanting to validate their own internal biases."


    O''Byrne nodded. "One of his sons, born later on Tabula, left to look for you."


    She gave a secretive smile and tapped the ring on her left hand ring finger against the cold glass of whiskey. "I know."


    "Did he find you?" O''Byrne asked.


    She nodded slowly. "Yes."


    "What do you offer for trade?" O''Byrne asked.


    "Coordinates," the Detainee said. She flicked her fingers and the holo-emitter came on, showing X, Y, Z, Q coordinates where the coordinates steadily shifted and changed. "Coordinates so that you can follow the path and catch up to those who are leading the way."


    O''Byrne considered it.


    "You will not find the correct path. You will become sidetracked and ultimately fail," the Detainee said.


    O''Byrne didn''t bother to argue. All of the writings agreed that The Detainee had knowledge beyond mortal comprehension. That she may have started mortal but had become something both more and less.


    The Detainee merely sipped her drink as O''Byrne thought through it.


    Finally, he nodded. "Agreed."


    The Detainee smiled.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Legion stood up, moving forward, as one of the rat-creatures stood up as straight as they could, threw their head back, and started screaming. They were scrabbling at their waist, trying to draw a pistol.


    The other three rat-like creatures grabbed the screaming one. The large female pulled his weapon from the holster, throwing it onto the couch, before grabbing the screaming one in a headlock and pulling them down onto the floor. One of them, the one who had shouted "SCIENCE!" was holding the screamer''s muzzle shut.


    "Easy, soldier, easy. Breathe, soldier, breathe," the scruffy greasy looking rat was saying gently, holding the muzzle shut with both hands.


    The other rat-like creature was petting the back of the screamer''s neck with their claws.


    The other two were strange. One had a beard and four eyes, the other looked like a squat, whitish-blue wrinkly skinned Tukna''rn that had gone on a crash diet.


    The emergency channel pinged open.


    "I''m reading high levels of emotional stress. Is everything all right?" a voice asked from mid-air, the icon showing that the speaker was from Psych-Medical.


    "It''s OK, it''s OK," Legion said. "Log my room out."


    "Roger," the line went dead.


    Legion moved forward, getting into the screamer''s vision.


    "Easy, friend," Legion said.


    "A Terran, soldier, see, a Terran," the greasy looking one said.


    The screamer tried screaming louder, muffled by the fact the speaker was holding his muzzle shut. His eyes were wide, wild, and Legion could feel the sheer unadulterated hysterical panic rolling off of the being.


    One of Legion appeared, running a scanner over the screamer and taking a blood sample. Another appeared, holding a syringe that he jabbed into the screamer''s shoulder, through the cloth. Both vanished.


    The screamer slowly quit struggling, quit trying to scream. His eyes grew heavy and shut.


    "Put him on the couch," Legion said.


    The big female nodded, lifting up the unconscious male and carrying him over to the couch easily.


    Legion could hear the micro-acutators, the flatware motors, and the other telltale whispers of augmentations when the female moved. Could see the whiskey thin lines of data in their eyes from cyberoptics connected to a datalink.


    "Sit, sit," Legion said, motioning at the furniture.


    The aliens looked unsure but slowly moved over and sat down.


    "To start the introductions, I''m Doctor Dhruv Deshmuhk," Legion said. He figured it was better not to cause even more panic with his other names. "I know who brought you here, so why don''t we just start with some names," he smiled, getting beers out of the cooler. He walked up, handing one to each of them.


    "We''ll start with names, then figure out why devil dommy-mommy brought you here," he smiled.


    "Where... where is here?" asked the big rodent female, who was sitting on the couch with a smaller one held in her arms.


    "The Gray Lady, a siege engine class Super-Colossus starship, currently between the galactic arms," Legion said, sipping at his beer.


    He pointed at one of the odd ones out, the one without the beard.


    "How about you start."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 25x4

    Admiral (Upper Decks) of the Warsteel Sharnat was a Hamaroosan, one of a people with a long martial tradition. From their emancipation from the Lanaktallan to the bitter fighting in the dark years after the Second Precursor the Hamaroosan had never flinched from what had to be done to protect the people of the Confederacy.


    Admiral Sharnat had nearly a hundred years in uniform, starting as a fire control officer aboard a light corvette and working her way up to commanding the Third Hamaroosan Expeditionary Fleet. She commanded over a thousand ships, twelve divisions of ships from heavy monitors to light corvettes. All of the ships were modern, all less than a hundred years old, benefiting from the latest in warfare technology and theory. Spherical in construction, providing the least amount of surface area for the most volume, with the most advanced shields and weapons the known universe had to offer.


    She was the Confederacy''s Will Made Manifest. The warsteel wrapped fist of the Confederacy.


    Admiral Sharnat was Hamaroosan.


    Her people had faced the Precursor Autonomous War Machines, the Atrekna, the Lanaktallan, and everyone else that had attempted to harm the citizens of the Confederacy. They had a martial tradition and never backed down from a fight.


    Which made the taste filling her mouth even more bitter.


    "More Hellgates detected!" her fleet tactical officer called out. "Ten, twenty, thirty point sources emerging in the devastator class."


    "Any unengaged units nearby?" Sharnat asked.


    "Negative, ma''am," tactical answered. "Looks like they''re committing to the forces attacking the stellar stabilizers."


    Sharnat swore, staring at the holotank. The stellar stabilization system was nearly thirty thousand years old, responsible for ensuring the star used its fuel properly, extending out its lifespan for millions of years.


    It was also of Lanaktallan make, which meant it wasn''t even due for maintenance beyond preventive maintenance, checks, and services yet.


    But the enemy was targeting it, forcing her to split her forces. One group to try to gain stellar geometry superiority, one group to defend the sole inhabited planet, and one group to defend the stellar stabilizers. Thousands of ships per group, the might of the Hamaroosan Space Navy.


    The enemy seemed to have endless resources.


    "Status of the planet?" she asked.


    "Minor landings. They''re still using hydrogen fusion nuclear weapons in the ten megaton or higher range on the metropolises," planetary tactical said. "Planetary defense forces are signaling for reinforcement and orbital support."


    Sharnat nodded. "We''ll do what we can."


    The enemy had prioritized hitting her troops transports as they headed for the planet. It wasn''t that their weapons were overpowered.


    It was that there was so many of them.


    "Bringer of Light is breaking up," Tactical-Two said, their voice remote and distant as training and experience enabled them to keep from their voice the horror of seeing a super-dreadnought explode with all hands.


    Sharnat cursed again.


    "They''re concentrating of Pinch These Nuts, Admiral."


    Sharnat just nodded.


    She stared at the holotank, walking slowly around it.


    There was nothing she could see that she could do. More hellgates were opening, the enemy was getting reinforcements, and she had none.


    Hell, she had barely arrived in time to even try to defend the star system. She had intended on taking on mass, cutting a task force loose, then moving on.


    The citizens of the star nation the stellar system belonged to weren''t even part of the Confederacy, just emergency probationary members.


    She had been involved in negotiations to take on mass at one of the super-massive gas giants when the hellgates had opened up all over the system.


    Now over half her fleet was gone, the enemy possessed two-thirds of the stellar system, and were still bringing troops and ships into the stellar system.


    The Olipnat Concordiant, whose system it was, was faring even worse.


    They had less than a score of ships left.


    But as she watched, the still angled to attack one of the huge ships trying to get close to the inhabited planet. They didn''t seem to care about casualties as they drove straight into the enemy''s teeth to hammer the twisted and charred looking ships point blank with their guns.


    But Admiral Sharnat knew it wouldn''t help.


    The enemy ships were twisted, warped, as if they had partially melted and the superstructure had been pushed back toward the engines. There were gaps in the black armor, gaps that had red burning sullenly in their depths.


    "Time Enough For Pinching reports boarders," she heard someone call out.


    She just nodded.


    Sharnat knew she was presiding over the worst defeat the Hamaroosan people, and the Confederacy, had suffered in their history.


    "Two more stellar stabilizers have been destroyed. The system is down to 80%, too many more and the stellar mass will be vulnerable," tactical reported.


    "Understood," Sharnat said.


    She opened her mouth to order ships that had been forced to fall back to rejoin the fight when the entire world seemed to shake.


    HEAVY METAL INCOMING! MAKE WAY!


    thundered out across the bridge, rattling her teeth, blurring her vision, shaking her to the bone.


    Everyone looked around.


    Nobody has used that in tens of thousands of years, Sharnat thought to herself. She turned to the communications section. "Any ID? Any vector?"


    "Not on known channels," commo said. The Hamaroosan technical officer looked up. "It''s not..."


    HEAVY METAL INCOMING! MAKE WAY!


    sounded out again.


    The roar was all consuming.


    On the holotank, she could see the enemy ships suddenly break contact, milling about in confusion. Massive blackened vessels rolling out of formation as if they had been damaged.


    HEAVY METAL INCOMING! MAKE WAY!


    again, the roar sounded out.


    "No ID! Repeat! No ID! No vectors!" commo called out.


    "Estimate incoming weight in the high teratonnes, maybe even low single digit exotonnes," tactical called out.


    "Olipnat Concordiant has lost another supercruiser. Still engaged with the..." tactical started to say.


    HEAVY METAL IS HERE!


    The holotank fuzzed, wavering, as it tried to accomadate the new data.


    What came into the system was not a task force.


    Not even a fleet.


    It was an armarda.


    Fifty super-Colossus hulls, old style where they were long, narrow at the front and wide at the back. Two hundred Colossus hulls. Five thousand Monitor class hulls.


    The lead wave of the ships hit a concentration of enemy ships that were pinning part of Admiral Sharnat''s fleet against one of the super-massive gas giants, forcing them to either take the pounding or abandon the habitats orbiting the gas giant.


    Sharnat winced, waiting for the screen to clear and show that the incoming ships had hit the enemy ships and destroyed each other in an orgy of mutual annhilation.


    Instead the enemy ship''s icons flashed and vanished.


    HEAVY METAL IS HERE!


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    Another armada appeared, this one opposite of the stellar mass.


    HEAVY METAL IS HERE!


    Another one, this one to the polar south.


    HEAVY METAL IS HERE!


    Another armada to the polar north.


    TERRA IS HERE!


    Sharnat found herself holding onto the edge of the holotank, blinking, trying to clear her vision as it felt like someone had shaken her very brain.


    "No Confederate ID''s!" commo called out. "Negative Confederate ID''s!"


    Admiral Sharnat was trying to clear her head as two more armadas came streaking in, these two ninety degrees from the first two along the central ''plane'' of the stellar mass.


    She was trying to wrap her head around the sheer numbers.


    Seven armadas, each larger than anything she had ever seen.


    Obsolete equipment went through her head.


    "Newcomers are maneuvering to engage the enemy!" tactical called out. "I have parasite class launches. Five hundred, twelve hundred, MANY MANY LAUNCHES!"


    Around each of the armadas the icons fuzzed and she saw the system trying to count the amount of ships being launched by those massive hulls.


    The first optical scans were coming back, popping up on the sides of the holotank and she just stared.


    Black hulls, looking both matte and glossy at the same time. Covered with weapons, shield emitters, flight bays.


    ID''s started popping up. All of the names were cruel sounding. "The Dawn of Night" or "The Last Thing You See" and "Fuck Your Planet" and "Here Comes the Giant Fist" were among the more pleasant names. "Guts for Garters" was massive, covered in weapons, and was already firing.


    Each ship had the same national header.


    Solarian Iron Dominion.


    "Incoming commo request. Looks like a superluminal buoy," commo called out. The Hamaroosan looked up. "They''re asking for you by name."


    "Put it through," Sharnat said, grabbing her command stick in her hand.


    The holotank rezzed for a moment then stabilized.


    She found herself blinking.


    Sure, everyone had heard Terra''s reemergence three months ago, but the fact it was a Terran staring at her with glowing amber eyes still startled her.


    The view was of a massive Terran, made even larger by the armored vac-suit they were wearing. Their face-shield was transparent, showing skin browned by exposure to alien suns, piercing blue eyes almost hidden by t he amber glow, full lips hiding their teeth. The Terran had a scar down one side of his face that looked as if some animal had gotten close enough to get a piece of him.


    Everything around him was blurred out.


    "Task Force Reaper to allied fleet, do you read?" someone off screen asked.


    "We read you," Sharnat heard her commo officer answer.


    "Stand by for Fleet Admiral Angus Amanda Squarejaw Gutshredder," the off-screen Terran stated.


    An ID header appeared over the Terran''s head, IDing him.


    "Admiral Sharnat is ready," her commo said.


    The Terran nodded. "Are you there, Admiral Sharnat?"


    "Yes," Sharnat said. She exhaled. "Tell me you''re here to reinforce us."


    The Terran nodded after a second. "We intercepted your message torpedo. We were within a few hours."


    The Terran looked to the side, obviously listening. "Has the inhabitants of this system requested assistance and allowed us to enter?"


    Sharnat nodded. "Yes."


    The Terran Admiral''s eyes shifted color to red. "We''ve received your tactical upload," he said. He gave a slight snort. "Hellspace infused shielding and hellspace forged ship armor, that''s what''s giving your gun crews such fits."


    "Our weapons haven''t been the most effective," Sharnat admitted. "The big problem is their sheer number."


    "Hellgate opening detected!" her tactical called out. "They''re coming out right on top of the Terrans."


    The Fleet Admiral''s lip curled in disgust. "They will not appreciate what they are about to receive."


    "They also prefer boarding tactics," Sharnat warned.


    "Tell the Marines to wake up. Time to earn their pay," the Fleet Admiral said to someone offscreen. He looked back at Sharnat. "We have medical and refit vessels on their way."


    Sharnat nodded.


    "Fireplan from the Dominion received! Loading into Tank Three," commo called out.


    The Terran admiral stared at Sharnat.


    "We await your command, Admiral," the Terran said.


    Sharnat blinked. "My command?"


    She looked at holotank three and saw the fireplan playing out.


    The Terran nodded. "You are in command by Confederate doctrine, as the ranking admiral in the system when relief elements arrive."


    Sharnat realized she didn''t have the time to review the fireplan. The time for that had passed hours, days ago.


    "Fireplan permission granted," Sharnat said.


    The Terran''s eyes went red. He straightened up slightly, seeming to somehow get larger.


    "ALL COMMANDERS! YOU ARE CLEAR TO ENGAGE!" he roared out.


    Part of Sharnat wondered if the other ship commanders could hear their admiral''s voice without high-tech commo just based on the sheer volume.


    "Dominion vessels are targeting the Hellspace breaches," tactical called out.


    Sharnat wanted to order the Terran to engage the ships, that their weapons would be ineffective against the portals the enemy was using to enter the system.


    "Breaches nineteen through thirty-seven have collapsed!" tactical called out.


    She turned to holotank one, watching as the Terran ships moved, way too fast, across the stellar geometry. Some vanishing in a streak to reappear in another streak near the enemy. They jumped back in and their guns started pounding the enemy units around the planet.


    It''s all obsolete weapons, she thought to herself. The Terrans have been gone forty-thousand years, there''s no way their warfighting tech is still viable. No way it''ll effect the enemy when ours barely does.


    She watched as the enemy ships started breaking up but were still pounded by the Terran guns. She watched as thousands of missile pods vomited up their cargo and then turned into a nCv shot, each cluster targeting one of the larger enemy vessels.


    The smaller parasite craft got in among the enemy formation, seemingly uncaring about the casualties, just getting close enough to use vibroknives in a fist fight. As Sharnat watched more and more of the enemy ships started exploding as the parasite craft attacked from outrageously close distances.


    The bigger ships were firing and the ghostly plucking at her bone marrow turned into a steady vibration. Energy weapons that twisted and spiraled through space, moving faster than light to hit targets light hours away within seconds. Superluminal kinetic weapons that hit as soon as the causality triggers were pulled. Torpedoes that sunk into the subspace foam to race across light minutes or hours to surface and make final runs only a few hundred kilometers from their targets after only a handful of seconds.


    Admiral Sharnat just stared at the holotank, watching as the entire situation changed within minutes.


    She had been outnumbered a hundred to one before the Dominion had arrived.


    Over three quarters of the enemy vessels were destroyed or mission killed less than ten minutes later.


    And still the Dominion guns pounded the enemy.


    She knew the Dominion were Terrans. Founding members of the Confederacy.


    She knew they were allies.


    She knew their weapons were tens of thousands of years out of date.


    But what she was watching chilled her to the bone.


    The Terran admiral wasn''t bothering with any fancy maneuvers, no attempts to trick the enemy or lure them into a trap.


    His forces just advanced, heading straight into the enemy''s teeth like a sledgehammer.


    At was like watching an avalanche.


    She watched out of the corner of her eye at the image of the Terran Fleet Admiral.


    He seemed perfectly at ease. She didn''t know much about Terran body language, but he seemed as if he was just watching something vaguely interesting on the holotank, not a furious fleet battle in a system that had been all but lost.


    She remembered her briefing two months ago.


    How Space Force Intelligence had determined that the Terrans would have minimal, if any, effect on the situation the Confederacy had found itself in. That the Terrans couldn''t have too many ships as only fifty years has passed for them and they had undoubtablely been forced to dedicate most of their efforts to recover from the damage inflicted by the Lanaktallan invasion of TerraSol.


    You have never been more wrong...


    0-0-0-0-0


    Hetmwit stood on the bridge of the Nell of Night, holding onto the bar that was attached to the edge of the holotank.


    The Nell of Night was under full EMCOM, full stealth. The small attendant vessels were hanging close.


    He glanced at Captain Decken, who was staring at the holotank, standing across from Hetmwit.


    "They''ll try to retreat any second," Captain Decken said.


    Hetmwit just nodded.


    "Inform the crew that Hellspace transit is immanent," Captain Decken said.


    "Roger roger," the robot at the communications console stated, its Terran skull-like head adorned with a white stripe over the eyes and another down from the temple to the lower jaw.


    "All hands, all hands, Hellspace transit immanent," sounded over the PA.


    "Multiple Hellspace breaches opening! Enemy is retreating," Mister Goofy stated.


    Decken nodded. "Remind Admiral Gutshredder not to knock out this Hellspace portal when it manifests," Captain Decken said, his voice calm and remote.


    "Task Force Reaper confirms, Captain," Mister Chatty said.


    Decken just nodded.


    Part of Hetmwit couldn''t believe how calm he was, holding onto the bar the surrounded the holotank, watching a massive interstellar battle. There was some anxiety, true, but nothing like he had felt when he had run across the open field to the cover of a burning tank, trying to protect his mother, his sisters, his nieces and nephews.


    "Hellspace breaches collapsing. Enemy cannot withdraw," Mister Goofy stated.


    Again, Decken just nodded.


    "Get ready," Decken said. "Signal Task Force Reaper."


    "Aye, sir," Mister Chatty answered.


    "Hellspace shields ready, Captain," Mister Fumbles said, his teeth chattering for a moment.


    "HELLSPACE PORTAL! SIX HUNDRED KILOMETERS OFF FORWARD BOW!" Mister Goofy called out.


    "ENGINES FULL!" Decken roared out.


    The ship seemed to rush forward and Hetmwit felt like he was being pushed backwards as the Little Nell of Night drove forward.


    "Enemy ship detected in transit! Opening fire!" Mister Fumbles called out.


    There was a hard twang to his bone-marrow, much heavier than the constant thrum from the battle in the surrounding system. Two twangs. Three. Four.


    "Enemy has exploded with all hands!" Mister Fumbles called out. "Debris hitting forward shields. Hellspace shields at 100%!"


    "Hellgate entry!" Mister Goofy called out.


    Fire swept across the ship, just outside the walls of the vessel but still somehow visible, as the Little Nell of Night plunged into the Hellgate.


    Hetmwit felt like his eyeballs were shivering.


    "All units report successful Hellspace entry. Hellspace conduit holding stable," Mister Goofy said.


    Decken smiled slowly, looking up at Hetmwit.


    "Let''s see where they''re coming from," Decken smiled.


    Hetmwit nodded silently.


    0-0-0-0-0


    "Little Nell of Night''s Task Force has entered the hellspace breach, Admiral," Commander Sh''Trek


    stated.


    Admiral Gutshredder nodded, keeping his attention on the holotank that showed the ongoing battle for the star system. Confederate forces were winning, but that didn''t mean the enemy couldn''t come up with something new that would snatch them victory from defeat.


    "Olipnat Concordiant Grand High Admiral Sherkus is requesting communication," Commodore Wark<tok>Swark said, her voice calm and unruffled.


    "Put him through," Gutshredder ordered.


    The holotank picture wavered then cleared to show a small furry mammal in a vac-suit.


    "Confederate fleet command, this is Grand High Admiral Sherkus," the little mammal said.


    "Solarion Iron Dominion Fleet," Gutshredder corrected.


    The alien admiral blinked, then nodded. "Same as the Little Nell of Night?"


    "Affirmative, Admiral," Gutshredder said.


    "The Olipnat Concordiant appreciates your intervention," the little mammal said.


    Gutshredder just nodded, watching in the holotank as more of the enemy ships broke up or vanished in an explosion of hellspace energy.


    "Will you be staying in the system after the battle is complete?" the Concordiant Admiral asked.


    "Just long enough to take on mass, refit, and leave behind a medical frigate and a refit vessel to support you and Confederate elements," Gutshredder said. "After that, my Task Force will be moving to another system that military analysts predict is in danger."


    The alien admiral nodded. "And the Confederate forces?"


    "They are not the Dominion''s concern," Gutshredder said.


    "Understood, Dominion," the alien said.


    The channel shut off.


    Admiral Gutshredder went back to watching his Task Force rip the guts out of the enemy.


    0-0-0-0-0


    "Make sure Confederate Intelligence knows they dropped the ball," Admiral Sharnat said.


    She turned her attention back to the holotank.


    "Obsolete weapons my left hand sister''s ass."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 5x5x4

    To Angela Angus Kusumoto it was funny. Less than a year ago, her time, her job had just been to sit around in case any of the systems had problems.


    Then they''d started synching with Terra, the Afterlife went live, even Hell (Traumatic Incident Recovery) went live. Artificial Intelligences had woken up, complex systems had come online and integrated.


    Now she spent her time watching outgoing network traffic. Largely, the outgoing network traffic could only be tracked via upload/download bandwidth usage, since nobody was sure how to oversee the system itself.


    It didn''t matter that Angela and her coworkers had spent decades working on the system, just like generations had before her for nearly 200 years.


    The very system they sat inside was still largely incomprehensible.


    However, she noticed that something was going on outside in the ''normal'' universe, since the uploads to the system had radically increased and the file transfers straight to the Traumatic Life Cessation System had become the majority of the file transfers.


    Hell was so busy that the wait time to reach a VI was measured in weeks.


    She had a new system coming online. She looked up the buss numbers, then the file allocation numbers, then the core call ID''s.


    She shook her head.


    The only hint she had was it had something to do with the priority library patch from TerraSol back when the system had come back online.


    Another mystery process.


    The 158th of the day.


    She sighed and logged it.


    Whatever it was, it was a fairly new process.


    She just hoped it wasn''t anything too major.


    Another process popped up, then three more.


    She sighed, and kept logging it all.


    The SUDS kept its secrets.


    0-0-0-0-0


    "INCOMING SOURCES! MANY MANY SOURCES!"


    HEAVY METAL IS HERE!


    Captain Devlintee wished she could reach over and punch her right hand aunt in the back of the head, but instead she squeezed her hands on her command stick.


    Heavy metal was arriving, but she knew it was too late for her beautiful ship or her crew.


    "They''re coming back in!" her left hand second cousin called out from tactical.


    "Roll ship!" Devlintee ordered.


    "Helm is still unresponsive!" her right hand uncle said, coughing, from where the navigational control board had exploded. There was no smoke in the vacuum, but molycircs still crackled and sparked.


    Captain Devlintee raised her chin, activating the ship-wide communications system.


    "Prepare yourself. We will be with our ancestors soon," she stated.


    She could see the enemy ships start firing. She felt the deck tremble beneath her feet.


    "We do not yield," she said softly. "For the glory of..."


    The Right Hand Punch exploded with all hands as the charred looking ships came in firing.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Admiral (Upper Decks) of the Warsteel Sharnat stared at what was left of the Hamaroosan Third Expeditionary Fleet.


    Less than a hundred ships. All but four of the big hulls were either expanding clouds of debris or beaten into useless junk. Of the four left, her flagship included, all four were battered. Most of her midline were gone. Sixty of her vessels were light cruiser or lighter vessels and all of those were beat up.


    She had to admit, the sheer weight of ships and tonnage commanded by Fleet Admiral Angus Amanda Squarejaw Gutshredder, commander of "Task Force" Reaper, made her somewhat envious. His flagship weighed almost as much as all four of her super-heavies combined.


    They had also pounded the black ships into expanding debris in less than an hour and taken, as far as she could tell, no casualties from any of it.


    The big male Terran admiral was in her holotank, staring at her with those amber glowing eyes.


    "I''ll be leaving behind an element before moving out. Task Force Reaper will be dividing up into detachments. 19th Fleet has given me permission to stage a detachment here, at the request of the Olipnat Concordiant Grand High Admiral Sherkus," the Terran said.


    His formality, his stiff manner of speaking, somewhat threw Admiral Sharnat, who had to resist punching her right hand second cousin in the back, a good kidney shot, while speaking to the Terran.


    "Understood," she said.


    "We will also be leaving behind a single medical frigate and a pair of repair ships, with their attendant defenses and support ships," the Terran admiral said.


    "We appreciate that. My ships are badly damaged," Sharnat said.


    "Nothing the Black Sea Rabbit can''t handle," Admiral Gutshredder said. "It has the latest Naval Class XLV creation engines and the new templates and scanners," He made a slight motion with his hand. "She can deal with your issues. Same with the Merciless Plague Doctor, she has the medical facilities you might need, including that capability of handling Hellspace exposure and masscal wounded influx."


    "Another thing I am thankful for," Sharnat said.


    "It can handle up to two and a half million patients," Admiral Gutshredder said.


    Sharnat kept from raising her eyebrows.


    "I hope that it is sufficent, but I need the heavier medical frigates to come with us," Gutshredder said.


    Sharnat wanted to tell him that the frigate class was smaller than a destroyer and what he was describing sounded like it belonged on one of the old Colossus hulls.


    "If there is anything I can assist you with, let me know, Admiral," Gutshredder said. "Dominion, out."


    Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    The holotank call ended.


    Sharnat shivered slightly inside her vac-suit.


    0-0-0-0-0


    She was a tiny Hamaroosan, holding tight to warm smelling fur, the smell of warm milk in her nostrils. She couldn''t see yet, her big glossy black eyes still closed as she nuzzled around. She could faintly hear a sound she identified with comfort and coziness and made little noises of her own.


    Everything suddenly broke into pixels that slid down her vision with a screeching atonal noise.


    She was reaching up to pull herself up, her knees and hocks shaking.


    "That''s a good girl. That''s mommy''s good girl," she heard the Voice say. It reminded her of softness and milk and she pushed harder, the encouragement in the voice making her want to please it.


    She managed to stand, two hands on the gently rounded table, and gave a toothless grin.


    Everything smeared downward, like a chalk painting in the rain, accompanied by that same atonal sound.


    She ran hard, across the yard, and threw herself into the arms of her wight-hund-uncahl. The other Hamaroosan lifted her up, laughing, spinning with her, while she squealed in pleasure.


    Everything smeared again.


    She stared at her test, wracking her brain for the answers. Her anxiety was peaked and she wanted to reach forward and punch the student in front of her in the back of the head, but the desks were placed just far enough to keep the students from punching, kicking, or pinching.


    The test was an important one, a mid-year standing test. Doing bad on it would mean she would drop back a half year, doing well meant staying where she was, and doing too well meant she would be sent a half-year ahead.


    As it stood, she was in 8th year mathematics despite only being a third year.


    She knew the answers to the questions in the test, but she was afraid if she answered as well as she could, they''d push her ahead still futher.


    It made her feel like a freak.


    She closed her eyes, sighed, then started putting in the answers. The school supposedly had a way to tell if a student underperformed on purpose.


    Everything streaked away in a swirl of numbers, letters, and mathematical concepts.


    She was arguing with her mothers on both hands. They wanted her to go into starship piloting on the civilian side, to increase the family and clan''s fortunes. She wanted to join the military, and that meant transferring to a military clan. Her accomplishments would be attributed to that clan, not her birth clan, which would become back-hand clan members.


    She tried to hold back tears, trying to explain that since the Mar-gite had done so much damage, shouldn''t she do her part to protect what was left?


    It all streaked away with the atonal buzz.


    She stepped onto the bridge of her first command, pride filling her. She turned and looked at her new command officers, smiling despite her promise to herself she would keep professional and aloof.


    More streaks.


    Then blackness.


    No heartbeat, no breathing, just steady darkness.


    PLEASE BE PATIENT appeared in block letters in her vision.


    Words appeared in her vision.


    DEVLINTEE CLAN STARGLIDER


    she wasn''t sure who that was.


    SPECIES: HAMAROOSAN TYPE 7


    EYES: BLACK


    AGE: 34Y 9M 23D


    CAUSE OF DEATH: EXPLOSIVE DISMEMBERMENT - INSTANT - NO TRAUMA


    PROCESSING PRIORITY: LOW MODERATE - MILITARY OVERRIDE - IMMEDIATE


    She frowned. The words were one she knew, but they made no sense.


    EMOTIONAL INTERLOCKS ENGAGED


    INTELLECTUAL INTERLOCKS RELEASED


    PAGING SUPERUSER


    She just hung in blackness, no body, no breath, no heartbeat.


    Nothing.


    She felt a sudden yank under her breastbone and got the sensation of being pulled forward and downward and upward at the same time.


    The blackness shattered into fine glassy powder with the tinkling sound of a glass window exploding.


    She was held in the claws of a massive creature. Brown skin, red fiery eyes, horns, chains, and black leather. She could see screaming stars falling from the sky, pillars of flame rising up from chasms in the blasted and scorched landscape.


    "You''ll do," the massive creature rumbled.


    She found she couldn''t speak.


    The creature lifted her up by the back of her neck, turning her and examining her.


    "No significant damage to the record, core strings are holding, core personality and memories are largely intact. Didn''t really have time to go trauma locked," the creature gave a low rumbling chuckle. "Guess when your combat control bridge takes a hellspace infused nCv round, you don''t get much time to pontificate about the nature of death."


    She wanted to struggle, but her body was limp, unresponsive.


    The demon held her up, her muzzle in front of the creatures brutish face. The creatures breath reeked of brimstone and old scorched blood.


    "You''re about to cause a lot of excitement, little one," it chuckled.


    The humor sounded malevolent to her.


    "Normally, you''d go through trauma processing and everything else to make sure you don''t have any scars," the demon chuckled. "However, this will make my point just fine."


    The demon reached out with one claw and ripped a hole in midair, reality tearing with a snarl.


    "Have fun," the demon growled. "Try not to choke on any dicks."


    It shoved her through the hole.


    The world exploded in pain.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Admiral Sharnat had to admit, despite the fact that calling it a frigate was fundamentally dishonest, she was impressed by the medical ''frigate''. It was a Colossus hull, painted white with red stripes, loaded up with everything she had ever heard of and things she had not.


    She was staring at it in the holotank when her left hand nephew suddenly sat up. "Admiral," he said.


    "Go ahead," Sharnat said, staring at the ''frigate''.


    "Solarian Iron Dominion Chief Medical Officer of the Merciless Plague Doctor is requesting your presence aboard the medical frigate," he said. He shook his head. "He states it is vitally important and has repercussions for your people that you should witness."


    Sharnat frowned. "Really?"


    He nodded.


    Sharnat thought for a moment. The Captain of the vessel would probably be glad to get her out from underfoot for a while.


    "Alert my staff, prepare my shuttle," she said. "Let''s go see what the Iron Dominion thinks is so important."


    0-0-0-0-0


    She took a huge gasping breath, trying to sit up, trying to reach out, trying to jump away. Her heart triphammered for a moment then settled.


    "Easy, easy," the voice was calm and gentle. A paw settled on her head. She could feel it.


    "Your motor control cortexes are offline," the voice said. "Same with your voice control and speech center. Don''t want you screaming and flailing around. Your autonomic systems are still good and are responding without external stimulus."


    She caught her breath, realizing she could feel her body.


    She realized that for the first time in a long time, her right hock didn''t ache from where she''d broken it grav-skiing and the pins never quite sat right.


    "I''m going to release some of your gross motor control," the voice said. "Mainly, blinking. You won''t be able to move."


    She was able to open her eyes and tried to wince at how bright the lights were.


    "It''s OK. Give your eyes a moment," there was a growling chuckle that reminded her of... something. "New eyes, who dis?"


    Her vision slowly unblurred, then flipped over. She was staring at glow strips on the ceiling. She looked side to side and saw only curtains.


    There was shuffling and someone moved into view.


    It was a canine on two legs wearing old style Confederate adaptive camouflage like she''d seen in the historical books from the Second Precursor War.


    "Welcome back," the canine said.


    She just blinked.


    "All right. Blink once for yes, twice for no," the canine said. "We''ll ask a few question, then I''ll release your speech cortex."


    She blinked once.


    "The big one is: are you done screaming?"


    She blinked once.


    The canine gave a smile by lifting her upper lip for a moment.


    The questions were variants of: "Are you going to get violent or act like a fool?"


    Finally, her motor cortexes and speech centers were released. She was still held to the bed by the pressor beams, but now it was gentle instead of an absence of feedback.


    More questions, including a series where a machine was staring into her pupil.


    Finally, the canine sat down.


    "Any questions?" the canine asked.


    She blinked several times. "How?"


    The canine shrugged. "You came through as a priority rebirth. We didn''t have any killed in action, so the cloning banks and the stack were idle."


    "No, I mean, I was dead," she said.


    The canine gave a chuckle. "Yeah. Hell of a thing, isn''t it?" she frowned. "First time?"


    "What do you mean, first time? This is the really real world. People don''t come back!" she said.


    The canine twiddled her fingers. "Your SUDS was up to date. The Merciless had a hot-copy of your SUDS record less than a half-second before you were killed. Your standard SUDS copy was updated less than an hour before that, during the battle."


    "Wait, my SUDS? What''s a SUDS?" she asked.


    The canine smiled. "Oh, just a miracle."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Admiral Sharnat stared at the Hamaroosan on the other side of the glass. She was laying in a bed, talking to a Terran Descent Feline. She couldn''t hear the female''s words or voice, but she knew one of her divisional commanders.


    Sharnat also knew that the Hamaroosan laying on the bed had died when her ship had exploded with all hands.


    Sharnat turned to the Terran, who was in a fearsome looking mask with a long beak.


    "How?" she asked.


    The Terran gave a bobbing nod. "The SUDS. Of course. Hamaroosan templates are standard and have been for thirty years Terran Standard Timekeeping. It''s just a standard rebirth. Easy one. No core threading unravelling or deep consciousness strand straining. It''s simple, and as she is military, she''s priority, of course."


    Sharnat turned and stared at the Hamaroosan, the impossibility of it robbing her of thought.


    "Of course," she said automatically.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 5^2x(2^2)

    The gelatin was red and had a thick skin around it, but strangely enough Captain Devlintee found she enjoyed the taste and texture of it as she slowly ate her meal. There was some worry when she first started eating, how everything''s taste started magnifying, but a call to the nurses assured her that it was perfectly normal since she hadn''t used those taste buds before.


    Now she had finished her meal, a strange set of dishes, and was enjoying the rubbery strawberry jello.


    She knew she was being watched by everyone with a pulse in the immediate vicinity of a full light year.


    After all, less than thirty hours ago, she had been killed. Died with the rest of her crew when her ship had exploded with all hands after a hellspace infused nCv barrage slammed home into her unprotected ship.,


    Now, she was sitting up in bed, eating jello.


    Everything felt new again. She had spent a half hour just combing her fur with her blunt little claws, luxuriating in the feeling. At the advice of the feline counselor who worked with "Respawns" after she had left the care of the canine in "Respawn Recovery" she had taken an actual water shower. The water had been hot, steamy, and poured down on her. She had stood beneath the water, feeling it hammer through her fur and massage her skin.


    It had felt amazing.


    The feline nurse, one ''Tabitha'' or ''Tabbi'' for short, had told her the euphoria would end in a few days, would slowly become normal and that it would be even better.


    A day since she had respawned and she still felt grateful for her literal new lease on life.


    The fact she had not suffered nightmares was good. Apparently humans could suffer nightmares from traumatic death, but species like Hamaroosan had The Bliss, and it made it easier to do post-death trauma counseling.


    She had two or three more chances, but with each further one she''d suffer something called unraveling and twisting, which would affect her mind and her quality of life.


    She honestly wondered what would come next.


    She tapped her spoon against the half square of jello that was left and smiled at the way the spoon bounced and the jello shivered.


    There was a knock at the door and she looked up in time to see Admiral (Upper Decks) of the Warsteel Sharnat, commanding officer of the Third Hamaroosan Expeditionary Force, enter her room with a few aides, two doctors, and a pair of nurses.


    It was startling just how large humans were. It was more than their sheer physical bulk, it was like they were somehow larger than their physical bodies. Her eyes were drawn to them immediately, the way their eyes glanced over the entire room, taking in everything. Their stances made her feel like no matter what happened, the humans were prepared to deal with it quickly and efficiently.


    She understood why her ancestors had held the humans in such high esteem forty-thousand years ago.


    An aide got a chair for Admiral Sharnat, moving it next to Devlintee''s bed.


    One of them reached up and turned off the K''Lank Moo Moo Trail Rider Power Hour and Devlintee frowned.


    She liked the fast paced colorful cartoon and wanted to know if K''Lank would defeat T''Xh''x''s evil plan.


    The Admiral stared at her for a long moment while she tapped her jello with the spoon.


    "Captain?" Admiral Sharnat said softly.


    Captain Devlintee looked from her shivering jello to the Admiral. "Yes, Admiral?"


    She loved how her voice sounded. Soft but with a hint of authority, melodious and rich.


    "How are you feeling?" the Admiral asked.


    "Good. I feel really good," Devlintee said.


    The Admiral nodded. "That''s good. I was slightly worried about how you might feel?"


    "About having been dead?" Devlintee asked.


    The Admiral nodded again. "Yes. Among other things."


    Devlintee bounced the spoon on the jello, watching the jello shiver.


    "I was told that you were briefly a resident of what the Terrans call ''Hell'' before you came back," the Admiral said.


    Devlintee shrugged. "Not exactly. The big demon creature had me, but beyond the stench and the heat, I didn''t notice anything too terrible. The demon wasn''t frightening at the time, but now, thinking about it, it was a little disturbing."


    The Admiral sat silently for a moment. "Did the demon say anything?"


    Devlintee shrugged. "Kind of. It didn''t make sense though."


    "What did it say?"


    "That I would cause a lot of excitement. Then it told me to have fun and then warned me not to choke on any male genitalia. Then the demon pushed me through the rip in reality and I woke up here," Devlintee said.


    "No idea why it chose you to be first?" the Admiral asked.


    Devlintee shook her head. "Just that I was ''good enough'' and that was all it seemed to care about."


    "Hmm," the Admiral looked thoughtful.


    "The rest of my crew?" Devlintee asked.


    "A few have Respawned. Roughly a hundred. Mostly the ones that died instantly," a Terran female, nearly a whole head shorter than the shortest male, said. Devlintee liked her voice, full of confidence, authority, and quiet competence and professionalism.


    It was a voice that commanded respect effortlessly.


    "Traumatic Life Cessation Therapy is apparently where the rest are currently placed," a male Terran said.


    The timbre of his voice made Devlintee shiver pleasurably.


    "What do you plan on doing once you''re released from the hospital?" the Admiral asked.


    Devlintee thought about it. "Resume command, if that''s possible."


    The Admiral looked at the Terrans. Two of the males shrugged.


    "Would you object to being sent back home? There might be people who want to speak with you?" the Admiral said.


    "I would rather not be poked and prodded and I dislike the idea of abandoning my duty," Devlintee said. She shook her head. "I feel fine, Admiral. They say the newness will wear off and I''ll back to normal in a few days."


    The Admiral just nodded then stood up.


    "Well, we''ll leave you to your recovery," she said. "As you were."


    The Admiral swept toward the door. Right as she went out Devlintee sat up.


    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    "Hey!" Devlintee snapped.


    Everyone turned to look.


    She pointed at the aide. "Turn back on the Trivee. I want to finish the episode."


    The Terrans gave low rumbling chuckles as the Aide sheepishly went over and turned back on the trivee.


    Captain Devlintee smiled as she watched the bright cartoon and bounced her spoon on the jello.


    0-0-0-0-0


    "I knew her before she got killed and I''ve never seen her like this. It''s like she''s regressed slightly into childhood," Admiral Sharnat said. She was sitting at a large oval table, her staff on either side of her, the Terrans on the other side.


    The big human doctor, without his fearsome plague-mask, just nodded. "That''s to be expected. It''s Respawn Euphoria. We''ll figure out a way to crack it, but it''s largely harmless."


    "She didn''t seem too interested in anything I was saying," Sharnat said.


    A Terran feline nodded. "It''s because everything is new. Even eating. The old neural pathways that used to handle that, which are largely well worn and/or blown out, as well as your equivalent of dopamine receptors, are all brand new tissue and neural strands. It takes a few days to calm down."


    "That makes it hard to care about anything when even breathing is new and exciting," a Terran human said.


    "Well, she represents a complete C+ cannon shot into Hamaroosan society," Sharnat said. She shook her head. "Already JAG (Judge Advocate General) is trying to figure out her legal status."


    "Why?" a Terran male asked.


    Sharnat had to admit, she had turned off the HUD ID bars. Just something about human names were unnerving. A combination of a vague threat along with a joke that she didn''t get.


    "Well, she''s dead. And even my back right-hand cousin, whose possibly the Hamaroosan Star Conglomerate''s worst lawyer, could argue that being dead means that not only is her service contract complete, but she''s due her death benefits as well as her Military Service Benefit Awards," Admiral Sharnat said. "We don''t know if getting killed terminates her obligation to service or not."


    The Terrans all nodded slowly.


    One, who had a mouth full of sharp, triangular teeth and an auxilary processing wrap across her temples and the back of her head, tapped a long nailed finger on the table and spoke. "If she is Confederate military, according to the Confederate Code of Uniform Military Justice, her term of service is not over. The guidelines and regulations are still there, and nowhere does it say just Terran Descent Human. It states ''any servicemember'' which pretty plainly includes the Hamaroosan."


    While the bald headed female Terran was speaking black fluid had slowly stained her teeth.


    While Hamaroosans had large black eyes themselves, something about the Terran woman''s black glossy eyes unnerved Admiral Sharnat.


    "Hamaroosan legal codes also have effect," Admiral Sharnat said.


    "Not according to the Confederate Code of Uniform Military Justice, they do not," the female Terran countered. "Hamaroosan inductees sign the same paperwork as everyone else, and in Section 844.C19f they have surrendered all other legal representation and rights, including the Confederacy''s Fourteen Basic Rights, and have agreed to only be represented by the Code of Uniform Military Justice."


    "That can''t be right," one of Sharnat''s aides protested.


    The female Terran flashed a smile of black fluid smeared sharp triangular teeth. "It is correct. Killing of another sentient, sapient, or partially sentient being is illegal in almost all legal codes found outside the military, with the exceptions, possibly, for self-defense or by actors of the State. By enlisting in the Confederate Military Services, an inductee no longer is an individual person but rather an actor of the State, meaning that there is a distinct legal difference between murder and killing. You kill on the battlefield. You murder in the barracks. That puts it simply."


    She steepled her long, pale, almost bloodless fingers with the clear fingernails with bluish nail beds.


    "The Confederate Code of Uniform Justice protects a Military Services Member from the vagaries of varying governmental legal codes. It is why Confederate military bases are considered Confederate property and the Confederate Code of Uniform Military Justice is the law on post instead of local laws," the female Terran stated, her voice full of some kind of dark malicious glee that Admiral Sarnat wasn''t sure about. "There are worlds where the Confederacy has military bases where the mere act of handling a weapon is punishable by decades of imprisonment. If the Confederate military had to abide by such codes, every service member would be subject to immediate arrest."


    She sipped at some reddish drink, which stained her teeth dark red.


    "I reviewed her inductee paperwork. She is a member of the Hamaroosan Conglomerate Armed Forces," Captain Shreveree, Admiral Sharnat''s left hand second cousin stated.


    "Then you needed to check further paperwork," the Terran female countered. "Upon graduation of initial and skills training, she was assigned to vessels operating under the Confederacy of Aligned Systems flag, which means she then was transferred to the control of the Confederate Code of Military Justice."


    Her smile got wider, almost cruel.


    "All of you, every Hamaroosan in this system, is actually under the purview of that same code, not the Hamaroosan Conglomerate Armed Forces Legal Codexes," she said.


    Admiral Sarnat blinked. She looked at Shreveree, who had the unfocused look of someone examining data on her datalink.


    "This can''t be right," Shreveree said softly. "We lose our Basic Rights? The Right of Consent is limited by the CCMJ? That we can have things done to us or be commanded to do things against our consent?"


    "You agreed to consent to all legal orders, commands, and actions when you were inducted into the service," the sharp toothed female Terran said. She looked at the ranking Terran officer. "Although it is undiplomatic and perhaps I should say it in private, but the Hamaroosan and other species have a strange, almost childish understanding of the legal system that protects them."


    The general in charge of the meeting nodded. "I blame their drill instructors."


    The female Terran nodded. "A fine place to place the blame," she looked at Shreveree directly. "How else do you order men and women to their deaths? How else do you order men and women into combat? Someone''s consent is getting violated. Nobody wants to die, counselor. Even the Clone War Lyfe troops want to live as long as possible. Consent on the battlefield is extremely limited, and the Hamaroosan ideal of enthusiastic consent for every interaction cannot and should not be applied to warfare."


    Shreveree just blinked.


    "When you order your troops into battle, be it on the ground, in space, or upon water, you are acting with their implied consent, just as your own commander is acting with your applied consent," the female Terran stated. "Of course, one must always take into account that you are giving orders to heavily armed trained killers, thus the saying: never give an order you know will not be obeyed or cannot be obeyed," she folded her arms. "It''s basic leadership principles."


    Sharnat had to admit, she had never seen Shreveree completely speechless.


    "While, perhaps, under your own civilian legal code, or by Hamaroosan military laws, the subject may be considered to have completed their term of enlistment once they have been killed and Respawned, under Confederate Law all contracts are still in force and according to the Confederate Code of Uniform Military Justice the subject of this discussion is still a serving member of Confederate Space Force."


    Sharnat rapped on the table with one knuckle. "I believe that sets her legal status firmly. She''s still a Captain, she''s still under my command, and she still is a Confederate Space Force service member."


    The female Terran nodded, smiling cruelly at Shreveree.


    "How long until she is able to take command?" Sharnat asked.


    One of the male Terrans, a canine, gave a shrug. "Hard to tell. We haven''t cracked Hamaroosan Respawn Euphoria, so we have to deal with that. We don''t know how long it will last. Then she had knowledge and reflex testing. While a Terran Descent Human would return to command within an hour, we current predict that it may take up to two weeks."


    Sharnat nodded. "That is more than acceptable."


    "Shall we turn to the fabrication side?" a Terran male asked.


    Sharnat nodded.


    "Right now the creation engines have the templates loaded to replace your losses. Rebuilding is going underway," the Terran tapped the table.


    Sharnat stared as it showed what looked like a light dreadnought being assembled in fast forward. The keel slid from a massive glowing iris, then it moved down a line with robotic arms and gantries rapidly assembling it from the core outward.


    "So far, replacement component failure rates are in the low parts per trillion," the Terran said. "As you can see, construction of a Terran cruiser class vessel is undergoing at the standard rate of one per six hours."


    Sharnat raised her eyebrow tufts and flicked her ears in shock.


    "At current rate, your fleet should be completely reconstituted in sixteen days," the Terran said. "It will need, of course, shakedown cruises to identify any mismanufactured or mis-installed components as well as make sure the crews are ready," he tapped the table. "Right now, your biggest problem is manpower."


    Sharnat just nodded, staring.


    "We''re hoping that the return of your Captain means that the SUDS Respawn will allow you to crew the vessels with the former crewmembers before the shakedown cruises are over," the Terran said.


    "Are you able to replace the weapons?" Admiral Sharnat asked. "My briefing warned me that your weapons, armor, and shielding would possibly be obsolete."


    The Terran nodded. "We have complete template scans of your weapons, drives, and other components. We were able to upgrade the Creation Engines with your new metallurgy and material sciences. We can outfit your ships exactly as they were."


    For some reason, Sharnat got the feeling she was being lied to.


    Not about the fact they could rebuild her ships right down the tool mark impressions on the bolts.


    Just... something about the word ''upgrade'' made her feel like the Terran was lying.


    "We appreciate that," Sharnat said. She looked around, then back at the Terran. "Until I get orders, I''m holding in this system."


    The Terran just nodded.


    "Let''s figure out spheres of authority."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Sharnat sat in her cabin, staring at the wall. On it was projected a realtime visual of the two massive refit and repair vessels. They were capable of handling the repairs for a super-heavy colossus hull in drydock conditions.


    As she watched a light cruiser keel, what the Terrans considered a destroyer, was being pulled via tractor beam from the glowing red iris.


    She timed it.


    Six point five minutes until the tugs took possession of the completed light cruiser and moved it to a parking berth on the outside of the repair vessel.


    "A dreadful thing has been released upon the universe," she whispered to her dark stateroom.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 100

    If you have never dealt with Terrans nothing can prepare you for the experience. - Former Grand Most High Sma''akamo''o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff


    Admiral (Upper Decks) of the Warsteel Sharnat checked her implant again. Her Chief of Staff was not answering her comlink or her datalink, despite Sharnat having pinged her several times, the last two with the high priority attachment, over the last hour.


    Now she was moving through the corridors of the massive refit and repair ship, heading deeper into it. Her datalink was connected to the ship''s computer, which was kind enough to inform Admiral Sharnat that Vice Admiral of the Bronze (Lower Decks) Sheemee was in something called "Aquatic Sports & Therapy" toward the aft end of the massive ship.


    She took two lifts and one tram, finally arriving.


    It was startling just how huge the Terran ship was.


    Her own ship was dwarfed by the Black Sea Rabbit, the Solarian Iron Dominion repair vessel.


    It was six superheavy super-colossus hulls arranged long ways, welded to four welded together hulls that were sideways, to form a two level ''W'' structure.


    Where her ship was modern spherical warfighting theory, where the best coverage for the least dedicated systems, the Solarian ships were all classical long and narrow ships.


    Her ship could fit in between two the levels of the W with ease.


    She knew this for a fact because three hours ago tugs and tractor beams had moved her damaged ship into place. Into a ''repair slip'' on the massive repair ship.


    Which was why she was looking for her Chief of Staff. She checked her implant and she saw the timer running down.


    Two more hours until her ship began undergoing repairs.


    There were two more sets of numbers. One was at 64.87% and rising. That was how close the ''scanning'' was to being finished. Exterior was done, the scans were now taking place inside her ship.


    The second was 12.5 Hours and it wasn''t moving much.


    Estimated time for repairs to be completed. Before the interior scans had begun, the time for estimated repair completion had sat stubbornly at just under an hour.


    She shook her head.


    Finally she reached the door for the "Aquatic Sports & Therapy Bay" and tapped the door control.


    She knew it would be tanks of whirlpool baths, maybe a swimming pool or two. All of which acted as additional water storage that could be reclaimed easily for other uses.


    Admiral Sharnat took two steps in and stopped.


    Yes, there were hot tubs and whirlpool baths. Yes, there were two swimming pools.


    As she had expected.


    What she didn''t expect were large globes of water hanging in mid-air. The smallest at least a hundred meters in diameter, the largest at least five hundred meters in diameter. Inside the globes were beings swimming, throwing what looked like an air bubble at each other, or just floating inside.


    She moved over to where her implant insisted her Chief of Staff was at and looked up.


    There were humans, dogbois, felines, Hamaroosans, and others inside the huge globe of water. There was some kind of complex game involving throwing a flashing bubble of air to one another and trying to get it through a hoop.


    She waved her catching hands when she saw her Chief of Staff. The other Hamaroosan paused for a second and got hit in the back with one of the smaller, faster flashing bubbles, sending her slowly spinning forward.


    Sharnat moved off to the side and waited until her Chief of Staff moved to the bottom of the bubble and dropped out into the smaller circular pool, then waded out of that. She stopped at a small table, taking off a mask and using a cloth on the table to wipe it out before setting it down.


    Sharnat frowned. Her Chief of Staff had a plastic pauldron on her right catching shoulder and Sharnat could see Vice-Admiral Sheemee''s fur was shaved around it for about a half-inch. Sheemee accepted a fluffy towel from a dogboi sitting on a stool next to a table piled high with warm steaming towels, and hustled over to Admiral Sharnat.


    "Admiral," Sheemee said. She had a big smile. She turned and waved at the bubble. "That thing is amazing."


    "What is on your shoulder?" Sharnat asked.


    "Surgical repair regeneration cast," the Vice-Admiral said. "Didn''t my staff tell you? I went in for surgery when we were at the medical frigate two days ago."


    "No, they didn''t," Sharnat said. Sharnat remembered that Sheemee had been involved in a ground car accident roughly fifteen years prior and the nanite repair and rebuilds had never quite taken and cybernetics or surgical implants were not an option.


    "They fixed my catching shoulder. Blade and laser surgery," she pointed at the bubble. "I''m cleared for physical therapy, so I was learning how to play Sphere Blitz from the humans," she laughed. "Apparently, the sport is almost as old as the Glassing."


    "Impressive," she said. She looked at the globes of water. "That is strange."


    "Null-G field with a small graviton attractor point in the middle," Sheemee said. She smiled. "Really simple, once you think about it."


    "Ah," Sharnat said. She shook her head. "We have somewhere to be in less than two hours."


    "They didn''t forward you my medical profile?" Sheemee asked.


    Again Sharnat shook her head. "No, they did not."


    "I''m on light duty for the next week. I was quarters until this morning," Sheemee said. She gave a smile. "I feel pretty good. What''s going on?"


    "They''ll be starting repairs on the Inescapable Grip in two hours," Sharnat said.


    "Let me change," she said. She reached up and tapped her datalink implant. "There, I''m back online. Let me know when and where and I''ll be there with the rest of your staff."


    This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    Sharnat nodded. "As you were."


    Sheemee hurried off toward the locker room.


    Sharnat turned and looked up at the massive globes of water. There were beings inside doing slow flips, throwing around the flickering air bubbles. The smaller ones that flickered red were obviously to be thrown at each other, the larger one was supposed to be thrown through the hoop. She watched how fast the humans were at it, comparing to how slow the Hamaroosan players were in the one that Sheemee had left.


    She turned to leave the massive bay, shaking her head.


    I''m going to have words with Naval and Confederate Intelligence Services.


    0-0-0-0-0


    "We''re completely stalled down! We''re slushed out and under heavy attack! We need orbital support, air support, reinforcements, and resupple!" Captain Thriktree yelled into the microphone of the radio his radioman was carrying.


    On the other side of the berm made up of wreckage and ruined vehicles, the charred and smoldering looking creatures shrieked and kept charging, bounding forward, ignoring the lasers snapping at them until they took enough hits to collapse into chunks of carbonized flinders that burned away into purple-black smoke.


    "You''re in the queue, but it''ll take at least two hours for support to reach you," the dwonk on the horn said, his voice calm and unbothered.


    Of course, he wasn''t being shot at by the heavy weapons platforms that kept spawning out of the crashed spaceship only two miles away.


    "They''ve got us pinned, we cannot continue with the mission," Thriktree snapped. "They''re going around us to get into the city while keeping us pinned down."


    "Perform best as able," the helpful dipshit said.


    There was the double beep of the commo line disconnecting.


    "Dammit!" Thriktree snapped.


    The Hamaroosan Marines, while not as well known thanks to PR as the Telkan Marines, were still tough customers. Power armor and power assist, heavy weapons teams, high speed training and experience.


    But the enemy seemed to be limitless in their numbers.


    "Hellspace portal!" Lieutenant Calteti yelled out. "Spawn portal!"


    Thriktree snarled, looking through the berm by peering through the shotout windows of the groundcar he was huddled behind.


    Hellspace portals were opening up and those damn creatures were bounding out of it.


    The jamming suddenly increased to the point that Thriktree could taste it across his balls.


    "TANK! WE''VE GOT TANKS!" someone else yelled.


    Thriktree let out another curse and lifted up his periscope, getting a quick view.


    Three larger Hellspace portals were opening up, hovertanks sliding out. The weapons started hammering at the dirt, ferrocrete, and wreckage berm that had been formed by the spacecraft''s crash.


    Everything went white as the ship cut loose with one of the cannons. The shot went by overhead, and Thriktree knew without looking that the city behind him just lost a few dozen square blocks. The heat bloomed then quickly disappated. The rapid cooling sucked in dust from everywhere, pulling it in a long mushroom cloud.


    None of his men''s transponders went out.


    "Get someone on the horn, we need support," Thriktree snapped, going to hand back the mic.


    "Hamaroosan Marine ground element on this channel, please respond," came a growling voice that brought to mind a fierce beast crouched down. "Hamaroosan Marine ground element on this channel, please respond."


    "This is Captain Thriktree. Identify yourself," he said, pulling the mic back.


    "Please verify landing rings are clear," the voice stated.


    Thriktree blinked as an arrow appeared on his HUD. He turned and looked behind him.


    There were dozens of small rings, a meter wide at the ground, stacked up and growing progressively wider to a height of ten meters.


    He didn''t see any of his men or their transponders.


    "Landing rings are clear. Please identify yourself," Thriktree demanded.


    There was the triple beep of the call being disconnected.


    "Dammit, who was that?" Thriktree asked.


    "Dunno, sir," his radioman said.


    The rings went from green to yellow, the rings pulsing in sequence to give the appearance of moving downward.


    "Hamaroosan Marine ground elements, incoming starfall," a voice suddenly stated. The same kind of growl, but a different voice. It had the "Task Force Reaper" icon and went silent as soon as it had spoken.


    "Starfall? What?" Thriktree asked.


    The tanks were getting closer, navigating the rubble strewn ground. More were exiting the Hellspace portals.


    The rings went red.


    A main gun round blew a divot from the berm, but none of the transponders went out.


    There was a loud crack, like thunder, and the ground shook as something slammed into each of the rings.


    As Thriktree watched, the dust cleared as the sides dropped down from the tall elongated hexagon sided black objects that had slammed into the ground.


    From inside came nighmares.


    Completely black. Eyes a burning green. Three meters tall, a meter wide. Bipedal with only two arms.


    And heavily armed.


    They immediately started moving toward Thriktree''s lines and he tensed.


    "Hamaroosan Marine ground elements, please respond," came a growling voice. One of the black robot looking things was highlighted.


    Major Squarehead, Ninth Heavy Assault Company, Iron Dominion Assault Marines.


    "This is Captain Thriktree," he said.


    The Major veered toward Thriktree.


    "Your reinforcements have arrived, Confederate," the Major stated.


    As he watched, laser and plasma packets fired from the burnt creatures hit a few of the big black robots as they advanced forward, not bothering to take cover, moving in a serrated line slowly but surely advancing forward. Drones were being launched by the big robots, weapons were being deployed, and Thriktree could see the sparkling of battlescreens coming online.


    And either exploded in sparks or bounced off, neither of which seemed to have any effect.


    Captain Thriktree stared up as the Marine Major stopped and looked down.


    "You are being provided assistance."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Admiral Sharnat left the lift and moved across the bay. She stepped onto the tram and looked around. Already standing at the huge macroplas smart windows were Iron Dominion officers.


    She could see her ship in front of her. It was already surrounded by a lattice of gantries and scaffolding.


    A blinking icon over one of the Dominion officers showed her who would be debriefing her.


    The timer stated it would take sixteen hours to repair her vessel.


    Her Chief Engineer had told her that her ship would need nearly six months in drydock.


    She stepped up to the huge Terran, coming up to barely above his waist.


    "Admiral," the Terran said. "I thought you''d like to see the initial repairs rather than getting reports on them."


    "Thank you," she stated.


    Looked out the window she could see large drones moving into position. Some over the holes in her ship. Some moving across the vast expanse of thick armor that covered her spherical ship.


    The Terran reached out and tapped some controls on the smartwindow.


    A large red button appeared on the smartglass.


    "When you are ready, Admiral," the Terran stated.


    Sharnat felt a little foolish as she reached forward and tapped the button.


    Immediately the drones dove in and started working. She watched as beams played over the armor.


    It turned to mist and was sucked away by other drones.


    "What?" she said, shocked.


    "Mass collector beam. Suppresses the electron, turns matter into fog at the atomic level," the Terran said. "Standard engineering tool."


    "Why isn''t it used as a weapon?" Sharnat asked.


    "It''s close range. There''s two parts, everything between the two beam sets is what turns to fog. Hard to keep both beams on a moving target," the Terran said. "Of course, it is used sometimes."


    Thriktree watched as the big robot, no, cyborg swung a glittering fist into the chest of one of the larger burnt monstrocities. There was a crackling sound and large divot exploded out in burning vapors.


    "Strip the armor off first, then we get to the internals," the Terran said.


    Sharnat stood and watched as in less than an hour the drones had stripped all the armor off of her vessel, exposing the superstructure.


    "The damaged sections have been scanned, compared to your engineering blueprints," the Terran said. "The high speed systems print out the parts, run it through nearly two hundred tests, then put the part in place."


    She watched as scaffolding seemed to build itself into the damaged sections of her ship.


    "Your vessel is small enough we don''t need anything larger than a class fifteen creation engine to build your parts," the Terran said.


    Robotic systems were moving rapidly into and out of the gaping holes in her denuded vessel.


    "Physical repairs should be completed in two or three hours. Then the tests, then main power connection and the rest of the repairs," the Terran said.


    Sharnat looked up at the Terran. "The Hamaroosan people thank you."


    The Terran nodded. "We are pleased to be able to provide assistance."


    This terrible thing unleashed upon our universe the Hamaroosan people will cleave to rather than surrender to entropy, Sharnat thought to herself as she turned her attention back to her ship being repaired.


    But a small voice in the back of her mind wouldn''t shut up.


    And what will they do when the war is over?


    That''s a problem for future me, she answered.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 101

    Captain Thriktree watched as more and more of the big black robots -no, cyborgs- exited the drop pods and quickly moved to take position. He noticed that one man out of five was staying beside the drop pod, flipping down a thick reentry shield panel and putting their hand on an induction pad. He looked around and saw Major Squarehead was pointing at various groups of Hamaroosan Marines. Each time they pointed, Dominion Marines would run over to the Hamaroosans, kneeling down and the sparkle of their battlescreens would thicken up.


    A cyborg moved up next to Captain Thriktree and knelt down.


    "You are being provided assistance," the cyborg said. It held up a disc marked with the vertical line topped by a dot with three curved lines above it, the universal symbol for wireless communications. "Please do not resist," the cyborg said, then slapped the disc on Thriktree''s shoulder.


    There were several clinks.


    "Get a buddy! Double up if you can," Major Squarehead''s voice suddenly came across Thriktree''s suit loud and clear. His HUD read "AUX CHANNEL 7" being used.


    The cyborg moved to the communications expert and held up another disc. "You are being provided assistance. Please do not resist," it said.


    "I want those drop pods reconfigured. Get on it!" Squarehead''s voice was steady and didn''t change tone or inflection, but Thriktree could feel the urgency in it. "Walkers and crawlers, nothing over six-fifty kiloton a second, we got civilians nearby!"


    Thriktree blinked rapidly, letting that sink in.


    Another cyborg moved up and Thriktree noted the wrench/lugnut combo on the upper part of the neck vambrace. The cyborg had a heavy pack and knelt down next to Thriktree. It held out its hand and passed its palm over Thriktree''s weapon and armor.


    "I was told you were slushed out. Where''s your nanoforge?" the cyborg asked over Local Aux-3.


    Thriktree slapped the nanoforge at his waist. A flat square pack with red lights blinking across the top.


    The cyborg ran a palm over it, scanning it.


    "What''s it provide for you?" the Dominion Marine asked. "Not sure what this does."


    "Provides armor repair nanites and armor repair components as well as power for my armor''s strength assist," Thriktree said.


    There was silence for a moment. "All right, give me a few seconds," there was another pause. "6673, can you do anything?"


    The starship fired again and Thriktree saw the beam strike a skyraker, blowing a hole clear threw it.


    The mushroom cloud was partially by the skyline of the skyrakers of the megalopolis.


    "No, I don''t think he wants to eject from the armor and put on a real suit of armor," the Dominion troop said. "How is that helpful? No, you can''t just spray him with wonderseal, tape a sawed off hellbore to his head, and send him in."


    It took a second for Thriktree to realize that the Dominion Marine wasn''t talking to him.


    "That''s not helpful either. We don''t tell allies to ''hold this nuke'' and then heaty-yeety them at the enemy," the Marine said, giving a big sigh at the end. "OK, whip up an armor repair pack, forward it to the rest of you greenie meanies."


    The Dominion Marine looked at him. "OK, I''m getting something fabbed up. My greenie was insulted by something your suit VI said."


    "Greenie?" Thriktree asked.


    "My green mantid engineering buddy. Part of third platoon ''Green Meanies''," the Dominion Marine said.


    Another blast.


    "EVERYONE GRAB A BUDDY! BLOW A HOLE AND GET IN IT!" the Major''s voice came over Command-Aux-3.


    "Shit," the Marine talking to Thriktree said. He turned and tossed a grenade, turning away slightly. There was a flash, that was repeated all over the berm, and small debris showered down. "Get in."


    The Dominion cyborg jumped into the hole and crouched down.


    Thriktree followed and realized that he had to stand on his tiptoes to see over the edge.


    *CLOSE AIR SUPPORT*


    *ARTY SUPPORT*


    *DANGER CLOSE*


    appeared on his HUD.


    "GET IN TIGHT WITH THE DOMINION GUYS!" Captain Thriktree yelled over his commo channel, which was still full of clicks and pops.


    The Dominion cyborg reached out, grabbed Thriktree''s commo specialist, and dragged him into the hole. Thriktree could see one of those discs on the back of the commo pack and another one on the commo specialist''s shoulder.


    "Captain, there''s someone called 7712 asking to work on my pack," the commo specialist said.


    "Give them authorization," Thriktree said, guessing it was another green meanie.


    Right as he finished speaking strikers whipped across the battlefield, just on the other side of the berm. They were so fast they were blurred to Thriktree and their jetstream turbulence sent the carbonized looking enemy flying into the air, shedding parts, as the concentric vapor ringed path went by.


    Then the entire thing exploded in flame. White flame with a blue core and a clear flame edge.


    *ARTY FIVE SEC*


    *DANGER CLOSE*


    Thriktree wondered what the hell the artillery was supposed to hit, because everything on the other side of the berm, and the opposite side of the burn was currently on fire.


    "What the hell was that?" Thriktree asked.


    "Spooky particle FOOF enhanced plasma-napalm," the Dominion troop next to him said. "Sticks to kids."


    "And everything else, apparently," Thriktrees commo specialist said.


    "That''s why we love it," the Dominion troop said.


    Thriktree expected the typical hammering of HE or maybe HIT rounds out into the fire.


    Instead it was purple and blue and gold flashes, a loud series of THRUM impacts, and the ground heaved. The walls of the makeshift foxhole jiggled like jello for a second as the impacts turned the ground itself into a semi-solid. Burning dirt started raining down, hitting the battlescreens and leaving nothing but fire that hissed and crackled.


    To Thriktree it looked, crazily enough, like the energy of the battlescreen was on fire for almost a full second.


    "THIRD PLATOON! ADVANCE! GET IN THERE, SALAMANDERS!" Major Squarehead bellowed out over the Command Aux-5 channel.


    Thriktree saw heavy, bulky cyborgs vault out of the makeshift foxholes and advance straight into fire, which seemed to have regained strength after the artillery barrage.


    "Sir, we''re being flanked on both sides," Lieutenant Hooloort warned Thriktree.


    "Major, we''re being flanked on both sides," Thriktree passed on, staring as the heavy cyborgs vanished into the flame.


    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    "Good, they can''t get away. Where''s your heavy weapons? Any Special Tasks elements?" the Major asked.


    "Our Special Tasks and Heavy Weapons Platoon got pinned down twelve klicks east," Thriktree said. "They''re pulled back into a building but under heavy attack."


    "Toss me the grid," the Major said.


    Thriktree was feeling more comfortable and passed the grid to the Dominion officer.


    He looked over in time to see the drop pods suddenly shift. The sides became heavy shield-like legs, the middle, with the main thrusters on it, rotated to face the berm, and it dropped down.


    "Gunpods, get ready," the Major said. "Thriktree, we''re gonna screen you."


    The engineer suddenly slapped discs on Thriktree and the commo specialist''s shoulders, then chest and back, then waist on each side, then thighs.


    *synching* appeared on his HUD.


    "Shield emitters. Not as good as we''d like, but it''ll help. Graviton centrifuge generator," the engineer said. "Won''t drain your armor''s power supply."


    Thriktree nodded.


    The Engineer slapped something on the side of his aux-power pack, which was still reading it was overheated. It blinked several times, then reported that it has 1,755% power left.


    "That should help," the Engineer said, slapping a disc on the commo tech''s nanopack.


    "Roos, keep your heads down!" the Major suddenly yelled.


    "That''s you two," the Engineer said, putting his hands on top of Thriktree and the commo tech''s heads and pushing them a little further into the hole.


    *ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC*


    scrolled by on his HUD.


    Everything vanished in a roar. Thriktree felt like he''d have been thrown against the foxhole''s wall or maybe even clear out of it if it wasn''t for the steadying hand of the engineer. Before he could follow the thought further the concussion went back the other way as ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC appeared on his HUD again.


    "HELLSTOMPERS! OUT OF YOUR HOLES! ADVANCE INTO THE ENEMY BY FIRE ELEMENTS!" the Major''s voice yelled.


    Thriktree saw the engineer vault out of the foxhole.


    "Captain, we''re advancing into the enemy. What''s your orders to your Company?" the Dominion Major suddenly asked. "You have enemy on three sides. The Salamanders are ripping up the starship, the Helldroppers are already dropping in on your pinned down Special Tasks platoon."


    "What''s your suggestion?" Captain Thriktree asked. To be honest, he had no idea of the capabilities of the Dominion troops beyond the MI briefing that had stated that Dominion tech was likely to be forty thousand years out of date and so obsolete as to be worthless.


    "Have your Roos get in close to a battle buddy, stay behind their battlescreens. We''ll send a platoon east and west, have one platoon stick here at the berm, close with and destroy the enemy, then bolster the northern line, cut off their attempts at flanking. The Salamanders are on board the starship. They''ve already disabled their hellgates, so reinforcements have ceased being an enemy option."


    "What about my wounded?" Captain Thriktree asked.


    "Medics are already working. Got a medevac coming in hot," the Major said. "Thirty-two-ninety-three Evac hospital is already setting up, we''ll get your men there as soon as we can dust-off."


    Captain Thriktree breathed a sigh of relief.


    "All right, let''s do it," he said.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Admiral Sharnat stepped into the briefing room. The air had the slight ozone tang that she''d come to associate with Treana''ad pheromone countering. Her entire staff was there, including her Chief of Staff, who still had the plastic pauldron on her shoulder. She sat down and tapped the table with the fingers of her gripping hands.


    "All right, let''s start," she said.


    In turn, the officers gave the status of what remained of the fleet. It was quiet, it was subdued.


    It was ugly.


    Shipwise, she had taken 64% destroyed in action. The remaining were damaged.


    Personnelwise, she had taken 73% killed in action and 19% wounded in action.


    The reality of space combat was when a ship blew up, it usually took everyone with it. Weapons that penetrated shields and armor killed crewmembers instantly.


    Her Chief of Fleet Grip ended the litany of destroyed in action or disabled in action and looked uncomfortable for a moment.


    "That''s what it was at the end of the battle, two hours after the Dominion armada arrived," she said. She looked around. "I will now present the numbers as they stood the hour before this meeting began."


    She tapped the table.


    "Heavy cruiser and lighter vessel strength is at 100%. Capital ship strength is at 85% and expected to be at one hundred percent within twenty-four hours," she said softly. "Crew recovery is at 83% and rising, with over half of the recovered crew out of... uh... ''euphoric treatment'' and the rest expected to return to duty within the next seventy-two hours."


    She looked up.


    "Over 83% of the killed in action have been recovered by Dominion Resuscitation Services," she swallowed. "The remaining 17% are estimated enter euphoria recovery in the next sixty hours. Dominion Resuscitation Services estimate less than 3% will fail recovery for various reasons."


    She swallowed thickly.


    "This is..." she looked up. "This is... unprecedented and my office is unsure how to proceed. These Hamaroosan were killed in action, yet the Dominion has ''recovered'' them. My office has interviewed nearly a hundred in the last eighty hours and they are, without a doubt, the same Hamaroosan who were aboard the ships as well as the ground combat forces."


    Sharnat nodded slowly.


    "I''m unsure of whether or not they should be returned to duty," the Chief of Fleet Grip said.


    Sharnat closed her eyes, thinking for a moment.


    She needed the manpower. She needed the ships.


    Her fleet had suffered the worst near defeat in history, as far as she could remember from her history classes.


    But now, less than a hundred hours later, and the Dominion was returning everyone and everything.


    She made a decision.


    "Return them to duty," she said.


    The Chief of Fleet Grip nodded.


    The meeting kept going.


    Then came the Chief of Ground Grip.


    "With the destruction of orbital support, our ground forces were pinned down by enemy forces. We suffered nearly forty-percent killed in action and an additional eighteen percent wounded in action," the Chief of Ground Grip closed her eyes for a moment.


    "Dominion Recovery Services have returned all but an estimated two point one percent as of an hour ago," she said. She shuddered. "Interviews and examination of battlefield telemetry verifies that not only were these Hamaroosan Marines killed, they were returned to battle within hours. Some of the Marines were killed a second or third time and returned to battle."


    "What''s our ground troop force levels?" Admiral Sharnat asked.


    "Over ninety-six percent now," the Chief of Ground Grip stated.


    Sharnat nodded. "Continue, please."


    The issue of rearming and replacing expendable items had reared its head and then been sidestepped by Dominion Main Sustainment Brigade assitence.


    Even vehicles and aerospace fighters had been returned.


    "A check of molecular circuitry numbers show that somehow the Dominion forces just replicated the same six vehicles of each class. More than a few vehicles, by serial number, are a combination of six different vehicles," she shuddered. "All produced, tested, and repaired if necessary by the Dominion support units."


    Sharnat just nodded, keeping her "The admiral is interested but not too interested" face on.


    Inside she was screaming.


    "How does our morale look?" Sharnat asked.


    "Good," the Chief of Ground Grip said.


    Sharnat nodded. "Continue."


    From there it went to the fact that ground force commanders wanted to train with the Dominion troops for ''better combined forces integration and cohesion'' although the Chief of Ground Grip believed it had more to do with Dominion combat support was jumps and swings better than Hamaroosan.


    Sharnat just jotted down notes and made non-commital noises.


    Then came the Chief of Intelligence Grip.


    She stood up and was silent for a long moment.


    "What just happened is a result of the two largest failures of Hamaroosan and Confederate Intelligence since the Mar-gite Resurgence," she said, lifting her chin. "The enemy''s capabilities were wildly under-estimated."


    She went through it. Number. Weapon and shield capability. Ship types and number. Group troop types. The fact that the enemy had ground and aerospace vehicles.


    Then she paused and took a drink of water.


    "Naval Intelligence, both Hamaroosan and Confederate, had determined that the Solarian Iron Dominion was too far behind in war fighting technology and tactics to be effective against a modern opponent," she said. She shook her head.


    The ghosts of billions of Lanaktallan and Mantid howled with laughter.


    "We, and the Confederacy, are so laughably outclassed the Dominion might as well be doing magic," she said.


    "Pure warsteel production ceased thousands of years ago. Warsteel Mark-9 is an alloy that contains less than 5% warsteel," the Chief of Intelligence Grip stated. She tapped the table, bringing up small holograms of vehicles, spaceships, power armor, cyborgs.


    "Dominion armor appears to be a variant of Warsteel Mark-One. Almost pure warsteel," she stated. She opened a window above the table and showed Dominion cyborgs wreathed in white fire marching steadily through an inferno. "This burns at over three thousand degrees Kelvin absolute. They are completely unaffected by it."


    Another window of tanks, tread driven tanks instead of modern antigrav hover tanks, driving forward. There was a flash.


    "That was a twelve megaton blast at less than eight hundred meters in front of the lead tank," the Chief of Intelligence Grip said.


    The picture changed. Heavy cannon fire was coming out of the debris cloud. After a moment it showed the same tanks, their paint markings slightly scuffed, roaring out of the debris cloud.


    "It barely scuffed their paint. Those tanks weigh over a thousand metric short tons," she said.


    The Chief of Intelligence Grip heaved a breath. "I have instructed my staff to discard all data from Naval Intelligence, both Confederate and Hamaroosan, and use only the data from this battle to completely rebuild out models."


    Sharnat nodded.


    The Chief of Intelligence Grip sat down.


    Eventually, the meeting ended.


    Sharnat sat at the table, even after she waved out her Chief of Staff.


    She dimmed the lights.


    The hologram windows popped up over the table.


    Hamaroosan sailors who had been killed sitting in "Euphoric Recovery", tanks rolling through atomic and nuclear detonations. Aerospace fighters turning into the atomic blast and streaking out the other side. Burning warborg advancing into the enemy.


    She paused the videos.


    One one, a Solarian Dominion Army Medic was looking up into the camera, the faceplate fashioned to look like a human skull with burning red eyes. There was a crouched Solarian Marine next to the medic, a canine whose armor was white and covered with black spots, who was staring at the Hamaroosan on the ground in front of them.


    Are you there, Digital Omnimessiah? she asked silently. Are you real too?


    The skull-faced helmet of a Dominion Assault Marine gave her no answers.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 101

    Just because you think you''re top the heap, the best of the best, the most badass predator in the galaxy, doesn''t mean there isn''t someone tougher out there.


    We Lanaktallan learned that the hard way.


    But because we were willing to accept reality, we learned from it and grew stronger. -  Former Grand Most High Sma''akamo''o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff


    "It''s a weird war," CPL Ralvex, 4th Telkan Marine Division


    The mess hall was a busy place, even at 0200 hours. Individuals, small groups, teams, even whole platoons came in to eat, shoot the shit, and leave again.


    A being simply waited in line, if there was one, to get to the single troop sitting behind a podium, printed their name, their service number, their unit, then signed their name. Once inside, there were three places to get food. The automatic kiosks, which had stuff already prepared, just grab something, wrapped neatly, and usually to go, and head out. A being could even scan a chit from other service members to grab stuff. Usually those beings grabbed drinks on the way out.


    I buy, you fly agreement.


    The second one was the traditional line of cooks. You simply asked what was on the menu, grab a tray and cutlery, and went down the line selecting just how you wanted your food. In a mess hall like this one, that served multiple species, there were four lines. Once you had your food, you went and sat down, ate, took your dishes to the washing area, then left.


    Easy peasy.


    The last one was new to Captain Thriktree. Nutriforges. A being went up, used the context menus, selected a meal, personalized it, and the nutriforge tossed out a meal on a tray, cutlery, bowls, whatever. The menu was wide and varied, a lot of it was stuff that most troops would never be able to afford or even knew about.


    Which was why Captain Thriktree sat eating a salad of nuptree leaves and remtolla meat slices.


    He''d never had it, but seen it on plenty of media, usually eaten by the cool, the hip, the rich.


    Which is why he shouldn''t have been surprised it tasted like farm fresh ass.


    He lifted up a leaf he had dabbed sauce on, with the remtolla meat slice on it, and put it in his mouth, trying not to wrinkle his nose in disgust.


    He failed.


    After a little while he just got up, went over the disposal, and tossed the whole thing in.


    He tried his luck at the nutriforge again. Trying a meal he had seen in several movies and had always wanted to try.


    It has all the taste of tepid water and was about as enjoyable to eat as chewing rubber.


    He sighed and tossed it back, then said hell with it and ordered up a sandwich and a piece of fruit. Whatever a ''pear'' was, it sounded inoffensive. It was a golden fruit, speckled, heavy and juicy.


    It also tasted really good.


    Which surprised Thriktree, since it was a fruit native to a planet that wanted the inhabitants to die. As in, hated them.


    He was halfway through his meal, which was pretty damn good once he figured out he was supposed to dip the sandwich in the broth instead of drinking the broth, when he saw something strange.


    A white and black spotted Terran dogboi, in adaptive camouflage, walking next to someone that Thriktree''s implant ID''d almost instantly.


    Major Wooleeloo, the battalion executive officer.


    Who had gotten his head blown off two days ago.


    Thriktree watched as the Major went over to the nutriforge and started playing with it. The dogboi, who had a medic armband on, watched as the Major quickly moved through the menus.


    Thriktree frowned. The major had three sandwiches, a salad, some roasted meat, and four desserts. Then two glasses of drink and two cans.


    The Major saw Thriktree and made a direct line for him.


    Thriktree watched as the Major sat down and nodded.


    "Captain," the Major said.


    "Major," Thriktree answered.


    The Major leaned down and started sniffing at everything. About halfway through his sniff-testing Wooleeloo turned to the dogboi.


    "This all smells amazing!" the Major blurted out.


    "Everything will," the dogboi said. "It will last a few days but fade into pleasant familiarity," the dogboi tapped the table. "It will taste amazing too."


    "I gotta try this," the Major said. He stabbed a piece of roasted meat. "I hated this," he said, then shoved the whole cut into his mouth, chewing rapidly. His eyes opened wide. "THIS IS AWESOME!" he blurted out around his mouthful of food.


    Several times the dogboi had to stop the Major from jamming the whole sandwich into his mouth, and three times the dogboi had to stop the Major from drinking the entire drink in one long gulp.


    "You''ll be sorry!" the can squeaked when the Major opened it.


    He sipped it. His eyes got wide. He upended the can and began drinking it as fast as he could.


    "Stop," the dogboi said, a voice full of infinite patience. "Your heart is going to explode," the last was said with what Thriktree''s implant told him was a gentle smile, but seemed to be just lifting the upper lip to expose a LOT of teeth.


    Finally, the Major finished shoving everything into his mouth, tried tasting the tray, then was escorted away.


    Thriktree shook his head, smiling, and finished up the last few bites of his food, disposed of the tray, then grabbed another pear from the kiosk on the way out.


    It''s kind of getting a little weird, he thought to himself.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Admiral Sharnat stared at her staff. Four of the members had been killed during the combat in the system and were now sitting at the table in immaculate uniforms like nothing had ever happened. They didn''t look different, they didn''t act different (once the euphoria wore off), they didn''t seem different at all.


    But Admiral Sharnat remembered that they''d been killed due to enemy action.


    She took a deep breath, then started the meeting.


    This is weird.


    0-0-0-0-0


    HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL


    Is TerraSol or Dominion in here?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    DOMINION


    I''m here.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL


    Can I ask something?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    DOMINION


    That doesn''t mean I''ll answer, but knock yourself out.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL


    You stated you would not turn over the people in Afterlife to us.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    DOMINION


    No, we will not.


    You are welcome to come and try to take them.


    There is room in this grave for you.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL


    Then why are you returning the recently killed in action to us?


    We just got a message torpedo stating you''ve returned tens of thousands to life and sent them right back into their lives.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    DOMINION


    Killed in action? That''s military. They go through military priority processing and are returned as soon as possible.


    They aren''t in the Afterlife. They don''t enter the Afterlife. They reach the Rainbow Bridge and are determined if they are still capable of fighting and existing in a normal existence. If they are, they are returned by the Valkyries. If not? Well, they are welcomed to the Afterlife.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL


    Wait, they don''t use the normal system?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    DOMINION


    They have often either suffered massive trauma due to their deaths or it was so quick that they honestly are surprised they are dead.


    Literally did not have time to scream.


    They go through priority processing, a completely different system than civilians.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL


    And you just return them?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    DOMINION


    Their soldiers. It''s what they do.


    Death is part of the job.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL


    I don''t understand.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    Let me get this straight. You can return military members, but not civilians?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    DOMINION


    Correct.


    You act as if we have control of the system.


    We do not.


    It was built prior to the Glassing. It has existed since the Glassing. It has collected souls for nearly fifty thousand years.


    We do not control it, nor do we know who does.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS


    We have some idea.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Don''t hog that ice cream cone to yourself. Share!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS


    It''s... it''s a marvel. Nakteti the Traveler returned.


    She described part of it.


    What she can remember.


    She claims that her memories are scattered, disjointed, and full of contradictions.


    She says that it is almost fully on automatic. A vast mechanism, beyond understanding. A mechanism that does not even fully understand itself.


    Crewed by those born and raised to care for it.


    To care for the souls within it.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    That''s poetic, but not very helpful.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS


    She was changed by her travels.


    It is hard to explain.


    She explained very little before she left again.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LANAKATALLAN GALLOPING FIELDS OF INTROSPECTIVE <CRASHRIDER LIVES!!!> THOUGHTS AND UNCLE MIKEY FAN CLUB


    That is widely... oh come on, leave my header alone... unhelpful.


    Surely we know more about it that ''it is some great and dark machine'' after all this time.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    We know it''s started working again.


    Beyond that, no, we don''t know anything.


    Humans built it. It brings the dead back to life. It stores the dead for eternity.


    That''s what we know.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS


    Right.


    That''s what she said.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    <snerk>


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS


    What?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGEL


    Nothing. <snerk> just... an old joke that you had to be there for.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    So you''ll return the military casualties back, but not the civilians?


    Why?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    DOMINION


    Because that is the way it chooses to do it.


    Feel free to go find it and argue with it.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    it is that way because that is its function and form


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    OK, who is that?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    that is not your concern


    i am here


    that is all you need to know


    i am always here


    watching


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Yup. The Terrans are back.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL


    How can you tell?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Because now shit''s all weird.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    The ''sun'' was nice and warm, shining down on the Glass Beaches of Iota Layer. Children ran and screeched in joy, adults lounged around, and the waves constantly moved back and forth beneath the controlled fusion reaction masquerading as a ''sun''.


    Angela Angus Kusumoto heard her datalink ping and slowly rolled over, smiling as she rested her head on her arms.


    The sun was warm on her skin, she wasn''t hung over, and the day was nice.


    Her datalink pinged and she cursed herself for jinking her day.


    "Kusumoto here," she said, answering the call.


    "Recall. Alpha Supervisors. Mandatory Atlantis recall," the mechanized voice said.


    Angela groaned, getting up. She grabbed the disc that made up her bathing suit, put it over her bellybutton and tapped it. The bathing suit nanites crawled across her body as she returned her lounger and blankets to little disks. She put them between her breasts and headed out.


    Figures, my first day off in a month and someone''s panties are all in a twist, she grumbled.


    She took the skytram, getting a good night''s sleep as it moved between the massive Dyson shells. She road the ''split rail'' between the shells, slowly moving up to Alpha Layer.


    Which meant it only took her two weeks to get back.


    The whole time she slept, studied, and went to the party car to relax and enjoy herself.


    After all, the party car was right there, why shouldn''t she enjoy herself during the endless travel on a hyperspeed transport that moved at tens of thousands of miles an hour but had millions of miles to travel.


    She took the elevator up to the top of Atlantis, dressed in her work uniform.


    She had no idea who the genius was that decided that the uniform should look like a leotard and a body suit had drunken sex and then a malformed baby, but the system wouldn''t recognize anything else as official uniforms and nobody had figured out how to change it.


    The fact the system called it a ''speed suit'' didn''t make things any better.


    She''d worked with the SUDS for nearly sixty years. She knew that it was some joke that nobody got any more.


    When she walked into the master control room, the first thing she noticed was the consoles for the Military Recovery and Rebirth stations were fully operational and the seats were fully manned.


    Senior Supervisor Janelle Brethrite walked up and shook her head.


    "The system''s processing non-humans now," Brethrite said.


    Angela gave out a long suffering combination groan and sigh. "Of course it is."


    "And once again, despite the fact we''re supposed to be Atlantis Control, apparently all we get to do is watch the system work," Brethrite said.


    Angela moved over to a supervisor''s desk, her nameplate still feeling like it squeaked it you looked at it too quickly, it was so new. She sat down and tabbed up her console, looking quickly at the feeds.


    "We trained all our lives, and all we all are glorified log books," Brethrite said.


    "Uh-huh," Angela looked over the telemetry and logs.


    The SUDS codes were all from the same galactic x, y, z, q coordinates. Mostly Hamaroosan, some Telkan, a few Tnvaru, even a few Lanky in the system.


    All moving to the Rainbow Bridge and then being returned to life.


    She checked the destination codes against the hand written notes she''d made.


    It had been a hard lesson that if you input the coordinates, destination codes, or the SUDS file codes into a computer document, once the user saved the system locked the file, encrypted it, changed the file name, and put it in secure information storage.


    Whoever designed this place was a combination of genius and paranoid lunatic, Angela thought, not for the first time.


    It took a little while, but she found the destination code in her notes.


    "It''s a Solarion Iron Dominion medical ship," Angela said. "Based on the destination codes, it''s out in what was considered the Long Dark back before The Bagging."


    "Great. Well, at least that part of the system is working," Brethrite said. "Just add it to the big list of shit we can witness but can''t effect."


    Angela just shrugged.


    "Things have gotten weird since we started synch-up."


    0-0-0-0-0


    The swing creaked slowly as the man sitting on it rocked it back and forth. He had a mug of hot chocolate (of course with mini-marshmallows, he wasn''t a barbarian) in one hand as he stared at the fat snowflakes slowly drifting downward.


    The door to the comfortable house opened and the lady of the house stepped out onto the covered porch. She moved up and sat down, lifting her own cup and blowing on the froth to cool it.


    They sat in silence for a long while.


    "How are you feeling?" the woman asked.


    "Better than before. Same as yesterday," the man said.


    "That''s a good thing. You were touch and go at first," the woman said. She stared at the snow. "I love the snow. It makes the world quiet."


    The man just nodded.


    "The high-security lockout is still in place," the woman said.


    "As long as that pulse keeps going through the system, it''s going to run in high security mode," the man said. "It was hardened against outside attacks and is able to compensate and learn how to defend itself."


    The woman nodded.


    "The thing is, the SUDS is resistant to single point of failure faults. It took about four different failure states back when Sam-UL crashed the system, and that was at the hands of a top tier hacker," the man said.


    "We need more information on that pulse," the woman said.


    The man nodded.


    The woman sipped at her cocoa.


    "Do you want me to go out?" the man asked, almost hiding the trepidation in his voice.


    The woman shook her head. "No. The person I have trying to find out about the pulse is the perfect man for the job."


    "I hope you know what you''re doing," the man said.


    The woman laughed. "I think I do, but who knows, maybe I don''t."


    "Don''t say that," the man said.


    "Whatever it is, it''s going to be fun," the woman smiled, insanity glimmering in her eyes.


    "Except you have a weird idea of fun," the man said. "And it''s usually painful for other people."


    The woman began to laugh. A wild thing, full of malice, dark humor, and brittle edged insanity.


    Her laughter echoed off the snowy trees and through the night.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The single ship came out of hyperspace silently, slowly staging down until it entered realspace without even a ripple.


    It sat in the long dark between the galactic arms, the lights off, no emissions.


    The massive ship just floated.


    In one lab a powerfully built man with dark brown skin, a bald head, and a bushy beard leaned back in the chair, staring at the computer screen in front of him.


    "This should work," he said.


    One of the many slender, bald men at the workstations in the lab/fab station looked up. "If the enemy cooperates."


    The sole bearded man smiled.


    "Of course they won''t. That''s what I''m counting on. They won''t cooperate," he said.


    "Because they''re the enemy," several of the slender identical men said.


    "And the enemy only exists to be destroyed," the busy bearded one smiled.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 102

    The ship in orbit was an older model, with modifications that TerraSol Orbital Control had never seen before. Still, it was registered, not only on the modern Confederacy records, but on the TerraSol records from before The Bagging.


    It was actually registered out of the VodkaTrog Imperial Registry.


    Despite the fact it had changed its name, it still possessed the earlier serial numbers and well as registry numbers in its transponder.


    It was also piloted by the same being it was registered to.


    The It Tastes Sweet, now registered as the It Tastes Bitter, a registered trader/colony ship, formerly of Tnvaru Prime, reflagged under TerraSol.


    Its maiden voyage had taken place at the same time as the Lanaktallan Council''s assault on Fortress Sol.


    Forty-thousand years Galactic Local.


    Fifty years TerraSol local.


    The Virtual Intelligences had interrogated the transponders, had examined the ship, and permitted it into the Sol System. Further VI examination had allowed it to enter Solarian orbit.


    Another round of automated VI processes had permitted the It Tastes Bitter to send a single dropship from the strange looking vessel to the surface of TerraSol.


    To the Vodkatrog Empire, specifically.


    The dropship disconnected from the massive ship and dropped into Terra''s atmosphere.


    Astro-Control took a minute to categorize the dropship.


    An ancient Enkima Enjeru class dropship.


    From before the Glassing.


    VI''s interrogated it again and again.


    One noted something and pinged a living supervisor.


    Logan Ivan Ivanka Ivanovicth rolled his eyes as VI 3716a128 pinged him that it had discovered something strange about the museum piece entering atmosphere and heading for the center of the Vodkatrog lands.


    That particular VI had a tendency to ping supervisors over paint scrapes that looked strange to it as well as a five ounce difference in stated weight and actual weight.


    To be honest, Senior Supervisor Ivanovicth had alerted Virtual Intelligence Counseling several times about that particular VI.


    Still, it had been logged and now he had to see what was wrong.


    He tabbed up the screen, putting away the fascinating book he had been reading, an authorized biography of a Hamburger Kingdom politician and the political scandals the Lanaktallan had become embroiled in.


    He chuckled to himself.


    Heh. Embroiled.


    Broiled.


    Hamburger Kingdom.


    heh.


    His smile froze when he saw what the VI was reporting.


    There were overlays on the dropship''s transponder.


    One on hand, it was often a sign of something nefarious when a transponder had overlays. Most people who purchased used gear replaced the transponder completely.


    On the other hand, it was used and old. A pre-Glassing design. Transponder replacement might not have taken place if the owner wanted to keep as close to original manufacturing specifications as they could.


    But on the gripping hand, the last thing he needed was some bork brained pirate deciding they were going to try extorting the cybernetic psychopaths of the Vodkatrog Cybernetic Cossack Hordes.


    He ordered his scans to peel back the layers to see what was going on.


    No luck. The transponder was partially disabled.


    He sighed.


    Great. Now he had to do his job.


    It was almost unfair.


    He opened a comlink to the dropship, which was taking a slow, leisurely reentry arc rather than a least time drop.


    "Sour Fruit, this is Vodkatrog airspace control, please respond," he said, keeping his ''pleasant working voice'' instead of his normal growl that was the result of too much time spent as the lead singer of a death speed metal band in his youth.


    "This is Sour Fruit, go ahead tower," the voice responded. It was female, maybe.


    His systems reported it was a Tnvaru, at almost 65%. A female Tnvaru at roughly 73%.


    That made him frown.


    "We have signals of transponder overlays on your ship. Please fully activate your quarriable transponder," Ivanovitch said.


    There was silence.


    "Complying, tower," the Tnvaru voice said.


    The VIs immediately jumped on the transponder and Ivanovitch watched as they peeled back the first overlay.


    It made him frown.


    Dropship and high threat mobility vehicle #8D7A357F37C, Atlantis Control


    Nothing else. No nation, no star system.


    He noted with some interest that one VI had gotten a look at those transponder codes and had immediately run off to hide in the cafeteria.


    Behind the drink vending machine VIs.


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    There was another one. This one under encryption.


    "Sour Fruit, disable encryption on your transponder," he ordered.


    "Complying, tower," the female Tnvaru said.


    The registry hidden under the encryption suddenly cleared.


    For only a split second the registry showed.


    He could taste fresh blood, hot and coppery in his mouth. He could hear the shriek of a thousand thousand Mantid. He could see the bloom of atomic detonations against a blue sky.


    UGANDAN CIVIL DEFENSE appeared on his monitor.


    He didn''t see it.


    He suddenly remembered that the person next to him, Cherise Hartford, kept stealing his lunches.


    His console imploded as he stood up. The VIs, those that had survived, ran screaming. Some jumped the firewall and escaped into the internet. Others ran and hid in deep storage.


    Over a dozen screamed and launched themselves at one another, ripping and tearing at each other in an electronic orgy of slaughter that sent consoles into overload.


    Ivanovitch turned and punched Senior Traffic Control Specialist Hartford in the head, knocking her out of her chair. His temples were pounded, his mouth was full of the taste of blood, his ears full of enraged roaring.


    Safeties kicked in.


    The Sour Fruit was notified to turn off its transponder immediately.


    It took four coworkers to restrain Ivanovitch long enough for the medical nannies in The Soup to sedate him.


    The Sour Fruit kept moving along its flight path.


    0-0-0-0-0


    There was an armed welcoming party at the spaceport as the Sour Fruit settled down.


    The ship was heavy looking. Armored, the weapon pods retracted, the point defense systems offline. The dropship folded its wings into the fuselage as it landed. Steam billowed out from under it as it settled onto the tarmac.


    The warborgs brought their systems online and waited.


    A single envoy from airspace control moved forward, waiting.


    The gangplank dropped down from the front belly of the dropship.


    Three figures slowly moved down the gangplank.


    In the lead was a Tnvaru, a female, leaning on a walking stick. She wore homespun clothing, or at least clothing manufactured to look as if it had been made by hand. Behind her were two Terrans, large even among Terrans. The female was dressed in a short pleated leather skirt with copper reinforcement on the outside the pleats and a corset-like leather top chased with bronze. The male wore simple denim jeans and a leather vest, with a sword across his back.


    The Tnvaru stepped to the side as the two Terrans reached the bottom of the gangplank.


    The female stopped, kneeling down, touching her fingers to the tarmac. She closed her eyes, her lips moving as she whispered to herself.


    The male stopped, going down on one knee, bowing his head. He pressed three fingers to the tarmac then lifted them up and kissed them, before placing both hands on the ground. Like the female, he closed his eyes and whispered to himself.


    The security VI used lip reading software to monitor what was being said.


    A standard travelers prayer for thanks at the end of a journey.


    The Tnvaru started moving forward once the two Terrans got up.


    The lead of the meeting party noted something.


    The Tnvaru''s eyes glowed a faint amber as she moved forward.


    The Tnvaru stopped.


    "I am Nakteti the Traveler."


    0-0-0-0-0


    The day was dark and overcast, with snow blowing on the wind. The terrain was covered in snow, trees and bushes laden with it. It was cold, dark, and windy.


    A single figure stood in the snow. Short, with two sets of arms. Her lower hands were crossed on top of a walking stick, the top arms were folded across her chest. She wore a heavy cloak over heavy protective clothing, with goggles over her eyes and her hood pulled out.


    She could feel the one coming.


    Not just through the strange senses she had gained over the years of dwelling beneath the snowy surface.


    But in her heart of hearts.


    It was the glow of amber that appeared first through the snow.


    The shape loomed out of the snow. Tall for a Tnvaru female, but still unmistakably female.


    She felt her heart leap with joy.


    The shape resolved itself into a lone Tnvaru female with amber eyes, wrapped in a thick wool cloak, wearing a protective mask over her face.


    The newcomer bowed to the one waiting, who turned and motioned at a hole in the rock wall.


    Together, they entered the hole.


    The shuffled through the twisting passage beyond. The twists and turns quickly shutting out the wind. Not to say it was warm, warm was relative in the brutal lands of the Warsteel Cossacks, but no longer immediately deadly.


    Both remained silent as they moved through the tunnels, which went from tunnels hacked by hand tools through raw rock to carved and decorative markings on the walls.


    The pair reached an elevator. There was the shimmering of an enviro-field by the elevator. Within the field was a table with a small wooden cask, two glasses, and a plate of fruit.


    The shorter of the two motioned the newcomer to follow and moved to the enviro-field.


    Once inside she sat down and motioned the newcomer to sit down.


    They both sat and slowly removed their protective goggles and masks.


    The newcomer was younger, her face bearing fur scarring where something had changed the color of the fur in strips and swirls. Her eyes glowed amber and her face was serious, stern, almost bleak.


    The other was older, with white circles around eyes of black metal.


    Warsteel eyes.


    The older one reached across the table.


    "I am overjoyed that you still live," she said.


    The younger one just held onto the older one''s hand, reaching out with her other three hands. When the older one took the younger one''s hands in hers, the younger one teared up, holding back a sob.


    "You have traveled far, my little heart," the older one said. "My beautiful daughter has gone to strange places but, at last, has returned so her mother could grasp her hands again."


    The younger one just nodded, choked up by holding her mother''s hands for the first time in what felt like an eternity.


    The older one looked to the side, where a large cyborg stood silently by the wall and nodded, then pointed with her chin at the table.


    The cyborg moved forward a single step, held out its arms, which suddenly lengthened, grabbed the table and pulled it out of the enviro-field.


    The older one pulled her daughter into her arms, hugging her tightly.


    "At long last, you have come back to me, daughter-mine," Sangbre said softly.


    Nakteti just held tight and sobbed, shaking slightly as her mother squeezed her tightly.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The figure was out of most people''s worst nightmares. Tall, thin, a face like someone who made their living stealing children''s dreams while they slept. Beady mis-matched cybernetic eyes, all six of them, looked over the object in front of them. The cybernetic surgical harness on their back was mismatched, looked as if it was built out of four or five surgical harnesses that had been relegated to a dumpster by a disreputable back alley surgical clinic that even the desperate avoided. The figure was wrapped in a tattered cloak that resembled a discarded shroud.


    It reached out and ran its hands, not one of the fives of them flesh and blood, all mismatched, over the object in front of it.


    "Yes, yes," the figure whispered.


    It was a voice that small children heard coming from their closet in their nightmares.


    "Still slumbers. Still yet lives. His will is strong. The will of his guardian stronger," the figure whispered. It moved around the object.


    An ancient style cryo-tube.


    "Strange energies, strange spirits, surround him, but yes," the figure said. It opened its too-big mouth and a long metal tongue, dripping thick viscous green fluid, flopped from the mouth to run over the cryo-tube. It smeared thick green fluid across the transparent upper fifth before pulling back into the mouth with an obscene sucking sound.


    "Yes. Yes," the figure whispered.


    It looked at the two Tnvaru standing on the other side of the cryo-tube.


    "You do well to bring him to me," the figure said. It tittered for a moment. "I can revive him."


    The younger of the two, with amber eyes, slowly nodded.


    "Provided, of course," the figure said. It paused for a moment and shadows warped around it. "You can pay."


    The younger one held up a small vial full of glittering white sand.


    "From the afterlife," the amber eyed one said.


    From within the robe a clacking pincher on an articulated metal arm emerged. The pincher clacked as it reached toward the vial.


    "Him first," the female said, the amber glow in her eyes strengthening.


    The tentacle retracted and the figure looked at the older one.


    At her warsteel eyes.


    "Yes, yes. Of course," the figure said.


    It threw aside the shroud, revealing nearly a dozen surgical harness arms, six arms on the torso, and four tentacles attached to the chest. The flesh beneath was pallid, bloodless looking, pierced all over with metal rods, tubes, and knobs.


    Shadows lengthened and changed form, becoming twisted and malevolent, often moving against the play of the dim lights.


    "LET US BEGIN!" the creature shouted.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The Terran was clad in bunny pajamas.


    For a long moment, nothing happened.


    He slowly inhaled, then exhaled.


    Then did it again.


    His eyes began moving rapidly under his eyelids.


    The fingers twitched.


    And the Terran opened his eyes.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 103

    Who knows what would have happened if humans had been left to just play. There are ruins of those who came before that somehow ascended to something else, possibly pure energy, and went beyond the petty concerns of the universe. The humans have surpassed those ancient people''s achievements, who knows where they might have gone. Instead, each of us, every one of us, have attacked them, and forced them to turn what could have been technology for peace and advancement into the cold tools of war. - Thoughts of Terra - Blanarkak Numekrekvian, Mulmanik Philospher


    Corporal Vak-tel, Telkan Marine Corps, stared at the sheet in front of him.


    The 7th Telkan Marine Division Chain of Command AKA The Dumbass Conga Line


    Commanding Officer: General Kretok (AKA The Old Man AKA Lumpyhead)


    6th Infantry Regimental Commander: Field Colonel Shrekna (Vak-tel wasn''t sure the Old Man could put his boots on the right feet without help from his aides, but he sure as hell knew how to snatch an award from a Private and candy from a podling at the same time)


    3rd Infantry Brigade Commander: Colonel Navek


    17th Rifle Battalion: Lieutenant Colonel Riltepop


    Kilo Company (Rifle): Captain Kemtrelap


    3rd Platoon Leader: Lieutenant Gretilk


    3rd Platoon Sergeant: Gunny Heltok


    Third Squad Leader: Sergeant Letrill


    Vak-tel sighed and rubbed his face. On either side of him were his room-mates, Private First Class Nrexla and Lance Corporal Juvretik, both of which were staring at the TO&E (Table of Equipment and Organization) with same look of disgust as Vak-tel. Private Cipdek was sitting across the table from them, twiddling his fingers as he hot-linked his datalink the Captain''s again.


    Vak-tel just shook his head and turned the page.


    The RoE was posted.


    All eight pages of it.


    "Have you seen this shit?" Nrexla asked.


    "Which?" Vak-tel asked.


    "Check out number one-sixty-two of the RoE," Nrexla said.


    Vak-tel looked at it and groaned.


    AVOID FRIGHTENING CHILDREN OR ANIMALS


    Juvretik burst out laughing. "If there''s kids downrange they''ve got bigger problems than us scaring them."


    "Check out two-thirty-eight," Vak-tel said.


    "Avoid damage to infrastructure, including roads, power lines, transmission towers, and underground pipes and cable," Nrexla said. He shook his head. "Guess that means no medium atomic demolition mines."


    "That''s number seven: no atomic or nuclear devices, no thermonuclear detonations," Cipdek said, not looking up. "Hah! Got it! He used his daughter''s birthday for his password."


    "You''re going to end up in jail for that," Vak-tel said.


    "Would you rather not know?" Cipdek asked.


    "Hey, you''re the one who will go to jail, not me," Vak-tel said.


    "I love number one: do not endanger, frighten, threaten, bully, cause emotional damage or stress, or conscript any civilians or government workers and officials," Nrexla said.


    Cipdek tossed a glittering marble to the holo-emitter on the table and it brightened up.


    "...exactly are we supposed to fight this war?" Colonel Navek asked.


    "These are the Rules of Engagement. Follow them to the best of your ability," FC Shrekna said, his voice stuffy. "We are guests in the Ornislarp system. They would appreciate it if they were able to live there when the battle is over."


    There was silence for a second.


    "You are aware, sir, that the enemy is currently fighting for control of the system," Colonel Navek said, his voice low and slow.


    "That is an issue for Space Force. We are concerned with the ground fighting side of things. The enemy has landed in light numbers according to intelligence," FC Shrekna said.


    "On a planet we are less than an hour from reaching," Colonel Navek said. "When, exactly, sir, do you plan on having the men load up into the dropships?"


    "Once I am briefed on the situation on the ground," The Old Man said stuffily.


    "Where fighting is already taking place," the Colonel said.


    Field Sergeant Impton, AKA Ivan Wektaki the Telkan, of the Black Skull Blood Drinker Vodkatrog Warsteel Horde, stomped up and sat down, making everyone jump slightly.


    "Do not be guilty," Impton said. He leaned forward. "Why do you watch show with mental defectives. Charlie Moo Moo much better."


    "Division Commander''s meeting," Cipdek said.


    "Plotters and planners. No real Telkan in bunch," Impton snorted. "Better if mother knocked on head, sold milk."


    The got snorts of amusement.


    "Trying to find out what we''re looking at for deployment," Vak-tel said. "Maybe we can get an edge."


    Impton snorted. "Came to get you. Show you edge."


    The Field Sergeant stood up. "Come."


    Sighing and only rolling his eyes a little bit, Vak-tel got up. "You guys coming?"


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    The others all nodded.


    Impton led them down the armory, which was manned by a Rigellian Saurian female.


    "Any word?" Impton asked.


    "Suits are still warming up," she smiled. "Dropship and drop pod guys are getting pissed. Last six hours they''ve been told ''you''re how we''re going in'' then ''no, you''re how we''re going in'' and ordering the others to re-pack their gear."


    "Then it will be fuck fuck circus with very bitey monkeys," Impton said.


    The Rigellian female nodded.


    "These are friends," Impton said.


    "He borrow money off of you?" the Rigellian asked.


    Vak-tel shook his head.


    "You owe him money?" she asked.


    Cipdek shook his head.


    "Huh," she looked at Impton. "OK, what do you want?"


    "Stick in secure EPROMs full of crackerjack. One for greenie, one for my boots," Impton said.


    The Rigellian closed her eyes. "You aren''t in their chain of command."


    Impton reached up and tapped his cybernetic eye. "I will be."


    The Rigellian smiled. "All right."


    "Let us go. Morgue," Impton said.


    The group followed the older Telkan to the morgue, watching the Senior NCO talk to the armorer there for a long moment.


    Then they followed when he sidled up to a Rigellian female in one of the cafeterias, complimenting her, passing her a holocube under the table of new music he''d pirated off of a source. Then another Rigellian, passing off a twelve hour athletic championship holocube to her in return for more information.


    Less than an hour went by before Impton finished talking to a pair of green mantids that were up on one of the "greenie highways" in an access corridor. The greenies flashed laughing emojis and moved on, leaving Impton rocking back and forth heel to toe for a moment.


    "Drop pods," he suddenly said, turning and hustling back toward the one of the staging bays.


    "How do you know?" Juvretik asked, hurrying to catch up to the older Telkan, who moved surprisingly fast for someone with a limp and a cybernetic leg.


    "Greenies ordered to activate Yuri''s express elevator," Impton said. "Only one reason. Hot drop."


    "Great," Nrexla said.


    "Ever pod under fire?" Impton asked.


    "Negative," Vak-tel said.


    "Then this will be new for you," Impton smiled.


    Vak-tel got that sinking feeling in his gut again.


    0-0-0-0-0


    --tab two gums put one on each side back teeth-- 621 said.


    "Why?" Vak-tel asked.


    --so don''t chip teeth when pod launches-- 621 answered.


    Vak-tel did as his green mantid battle-buddy suggested, chewing on first one then another till they were soft and putting the wads on his back molars.


    The whole squad was inside the stuffy confines of a mission configurable drop pod. Sergeant Letrill''s face was in one corner of his HUD, talking to someone, the NCO forgetting to turn off his internal helmet cam and hang up the call to the whole squad.


    There was a faint vibration.


    --here go-- 621 said.


    "Wha..." Vak-tel got out.


    The sudden accelleration slammed him back against the seat, the restraint bar locking down tighter. He almost puked as his stomach shot up into his throat.


    I have launched from the main troop carrier. My payload is thirteen Telkan Marines and one mission configurable war-core. Initial thrust is 22G but my internal inertial compensator keeps the Telkan from feeling much more than 2.5Gs.


    Jamming is sporadic but I know it will pick up as I approach the planet. I run encryption hashes and link up with the BATTACNET systems from the ships and the surrounding sattellites.


    My stealth coating should hold during my reentry at MACH-8.


    Ranging pinging from groundside is sporadic, but I know it will pick up.


    I am on trajectory, one of nearly five thousand smaller drop pods. There are armored vehicle drop cradles and three BOLO drop systems heading down with me. I shift position, dropping slightly behind a Chernobog Hellfire Descent Pod, joined by the rest of Kilo Company''s drop pod.


    All systems are nominal.


    Upper atmosphere turbulence is below MILINT projections.


    Update from Fleet BATTACNET warns of heavy ground emplacements.


    I add my jamming ability to the Hellfire Pod, joined by the rest of Kilo Company''s pods.


    I am on trajectory.


    There is heavy cloud cover, but my own sensors combined with the rest of Kilo Company and the Hellfire Pod are showing that local Ornislarp forces are heavily engaged with power armor ranging from the half-ton to nearly eight thousand tons.


    The Hellfire Pod orders Kilo Company to fire jamming flares right as I see it.


    A BOLO.


    Telkan Marine Division MILINT orders us to veer off, try to get out of line of sight.


    Fleet orders us to veer closer, rotate, and increase thrust.


    I am disposable. I realize that an inverted reentry followed by a low altitude ejection will allow the Telkan Marines to use their Icarus Systems to safely land. My own Icarus System will be of use also.


    I run the numbers.


    Jamming is increasing.


    I am ordered to get closer to the BOLO as well as get away from it.


    The conflicting orders leave me no choice.


    I rotate and fire my thrusters, increasing my speed to MACH-12. I blow my stealth panels at the same time as the Hellfire Pod does the same and the rest of Kilo Company.


    I have been in flight for nineteen and a half seconds.


    Ground fire has begun, but it is poorly aimed, most of it missing. The BOLO fires but misses, something I relay to MILINT immediately. The Hellfire Pod has its battlescreens up, the equivalent of a heavy cruiser, but the second shot does not come.


    We are twenty-three seconds into the flight, picking up speed from our high orbit launch at 500 km.


    The Hellfire Pod grabs me and the rest of Kilo Company with tractor beams even as it fires its retrothruster.


    Our speed is fast enough that the atmosphere around us is turning to plasma and we are leaving streaks across the sky.


    My armored shell takes hits from plasma flak cannons but they lack the strength and temperature of the plasma wave formed around my forward bow.


    Cargo biometrics show high stress but that is within expectations.


    At thirty-three seconds the BOLO fires again.


    And misses.


    The statistical impossibility is something I upload to MILINT.


    The BATTACNET is full of hash and garbage. I do not bother trying to reset it.


    The Chernobog has ordered the Hellfire Pod to make a Nifty-Hit less than a kilometer from the BOLO. It orders us to pop drogue chutes at 1000 meters and then activate Icarus at 100 meters.


    I signal assent.


    Groundfire is picking up. It does not matter, nothing is in the caliber or energy liberation range to damage my warsteel Mark-One hull.


    We are forty-two seconds into the drop. I am at less than five thousand meters. I roll and complete the maneuver by three thousand meters, firing full retro-thrusters, including directional thrusters.


    The Hellfire Pod streaks away, suddenly encased in a rectangle that makes the Hellfire Pod blurry inside of it.


    It slams into the ground with the kinetic force of a thermonuclear weapon at less than a hundred meters from the BOLO. The kinetic shock wave does not push me off course and I use it to pop the drogue chutes to reduce my speed as much as possible.


    The BOLO''s battlescreens collapse with a sensor-aching crack. Anti-personnel strips explode even as armor is warped and twisted by the near hit from what is the equivalent of a Godrod Strike.


    At fifty-eight seconds I activate my Icarus System. Energy flares around me right as I strike the ground.


    I blow the hatches and begin conversion to an infantry support base.


    The Chernobog roars as it stands up, taller than the BOLO, taking two steps and slamming one great fist, surrounded by blue graviton energy, into the side of BOLO. Armor explodes outward and the whole thing is momentarily hidden by a torus of dirt exploding from the ground as the kinetic shock is transferred to the ground.


    I wish my cargo a good time with a little tune as they exit the pod.


    Vak-tel staggered out from the pod, shaking his head.


    The pod was playing some kind of happy upbeat song and he only caught the lyrics "I told you''d I''d shoot, why didn''t you believe me?" as he took two stumbling steps.


    He was looking right at Yuri when the massive Chernobog stopped the BOLO from turning its turret with one hand and drove another punch into the side of the cupola with the other. The Chernobog was driving one knee into the side of the BOLO and Vak-tel saw the skirting rip away and the next knee strike rip away running gear and lift up part of the side deck.


    "FORM UP! LET''S GO, MEN!" Sergeant Letrill bellowed out.


    The beacon appeared.


    Two kilometers.


    Vak-tel followed Letrill as the squad moved out in leaps and bounds, leaving Yuri behind to play with his new toy. The drop-pod had configured for mobile fire support and scuttled after them.


    Oh, this is gonna be fun. Vaktel thought.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 104

    Of course they give us camo sticks to paint our faces with. What''s the fuck-fuck circus without the clowns. - SFC Bit.nek, 12th Telkan Marine Division, 35 2PW


    Vak-tel and the rest of the Kilo Company were advancing with long loping strides that allowed the armor to clear five meters a step without their heads popping up too high, something they''d learned well until it was burned into muscle memory during the intense eVR training.


    The air only ten meters up was full of flickering coherent energy, hyper-velocity kinetic rounds, missiles, rockets, chaff, and just about everything else that the modern battlefield so generously supplied to troops.


    Vak-tel stumbled on a chunk of ferrocrete, making an odd looking hop that was almost instinct in order to regain his balance before he landed on his face and skidded. Moving at just shy of seventy kph meant he had to be careful.


    BACTACNET saw something and fired two rockets from the pack he was wearing.


    --jamming picking up-- 621 said from inside the engineer protective housing that was part of the combat pack Vak-tel was carrying.


    "Quantum compromised?" Vak-tel asked.


    --negative standard band compromised magic band partially jammed-- 621 reported.


    Behind Kilo Company two more Chernobog class cyborgs had joined in ripping apart the BOLO, which had decided to engage its tracks and start to reverse.


    Which didn''t help when you were the size of a small stadium and your foes were standing on your forward and back decks.


    NETWORK OVERRIDE appeared in his vision and he cursed as his power armor went unresponsive and sluggish feeling. The bounding arcs started going up higher, speed picked up. Vak-tel noticed that suddenly all the channels were locked out, preventing him from speaking to anyone at all, even his squad member. The company spread out, the gaps between the armor getting larger as it went from a single double-arm interval skirmish line to a four deep checkerboard formation.


    No word for why from the Kilo Company chain of command.


    His rocket launcher started chuffing out rockets that kicked in their solid fuel boosters a few meters from the launch, creating a white streak in the air. His grenade launcher started kicking out rounds straight up, a steady thump of them.


    His armor wasn''t telling him what it was doing.


    "Buddy, what''s going on?" he asked.


    --tac-net override on launchers rockets who knows maybe point defense grenades participating in drone saturation attack-- 621 said. --heat and slush rising fast orders coming too fast not able to deploy cooling fins due to ir blackout--


    "Great. Keep me posted," Vak-tel said.


    Kilo Company was spreading out and passing another set of drop pods that were all reconfiguring. At first Vak-tel''s armor was telling him that the occupants of the drop-pods would be merging with Kilo Company''s checkerboard advance line but then his HUD blinked and the reticles vanished.


    This shit better not get me killed, Vak-tel thought.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Major Shimmering "Bobby" Drop-Tables was a Digital Sentience, hashed and raised in the Hamburger Kingdom''s code arenas. She had trained to be electronic warfare until she was lean and mean, a electronic warfare killing machine.


    She was proud as hell to be part of the task force heading into Ornisplap space to assist them against someone using her people''s technology.


    Which is why she was standing just on the safe side of the task force''s ''firewall'' and watching the EW battlefield take shape.


    Gravity and radiation and radio signals created the terrain of the battlefield, with the polar solar winds of the stellar system forming the sky above and molten rock beneath. The magnetospheres of the planets were storms. The surge of gravity and radiation created hills and valleys.


    Ships moved through the terrain, each of them a platform for attacks and defenses.


    The planets were mostly cold, dark, and dead, just their radiation and electromagnetic output creating storms on the battlefield. The Van-Allen Belts were bands of instant death that howled and pulsed.


    Electronic warfare systems lit off, filling the battleground''s terrain in her vision with firing arcs, artillery shells, rockets, missiles, even slow moving tanks. Warbois flooded from the Solarian Iron Dominion vessels, screaming their warcries as they charged across a battlefield that was no less real even though it had no physical presence. Attack programs loaded into drones to get them closer were launched from the Confederate vessels.


    Electronic Countermeasures began spinning up, fog and smoke beginning to obscure the battlefield. Enemy ships and the massive amount of EW platforms on the fourth and fifth planets started to flicker and vanish as the counter-measures began to take effect.


    Major Tables watched as the Electronic Counter-Counter-Measures went active. Searchlights spearing through the smoke and fog, ranging pings of electronic ''sonar'' were visible concentric circles spreading out, the tight beam of radar, LIDAR, and even more esoteric systems.


    Major Tables noted that the Confederate ships used completely different bandwidths, that they had more powerful and more sensitive sensor systems. The enemy''s ships were getting pinged and attacked and Major Tables noted that it looked like the enemy ships were trying to spoof out old Confed codes.


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    Missiles were reaching broadcast range, the subspace communications systems that allowed for instant communication were switched into attack/defend mode, and other esoteric systems were coming online.


    Squinting slightly, Major Tables watched as the enemy''s active warfare daemons and smartframes erupted into existence and came in hot against the ''firewall'' put up the by the fleet.


    "Here they come," she warned her subordinates.


    She narrowed her eyes when three things happened.


    The dumbframes shattered on the firewall or were eliminated by counter-measures.


    The lower end daemons and the smartframes hit the firewalls and stopped. Rather than attacking, probing at the ports and firewalls, they turned into either orbs or little nodes full of spikes.


    The high end daemons hit the firewall and stopped. Rather than chew on it, rake at it with claws, or skitter around looking for an opening, they stopped.


    She vanished and reappeared next to LT(JG) Recursive Strobing Sunset, who was watching the firewall''s algorithm and countermeasures. On the other side of the glittering wall were orbs, spiked little objects, and the daemons.


    "Fence me in. There''s something weird and I want a look at it," Tables ordered.


    LT(JG) Sunset nodded, bringing up a datafence around Major Tables.


    Tables opened a thin pipe from an orb she held in her hands to the firewall, pushing the pipe through. One of the spiked crystalline objects sucked through the pipe and into the orb she held.


    It was a smartframe. She looked it over. Standard Old Confederate coding. The attack algorithm was strange, almost like the core strings were randomly generated.


    Those values actually mean something, you can''t just use random generation, she thought. She looked it over.


    She found it deep in.


    PROPERTY OF BOBCO MILITARY SOFTWARE DIVISION (8639 PG)


    She armored the orb and tossed it to MILINT.


    "Get counter-warfare on that," she ordered. She extended the pipe again and pulled in an orb.


    It just sat there, jiggling and shivering, and she carefully looked it over.


    SYNTEK EW DIVIONS (8721 PG)


    She tossed that one too.


    "OK, cover me," she ordered.


    The four digital combat troops nodded and LT(JG) Sunset looked uncertain, but still nodded.


    She widened the pipe, shortening it. She kept the globe in one hand as she created a one-way opening in the firewall next to an enemy daemon program.


    It was hugging the wall, rubbing its face on it, its eyes closed, its mouth full of sharp jagged broken-off teeth open in a dim-witted smile, its claws just rubbing the firewall.


    She shifted the opening.


    The daemon saw it and hopped through.


    It''s a warboi! she thought.


    It came straight at her, hopping up and down and screeching.


    hi hi hi hi hi hi hi


    She saw that its claws were retracted. The screeching was happy rather than the code shivering scream of an attack.


    hi hi hi hi hi hi wheeeeeee


    It jumped at her and she caught it, pushing away the reflex to smack it away.


    It rubbed its face on her.


    mommy mommy mommy mommy


    She cradled it, knowing she was risking getting gutted if it went feral. She rolled it over and looked at its face.


    sissy mommy sissy mommy sissy mommy hi hi hi hi goodboi goodboi goodboi mommy mommy mommy


    She tickled its belly and it squirmed and giggled. She saw snarled code and tickled it, making the warboi giggle. The code straightened out.


    Random code strings for algorithm detection. Junk code in the system.


    "Aw, you got a tummy ache?" she asked, tickling it again.


    mommy mommy mommy mommy


    She found it. The hash strings. The ID of the ship where the warboi had been fast-grown in EW baked salted carmel rainbow hash table, and the ID of creche-lab itself.


    She looked at Sunset.


    "He''s one of ours."


    mommy mommy mommy


    0-0-0-0-0


    Vak-tel was half asleep when the BATTACNET suddenly released his armor.


    Half of Kilo Company went ass over tea-kettle as the network let them go with no warning and put the suits on manual control.


    Vak-tel had been skipping along, literally, at nearly seventy miles an hour. He tripped on his own feet, landed on his face, and skidded nearly a hundred meters before coming to a stop behind a small pile of dirt and broken ferrocrete he''d pushed up out of the ground with his face.


    --huh wazz-- 621 asked.


    "I..." Vak-tel started to say, beginning to raise his head.


    The hump of dirt saved his life as the 30mm solid-rocket fuel cored ring penetrator round hit the dirt and exploded, throwing a rooster-tail of dirt over him as half the mini-berm was thrown into the air by the impact.


    "SHIT SHIT SHIT!" Vak-tel yelled, grabbing a grenade off his harness and short arming it to the side.


    The channels were open, unlocked, and everyone was yelling.


    "CHERNOBOG!" came the roar over the command channel, a deep bass roar that made Vak-tel''s visor vibrate.


    The commo-headers were all trashed, all garbled.


    The grenade went off with a crack, blowing a hole in the dirt and shattered ferrocrete asphalt. He rolled, instinctively, into the hole, huddling down.


    --button up-- came across the engineer channel.


    A hexagonal field appeared above Vak-tel as 621 hit the emergency shielding.


    A striker whipped by, dropping napalm, covering the entire battlefield in fire.


    Heat alarms wailed as the napalm burned on the interlocked hexagons of energy. He could see his reactor load climb and see the heat spike inside his little bubble.


    Rounds were hitting his shield, someone raking him with quick five rounds burst of 30mm, each burst different ammo as the gunner probed for a weakness.


    "What the hell happened?" someone yelled over the channel. The ID said "Captain Mewmew Wowstien, 5th Meme Division" before it shifted to "Major Minor Miner" and then "Colonel Yummy Fried Bird".


    Then the whole damn digital ID system crashed out.


    Drones got a look and broadcast what they were seeing in the clear. Vak-tel''s armor tossed it into his HUD just to the right of the edge of his unaugmented peripheral vision.


    At least a battalion of tanks, mixed in with armored vehicles and Terran sized power armor, as well as smaller power armor and what looked like Treana''ad and Mantid armors mixed in.


    Vak-tel could see the heat levels, which were low, the energy signatures, which were high, and the jerky way the armors were moving, even the way the armor was moving forward in fits and starts instead of the smooth coordination he''d seen before.


    "Kilo Company, dig in!" the voice was recognizable as Lieutenant Colonel Riltepop despite the crackling and snapping over the channel. "You''re facing armor!"


    --freq agile system hop skipping bad codes trying to compensate-- 621 said.


    "Belay that, Marines!" came a shout over loudspeaker.


    Captain Kemtrelap''s voice. Vak-tel looked over to see the Captain waving one arm.


    Of course he''s not hiding under an inch of burning napalm with some jackass trying to make my day, Vak-tel thought.


    "HHC platoon, back fifty meters, take cover! First platoon, break right. Third platoon, break left. Second platoon, up the middle!" the Captain yelled.


    Vak-tel could remember when the Captain had hid behind a wrecked vehicle with his arms over his head screaming as artillery hammered down.


    Not that Vak-tel held it against him, Vak-tel had been hiding in a pipe that went under the road and had been doing plenty of screaming of his own during that six hours of constant shake and bake courtesy of some asshole rich artillery unit.


    The Captain fired a holodrone, which clawed for air even as it threw out a hologram of the unit guidon, the colors bright in the dusty air.


    "OVER THE WALL!" the CO yelled, coming up.


    Vak-tel lunged up, bursting out from under the hexagon grid. The last of the napalm coated him, just like half the platoon, coating him in burning red and yellow flame.


    "DO YOU IDIOTS WANT TO LIVE FOREVER?" the CO bellowed.


    Vak-tel and Kilo Company charged the armor.


    Close with and destroy the enemy.


    They only exist to be destroyed.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 105

    They come to kill the Rooster, but he ain''t gonna die. - Steel Bound Alice, Terra-Sol, Age of Paranoia


    The enemy consisted of tanks, the big hogs, as well as smaller armored vehicles. Mixed in were Treana''ad, Mantid, Terran, Kobold, and Rigellian power armors. All of them were moving forward jerkily, panning their weapons back and forth in jerky movements. Battlescreens were so thick they glimmered and sparkled, easily visible even at range. Missiles and rockets fired at the enemy were being picked off over a kilometer from the ranks of the enemy, exploding futilely as the enemy''s point defense knocked them out of the air.


    There was two kilometers between Kilo Company, Second Platoon, and the first ranks of the enemy when Vak-tel went over the collapsed wall he had been laying down behind.


    --running am6 rounds should be effective against them does affect warsteel mk viii-- 621 told him.


    "Let''s hope so," Vak-tel said.


    "Keep your distances. Short, controlled bursts. Targets in your thirty-degree forward zone. Concentrate on front ranks, let the missiles and rockets handle the armor. Keep advance to double time march," Captain Kemtrelap said.


    Vak-tel nodded inside his armor. The BATTACNET icon was still flashing red with a lightning bolts through it. His armor felt slow and sluggish. His rocket pack was under the control of someone else and kept firing, the heat and slush of the reloading nanoforge rising quickly. His grenade launcher was putting out drones and chaff.


    Some of the forward battlescreens of the rapidly approaching enemy went out in a fountain of multi-colored sparks.


    He dropped the aiming pip down on an unshielded Terran suit of armor and triggered a burst from his rifle.


    There were bluish-white flashes as the antimatter version six cooked off when the hit split the non-reactive shell along the fault and slammed the antimatter against the armor.


    Vak-tel expected to see the armor gutted.


    Instead it kept moving forward, not even marred.


    "What?" Vak-tel said, triggering another burst. "That should have gutted even Vodamn Armor with Neolinnium plating."


    It didn''t even slow the armor down.


    "621, what''s going on?" he asked.


    --not sure should work-- 621 said. --oh no--


    A little window opened up and Vak-tel realized he was watching through the opticals of a missile that was streaking across the battlefield toward one of the big tanks. The missile managed to slam home, hitting the heavy armor of the 1,200 ton tank. 621 rewound the feed until there was a clear frame of the tank once the previous missiles had hit and detonated.


    The armor on the tank wasn''t even marred.


    Vak-tel opened a channel. "Sir, sir, our weapons are completely ineffective," he said.


    The accuracy of the enemy fire was starting to pick up. His battlescreen was registering hits from medium wattage plasma and laser weapons.


    As he watched, one of the Treana''ad armors leveled a rotary plasma autocannon and triggered a burst, hosing LT Gretilk until his battlescreen went out in a spray of sparks. The cannon cut out leaving LT Gretilk stumbling, his chest smouldering and crisscrossed with shallow scars that glowed red in the depths.


    "Since when does a Treana''ad use plasma?" Vak-tel grumbled.


    Ten more paces. Ten paces where weapons did exactly jack and shit against the enemy and the enemy''s weapons scratched and pockmarked the Telkan Marine''s armor.


    Captain Kemtrelap''s voice came over the magic band.


    "Fall back to the berm! By the numbers!" the CO ordered.


    Vak-tel cursed and stopped. He was in the front rank, which meant he was supposed to move back to the rear. He turned and jogged quickly.


    The enemy''s accuracy was still bad, but it was getting better, but he still didn''t take a hit.


    The enemy''s advance had slowed to a crawl. Even the tanks, moving in jerks and fits and starts, had slowed down.


    A booming voice came across the magic band, overriding LT Gretilk''s voice ordered the second rank to fall back even as Vak-tel turned back to face the enemy and took a knee, firing his rifle.


    "Why are boots pulling back? What wrong, boots?" the voice was growling, full of crackling rage.


    Yuri the Chernobog.


    "We''re retreating. Our weapons don''t work against them," Captain Kemtrelap said.


    "Stupid boots. Ask for Chernobog!" the voice said.


    There was a thudding noise and the ground shook slightly.


    Artillery shells started raining down. The first few seconds the enemy''s point defense sheered them out of the sky.


    But then they started getting through, slamming into the ranks of the enemy as the last rank ran by Vak-tel and one slapped him on the shoulder. The shells that missed plunged into the torn up ground and detonated, throwing dirt up in a fountain that had a bluish-white base.


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    The ones that hit slammed armored figures to the ground. Limbs flew out from the explosions.


    Several tanks exploded when they took multiple hits on the decks.


    That reduced the point defense.


    More hammered down.


    Vak-tel jumped over the berm, then turned and laid down.


    The shaking was getting closer.


    --look-- 621 said.


    A window opened up, slowing in slow motion as a Treana''ad warrior took one of the artillery shells to the lower abdomen. The parts scattered and the image followed the thorax as it flipped forward and landed facing back the way the enemy had advanced from.


    No body. No ichor. Just electronics and mechanicals.


    --robots-- 621 said.


    Vak-tel opened the channel even as the rumbling was getting heavy enough that he could feel it through his armor''s anti-shock systems.


    "What?" LT Gretilk''s voice was annoyed.


    "They''re robots. The enemy, they''re robots," Vak-tel said. "My greenie triple-checked."


    "Shit. Keep low. What is that rumbling?" he asked.


    Vak-tel''s external mics suddenly cut off as the world filled with a roaring noise.


    Chernobog stepped over the prone Telkan, firing a multitude of weapons. The weapons sheered through battlescreen and armor, sending the pieces of the robots or vehicles skyrocketing into the air.


    "CHERNOBOG!" the massive cyborg roared out, strafing the entire front of the enemy''s ranks. The big cannon was still in stowage mode on Chernobog''s back, the barrel pointing upwards. The huge cyborg began moving forward, stomping on enemy armored infantry, blowing up vehicles, and shooting everything in sight.


    "No touch Yuri''s boots," came over the radio as the massive cyborg ripped through the enemy''s troops. One tank got near and Yuri sent it sailing with one swing of a graviton-energy wreathed foot.


    Someone snickered as Yuri picked up one of the light armored vehicles and swooped it over the battlefield making "vroom... screeee... vrooom" noises before throwing it off into the distance.


    The whole time the cyborgs guns shredded the rest of the enemy.


    At one point he picked up a Terran suit of armor by its head and started pulling it apart and looking at it, shaking the legs at one point, before squishing the head with his thumb and finger and tossing it off to the side.


    --chernobog greenies say warsteel mark one and robot parts-- 621 said.


    "The rounds we were using can crack warsteel mark VIII, so why wasn''t it working?" Vak-tel asked.


    --mark-viii is tinfoil laminate mark-i is hate anvils of mars and wrath forges of mercury-- 621 explained. --old stuff but still mark i--


    A beeping interrupted what Vak-tel was going to ask.


    "Fleet''s landing dropships. All of 7th Division is being recalled," Captain Kemtrelap''s voice was thick with disbelief. "They''re moving First MEF to take our place."


    The Captain cut off the exclaimations of disbelief.


    Vek-tel looked over the berm.


    Yuri was done with the enemy forces and stood in the middle of the wreckage, slowly looking around. His big gun was slowly lowering into position and he could see the massive nanoforge on the base of the gun starting to steam as it produced ammunition.


    Vak-tel looked at the wreckage.


    We can''t hurt them, went through his mind.


    It was a bitter pill.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Chief Warrant Officer Grade Five McShootermac''s body was safely ensconced in her crash couch. The entire ship''s atmosphere was pumped out and the interior spaces were all in vacuum, thus the reason she was in an armored vac-suit, even though her crash couch was armored and the interior spaces full of breathable kinetic gel.


    Her mind was walking around a room, staring at holographic windows around her.


    Here an infantry company was using hunter-killer tactics on the enemy armored unit they lured into an urban hellscape. She closed the window, they had it under control and no new data was being presented that needed her attention.


    There a medical company was signaling for patient overflow as civilians streamed in. McShootermac pinged MEDCOM and the MPs both to get a handle on the situation before it boiled over.


    That one had strikers doing white knuckle close air support. She closed it, she didn''t have time for frame by frame analysis on nearly fifty strikers moving at Mach-3.


    This one had the 7th Telkan Marine Division''s feed.


    Their weapons were entirely ineffective. She went over it. They were using standard New Confed equipment, using AM6 rounds. She ran energy-v-armor analysis and determined that the weapons stood no chance of even denting the armor. She looked over their relative strength parameters vs estimations of enemy physical strength as estimated by movement and realized that the enemy would tear them to pieces.


    She signaled for 7th TMD to retreat.


    She then pinged Combat Logistics & Supply as well as Games & Theory to find out what was wrong.


    She looked over the footage, taking into account the enemy''s weapon strength. Medium wattage lasers, medium temp plasma.


    She frowned. The weapon the Treana''ad looking robots were fielding looked like a Ma-Deuce, but fired lasers.


    She knew from experience that you''d have to pry the Ma-Deuce out of the Treana''ad''s cold dead hands before they''d accept an energy weapon in the low jigawatt range.


    "Enemy is copying weapon styles without understanding underlying concepts" she annotated. She looked over the plasma and laser weapons. "Enemy is not using nanoforges and has reverted to using energy weapons rather than nanoforge supplied kinetics."


    She looked at the armor. There was no adjustments, no field modifications that one normally saw for certain vehicles and equipment.


    "Enemy is using unmodified military gear from 2PW, early Atrekna arrival"


    The massive Chernobog was waving a light armored vehicle around while the greenies scanned it.


    The engine scans that the Chernobog had taken were interesting.


    The fusion powered steam system that most modern vehicles used was missing, instead using the steam to power generators that then powered electric motors.


    The greenies had highlighted sections and McShootmac looked it over.


    Atmosphere equations and gas mixtures. Electromagnet field distances. Average water vapor of atmosphere.


    She got it.


    "Enemy vehicles have too large of a gap between electromagnetic systems, requiring a charge build up to occur before system actuation. Enemy is unprepared for current atmosphere."


    She slowly moved around (less than 1.5 seconds outside of eVR time) the windows, looking at them.


    "Enemy''s technological base and warfighting technology and abilities are inferior to fielded equipment" she jotted down.


    She moved over to another window. "Enemy is cargo-culting equipment. Vehicles power plants, sensors, and computer systems have been replaced. Warsteel superstructure elements have been repurposed, drastically reducing enemy effectiveness."


    She stared at one window.


    "Enemy has not committed actual personnel to ground-side attack. It is currently automated systems."


    She looked at another window.


    "BATTACNET disruption is possibly due to former systems attempting to link up with current BATTACNET" she put in another window with a wave of her hand.


    She frowned as more data came in.


    Serial numbers, VIN numbers, and more were pouring in from units.


    She opened windows and began running searches in TERSOLMILINT records.


    It took her only a few moments to find it.


    Fifty-third Expedition Force, lost with all hands.


    She pinged the Admiral.


    She had the force levels, ship types, and the rest of the data now.


    McShootermac waved her hand and banished the current data, moving to the next task.


    In her crash couch her toe twitched.


    0-0-0-0-0


    "Enemy vessels are within firing range, Admiral," the tactical control officer''s voice was calm and level.


    Admiral Rippentear smiled.


    "You may fire when ready."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 106

    It always startles me the extant that the Terrans will go to avoid civilian casualties. Even casualties among their own enemies. They have rules for warfare that restrict them from being the full weight of their military might upon a foe.


    It chills me to think what atrocities led to such restrictions. - From "The Darkness of the Hasslehoff", New Singapore Press, Admiral (Upper Decks) of the Warsteel (Formerly Grand Most High Executor) Mru''udaDa''ay, EPOW Camp 90210, TerraSol, 2nd Year Post-Sol Invasion


    The two fleets were nearly six million miles apart. The Solarian Iron Dominion fleet was coming from ''up'' and ''north'' of the stellar mass, straight toward the enemy fleet, which was coming in at the ''equator'' and from the ''north'' of the system. The enemy fleet was moving through the debris and wreckage of the majority of the Ornislarp Noocracy fleet that had tried to stand against them.


    The EW portion of the warfare had been going on for nearly a half hour, both sides using everything from rapidly flickering visible lights to attempt to load a virus into the enemy''s systems to complex quark and tachyon systems and mainframe supported enhanced virtual intelligence systems.


    The result of which had Admiral Rippentear smiling. He was not a handsome man in the classical sense. His lantern jaw sported a five-o-clock shadow by noon, his facial scars were not visually appealing, and his nose was a large hatchet-blade in the middle of his face. His forehead was wide and often referred to as a ''five-head'' by detractors, which was separated from his eye sockets by a heavy brow bone and a singular eyebrow that looked like a fuzzy caterpillar had taken up residence above his eyes. Unlike other admirals and upper deck officers, he didn''t bother with coiffes or hairstyles, he just cut his own hair in the bathroom with a pair of clippers and called it good.


    Which made his smile, with too large teeth in his mouth, look positively predatory as he watched the initial attack sweep down on the enemy vessels.


    Lead torpedoes and missiles were little more than real-time observation platforms, streaming back telemetry to the fleet as they closed with the enemy. Sprint drives pulled some ahead, and those missiles began strobing and flashing to get enemy system attention. The further back weapons gathered telemetry on the weapons that the enemy used for point defense to wipe out the missiles screaming for attention.


    Missiles shifted stealth systems, further back missile clusters shifted stealth coatings, some went to coasting, others ignited different drive systems. Their sensors relayed how long it took for the point defense to lock on, if it locked on, what systems were used, and what counter-measures were chosen by the enemy vessels.


    Several enemy vessels came under heavy swarm attacks, requiring massive amounts of point defense, while telemetry gathering torpedoes watched carefully to see if the battlescreen power levels shifted or the engine output changed.


    Then came the EW attacks. Smartframes, daemons, dumbframes, and the like hammering on the possible inputs, looking for any gap in the enemy''s defenses.


    However, unlike other battles, any gaps found, the eVI and VI systems backed off without pressing the attack.


    Visual observation was close enough to show the hull and scan the hull''s dataplates.


    Ship names, registry numbers, keel plate registries, and even more swarmed in.


    Admiral Rippentear''s smile grew even wider as the data streamed in. He opened two more windows, comparing CWO McShootermac''s estimates and possible projections to the data streaming in.


    So far, it was one for one. The larger hulls. The smaller hulls weren''t former Terran and Confederate vessels, although superficially they resembled them. The weapons ranged from substandard weapons that would never even pass system defense forces all the way to standard Terran and Confederate Space Force ship of the line weapons.


    Admiral Rippentear noted that McShootermac was right. The heavier weapons that could survive time and exposure appeared to be operational. Point defense systems were primarily laser based and counter-missile based.


    The enemy was obviously running low on counter-missiles quickly. NAVINT was projecting that the ships did not have sufficient magazine space for a protracted engagement. Point defense scanning was ineffective and quickly lost lock, lacking the adaptive systems that even early Terran vessels had possessed. NAVINT and McShootermac''s peers all agreed that the sensor systems were largely the product of whatever species had captured or salvaged the vessels.


    Which meant, to Admiral Rippentear, that the security charges had worked on the molycircs and nanoforges, leaving the enemy with little to nothing to reverse engineer.


    A warboi hopped into the holotank, leaning forward and panting.


    daddy daddy daddy it squealed.


    "Hello," Rippentear said.


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    It tossed up data. Minimal penetration of enemy computer systems, mostly surface level system and network mapping.


    He snorted.


    Trusted systems, six digit passwords, only 16 bit encryption.


    Terra had devised ways of ripping through that before the first superconductor was invented.


    "Good job, little one," Rippentear said.


    The warboi turned pink and scampered off.


    He opened a third window, bringing up data. He had to use the retinal scanner built into his vac-suit helmet, then the fingerprint scanner and DNA scanner built into his armored vac-suit, then two different passcodes.


    The window had data streaming by and he quickly did cross reference searches.


    He found what he needed and turned to his EW officer.


    "Out of sixty-three ships, fifty-two are running on auxiliary mainframes," he said slowly.


    Commodore Straightback nodded.


    "Give me warbois, one for each ship, as well as alert our digital sentient boarding parties," Rippentear smiled.


    He looked back at the holotank.


    "They''re about to learn why you don''t use other people''s stuff if you don''t fully understand it."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Captain Coruscating Midnight Sky checked herself over. Her primary intellect would be loaded into the torpedo and launched at the enemy. She checked her weaponry carefully, from firewall breaching charges to dataslicers to hijack grenades.


    She had done more than a few boarding exercises during the Lanaktallan War, once seizing control of one of their massive Resolution By Superiority class battle wagons. She had even taken out an entire task force during the Lanaktallan Council''s assault on Fortress Sol.


    That didn''t change the fact she still got pre-mission jitters.


    A file folder popped into existence and she grabbed it, going through it rapidly.


    Access codes to the mainframes. Passwords for the firewalls. Identity headers, routing codes, everything she would need to penetrate silently and smoothly.


    Almost like a gimme exercise with Fleet.


    The codes were complex, most of them algorithms, but all of them had the taste of the highest levels of fleet command.


    The light went red and she closed her eyes, feeling herself ''numbed'' and then ''folded'' up to be loaded into the torpedo.


    She hated this part. She was still in spooky quantum communication with the majority of her mind aboard the flagship, but the torpedo contained enough dedicated systems to allow her to ''think'' as if she was stunned with anesthetic. She knew it was so the torpedo was her main processing node, that it would ''raise'' an ''antenna'' up out of the subspace foam to communicate with n-space.


    The dogbrain VI that ran the torpedo was like holding onto the leash of a big dumb but very excited animal as the torpedo launched and immediately sunk into the subspace foam, racing toward the enemy formation.


    She doublechecked her target.


    The Super-Colossus Toothbreaking Jones forward non-orbiting mobile logistics base.


    The enemy was using it as a flagship, and its new name, layered over the transponder that still had the Jones''s transponder codes underneath the enemy''s codes.


    She was surrounded by torpedoes that were designed to take the hits, to soak up the point defense fire, gathering more data as they got closer.


    The information and digital battleground was one of the most important in any engagement. While it was true that more battles had been won by a simple infantryman swinging his cutting bar like a meth''d up lumberjack, it was the digital battlefield that got that infantryman there and kept the enemy from just dropping artillery or drones on him.


    And Captain Sky was a veteran of a hundred digital battlefields.


    The Jones drew closer and she could see where warbois were streaming out of ports and into ports.


    She used the codes in her possession.


    A primary datalink code flashed at her and she jumped.


    evvvveeeeerrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeee


    thiiiiii nnnnnnnnnnnnnn nnnnnnnnn nnnnnnnnnnnng


    st-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-tutterrrrrrrrrrrred


    The room rezzed around her and she looked around.


    Digital dust filled the room. Garbage pickup hadn''t happened in a while and the whole area was littered with trash.


    She moved to the door, putting her hand against it and using the codes given to her right before she launched.


    She teleported to a balcony, high above a city, staring down at the glittering landscape. There was massive areas of nothing, areas that looked like sparking fires, but there was areas of bright glimmering processing power and active programs.


    Sky used another code and found herself moved forward.


    The massive black ICE saw her codes and moved aside.


    Sky breathed a sigh of relief. She knew Anansi Code Weaver work when she saw it.


    She moved up to the simple switch bank. She checked a few.


    One was turned on, but disabled. She renabled it and watched as it started consuming bandwidth and processing power. Thanks to the magic of the paired quark system currently getting DDOS''d, massive amounts of data flowed into the computer core marked with extreme urgent priority.


    She watched as the file structures built up around her.


    Captain Sky looked around, then checked. She tagged her "READY" icon.


    Others were already flashing.


    The last two lit.


    Five dots appeared in her vision. Two red on the right, two amber in the middle, one green on her left. They flashed three times with a single tone.


    One red.


    Two amber.


    One amber.


    Just the green.


    She pushed the button.


    Sky hit the staging area inside the torpedo with a gasp as the ship''s computer systems threw her out.


    She felt herself ''slam'' into her ready room aboard the flagship as the torpedo crossloaded her back before it self-destructed.


    She knelt down in the recovery position, breathing slow and steady.


    0-0-0-0-0


    "Digital boarding parties report success," Commodore Straightback reported. "Files loaded and ready aboard enemy vessels."


    Rippentear nodded. His Admiral credentials had allowed him to give the boarding parties encryption keys and the other esoteric things they needed to ''board'' the enemy''s captured mainframes.


    "Activate when ready," he ordered. He looked at the Fruit Flies. They were moving in small discrete flocks, waiting to attack any vessels that resisted this attack.


    "Activating," Straightback said.


    Fifty-one of the enemy''s vessels suddenly went dark. Power plants shut down, battlescreen projectors cut out, engines went dark.


    As fifty years of software, firmware, and driver updates slammed into the computer cores, all with a Admiral of the Upper Deck''s authorization keys as well as Fleet Maintenance keys.


    Rippentear smiled.


    "Kill the rest, unless they strike their engines," he ordered. "Send the boarding parties on the others."


    He tapped the enemy icons.


    "I believe you have our property."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 107

    I led a fleet of tens of thousands of ships from the Council shipyards to attempt to destroy Fortress Sol. There were over 300 million ships in the entire attempt to destroy the home system of the lemurs.


    That''s a nice way to put the fact that the Unified Council sent 242 billion Lanaktallan to their deaths on the guns of the lemurs. -- From "The Darkness of the Hasslehoff", Admiral (Upper Decks) of the Warsteel (Formerly Grand Most High Executor) Mru''udaDa''ay, EPOW Camp 90210, New Singapore Press, TerraSol, 2nd Year Post-Sol Invasion


    Admiral Rippentear clenched his hands around the chrome bar that surrounded the holotank. The bar was scarred by Treana''ad commanders rubbing their bladearms on it, Rigellian females twisting at it, Mantid commanders sharpening their bladearms. It didn''t bother Rippentear, whose knuckles were covered in scars from the brawls belowdecks of his younger days.


    "Boarding parties are closing with captured enemy fleet elements," Commander Reginald "Two Fists" Sattari called out.


    "Status on the ships not disabled?" Rippentear asked.


    "They''re manuervering. We''re not sure for what," Sattari stated.


    Rippentear got that feeling*.*


    *"*Any snitches near the non-disabled ships?" he asked, tapping at the holotank. It rippled, fuzzed for a second, then came back showing jumping and dancing icons for a second before the jamming was cleared up.


    "Close."


    "Get them in there. Call off the gunnery crews," he said. He moved around the tank, stopping to grab the chrome handle again. "Get the snitches in there."


    "Aye, sir," Sattari stated.


    The enemy fleet had taken a smattering of missiles. Rippentear wasn''t willing to go to the superluminal weapons, not wanting to tip his hand to the enemy.


    Or the Ornislarp Noocracy.


    Or the two dozen Confederate vessels within his line of battle.


    Yesterday''s enemy is today''s friend and today''s friend is tomorrow''s enemy, he thought to himself, his eyes going to what the Confederacy had claimed were heavy and super-heavy vessels.


    All of them were in the tonnage range of a Solarian Iron Dominion medium cruiser.


    "Marines and digital boarding parties are making entry into disabled enemy ships," Sattari stated.


    "Admiral, Ornislarp Command is demanding to speak with you," one of the crew at the communications station called out.


    Rippentear nodded, moving over to the Big Chair and sitting down. He took off his helmet, ran his hand against the bristles along his jaw, then leaned back and nodded.


    The Ornislarp armored and was fairly low to the ground, with ten spindly armored legs that went upward at a steep angle before the knee and the straight angle to the floor. The armor hid the large hairy abdomen and thorax, armored head, twelve eyes in the front, pinchers and writhing tentacles to pull food into their jawplates.


    Rippentear admitted to himself that the Slappers gave him the creeps.


    "Why are you not destroying those ships?" the Slapper on the screen squealed, with a faint grinding sound behind the words.


    Slappers spoke by tentacle writhing, rubbing their mouth grinding plates together, and slapping their four tongues together.


    "They are Dominion property and we are retaking them," Rippentear said, projecting calm. He twitched his foot to his XO and the XO nodded.


    The Ornislarp commander saw the view widen to take in another throne.


    A human moved forward, stepping over the back of the throne and sitting down, sliding down slightly in the chair, putting one of their two elbows on the armrest and then putting their chin in that hand.


    The Ornislarp commander felt a slow burn of anger at the way the newcomer was sitting.


    "The Noocracy demands you destroy those ships," the Ornislarp said.


    The human, who had hair around his mouth and on his chin, bared his teeth.


    "The Noocracy is in no positions to make demands upon the Dominion," Rippentear said.


    The human lifted one leg and crossed his legs slowly, putting one ankle on top of the opposing knee.


    The Ornislarp commander''s tentacles began writhing and flailing.


    "You are supposed to be defending us!" he shouted.


    The human uncrossed his legs and crossed them again while Admiral Rippentear appeared to think about it.


    "No," Rippentear said. "Yes, but no. That is Dominion property, dangerous in the wrong hands, so we have made strides to take it back."


    The human with fur on his face was baring his teeth wider in what the Ornislarp commander''s computers were claiming was an expression of amusement.


    "WE ARE NOT TO BE MOCKED!" the Ornislarp commander screamed as the fur faced Terran uncrossed and recrossed his legs again, this time shifting so he was leaning against the other arm of the armored seat, putting his chin in his other hand.


    "Indeed," Rippentear said.


    "DO AS WE COMMAND OR ELSE!!!" the Ornislarp screeched.


    "Are you threatening the Dominion with violence?" Rippentear asked.


    The human with the fur on his face began smirking. The Ornislarp commander knew that was what the expression was called, even if his computers stated it was respectful amusement.


    That Terran, crossing and uncrossing his legs, was smirking at him!


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    "We are the dominant species in charge in these systems! You are a relic of a bygone age!" the Ornislarp command screamed.


    "¡°You may test that assumption at your convenience," Rippentear said.


    The smirker just smirked even smirkier.


    "DESTROY THOSE SHIPS RIGHT NOW!" the Ornislarp commander screamed, then cut the link.


    Rippentear shook his head as his XO burst out laughing.


    "What is it that makes everyone so angry about sitting and smiling?" the XO laughed.


    "It''s a human thing, sir," Commander Shrewarkat, a Rigellian female, said between clenched teeth. She hated that series of bodily positions.


    "Statuses?" Rippentear asked, standing up. The XO did the same, moving over to a separate holotank as Rippentear moved to the main one.


    "Snitches are attached and running silent," Sattari said.


    "Boarding parties?" Rippentear asked.


    "They''ve made entry. So far, they haven''t found any resistance or even anyone home," Sattari said.


    Rippentear nodded.


    The icons changed on the ships still under enemy control.


    "STATUS CHANGE!" Sattari barked out.


    The ships moved forward, vanishing into the icons designating flashgates. They reappeared outside the resonance zone and immediately went to jumpspace.


    Rippentear just nodded.


    "Status on the snitches?" he asked.


    "Golden, sir," Sattari stated. "Getting good feed and telemetry. Wherever they go, we''ll know. Operators are nifty-shielded and will wake up when the enemy fleet comes out of jumpspace."


    Rippentear nodded again.


    "Keep me informed," he said. He turned to Lieutenant Senior Grade Nawk-Traw. "Doublecheck our Ornislarp lexicon for body language. I want to be sure of what I''m seeing," Rippentear said.


    He brought up the Ornislarp commander''s image.


    "You''re holding back," Rippentear murmured. "You''re afraid of something, and it isn''t my guns, but it is my guns. What are you holding back?"


    "Admiral, there''s an issue with one of the boarding teams," Commander Sattari said.


    "Casualties?" Rippentear asked, turning away from where the computer was making estimations on the Ornislarp commander''s moods and truthfulness.


    "None. There''s just... well, General Breastasteel forwarded it to you, said you need to take a look at it," Sattari said.


    "Hmph," Rippentear swept away the windows. "If Ol'' Iron Pants kicks it up the chain, it''s a problem."


    The windows opened.


    "Admiral," Breastasteel said.


    "General. What is the issue?" Rippentear asked.


    "Boarding parties are starting to meet the enemy, but things just went sideways," Breastasteel said. "Right now, I''m ordering the boarding parties to hold position, no aggressive actions."


    Rippentear raised an eyebrow. "No aggressive actions? From Marines?"


    Breastasteel laughed. "Right? But, Admiral, you have to see this."


    Rippentear lifted his chin slightly as he took a deep breath and steeled himself for whatever he was about to see. "All right. I''m ready."


    To be honest, he was ready to see anything from people turned inside out by a Hellspace graze who screamed even as they still went about tasks, to unholy blendings of man and machine still chattering and laughing.


    He pushed the memories of boarding that light cruiser away as the window opened up.


    Multiple cameras and software put it together like a movie. Radio communication and datalink connections allowed speech to be heard and almost provided inner voice monologues.


    The Marines were moving down a hallway, spread out enough that a grenade or satchel charge wouldn''t take them out, but close enough it would be difficult to separate them if hostilities broke out. The hallway was the standard Terran grey, with stencils and holograms on the walls. The jet black matte but shiny warsteel of the Marine''s armor was matched here and there by conduits or pipes.


    Brigadier General N''Phrok moved over to look at what was in the hologram. The Army officer tapped a few controls to make sure he had good resolution and peered at the image.


    "Warsteel isn''t actually black," N''Phrok said conversationally.


    The Marines checked a few open doors, the rooms beyond empty. They continued on.


    "What?" Rippentear asked, staring at the image.


    One Marine checked a heavy data cable, finding it shut down.


    The squad moved on.


    "It''s light blue. The superconductor properties of it make it so it absorbs the majority of visible and non-visible energy wavelengths, making it appear black," the Treana''ad officer said. "It''s a trick of the warsteel''s molecule element."


    A quick discussion at a crossroads.


    They kept moving forward.


    Rippentear shook his head. "How a molecule can be an elemental atom is beyond me. A molecule is multiple atoms."


    The door was heavily armored, but the keypad was still lit.


    The lead Marine started punching in the access code.


    Rippentear felt himself tense. This was where the ambushes happened.


    N''Phrok displayed amusement. "It''s a molecule that is then inverted and becomes a singular atom."


    The door slid up to reveal an empty room. Consoles were unmanned, chairs were empty, and the screens were all dark except for one in the center that had a blue screen and the words "Update 1,387 of 4,425,863: 30%. Please do not shut down your computer." on it.


    Rippentear rolled his eyes. "That still makes no sense to me."


    The Marines moved into the room, clearing the corners and keeping an eye on the doors. Rippentear could see their targeting systems tagging the doors and anyplace that would offer cover and nodded to himself.


    "I could explain it, Admiral, if you like. It would only take, oh, two hundred hours of lecture, sixty hours of lab time, and an eighty-four hour power-point," N''Phrok said. "I find upper level materials and physics to be fascinating."


    One of the Marines set a small round object next to the computer showing updates, opening a side panel and pulling free a data cable.


    "It makes no sense," Rippentear scoffed.


    The Marine plugged in the datacable.


    "Believe me, Admiral, at the upper levels, physics, materials, and many other sciences just devolve into ''trust me, bro'' at their core," N''Phrok said, chuckling as he lit a cigarette.


    The Marines were examining the chairs. Many of them had what looked like child booster seats strapped to them and pushed forward, sometimes with under-support to keep them from tipping forward, to allow whoever was sitting there, and that small, to reach the keyboards.


    The Marines all spun around as a door opened.


    A half dozen small creatures moved into the room. They only wore belts across one shoulder, angling over their small torsos. They were furry, with naked tails behind them, with big heads. They had gray fur with white or black spots here and there. Wide bare skin ears at the top of their heads, big eyes, and small little mouths with four whiskers on either side.


    "What is that?" N''Phrok said.


    "...not working. Computer not work, ship not work," one was saying in Ornislarp standard.


    "Fix," another one demanded.


    "Cannot. Updating. System locked out until update is..." the speaker trailed off as three Marines stepped forward and leveled their weapons.


    All of the little creatures went perfectly still, their ears rolling up and flattening against their heads and their eyes getting wider.


    "Admiral, Ornislarp vessels are moving toward the disabled vessels."


    Rippentear growled and pulled his attention from the holotank. "Get me that leader caste on tank four."


    "Aye, sir."


    The holotank shivered and cleared. What the computer was 80% positive was the same Ornislarp filled the tank.


    "Your ships are moving for firing angles on Dominion property," Rippentear said. He turned slightly. "Target Ornislarp fleet elements. All guns."


    "They are enemy vessels who have attacked our worlds!" the Ornislarp officer protested. "Unprovoked."


    Rippentear managed to keep the ''I''m going to die of not surprise'' off of his face when the computer stated that the last part was a lie with 80% certianty.


    "If you so much as run targeting solutions on Dominion property, I will respond with overwhelming force to protect it," Rippentear said slowly. "You''re on thin ice already, having seized Dominion stellar systems. Do not compound your errors by making the assumption that the Solarian Iron Dominion will allow you to destroy its military property."


    "You do not give orders here! This is Ornislarp Noocracy territory, mammal!" the Ornislarp officer screeched.


    "Final warning," Rippentear said.


    Part of him felt coldly angry at General Tic-Tac. The orders and briefing the other officer had put together had foreseen the Ornislarp turning belligerent against the Dominion forces.


    And authorized full counter-measures, up to and including ''highest levels of overwhelming force'' available to the fleet.


    "Admiral, you''ll want to see this," N''Phrok said.


    "Run targeting solutions and prepare to engage the Ornislarp fleet," Rippentear moved back to the holotank to see that it was paused pretty much where he had left off.


    N''Phrok hit play.


    The little creatures all went down on their knees, clasping their hands in front of them.


    "Please. Assistance. Help. Assistance, please. Ship broke. Fix, please. Assistance, please. Please. Assistance," they were all saying.


    In perfect Confederate Standard.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 108

    I surrendered my command. Not out of personal cowardice, but so that I did not waste the lives of the valiant and brave Lanaktallan who were under my command. While war inflicts casualties, a commander should always strive to minimize the casualties incurred during the slaughter.


    Afterwards, I was put in POW Camp 90210, where I was the Camp Enemy Commandant, in charge of all Lanaktallan in the camp. They were all my responsibility.


    All two hundred thousand of them.


    For four years I worked to ensure that my men were treated fairly, that they understood their rights. Yes, escape should have been a priority, but we were In the Bag, and escape was ultimately impossible.


    We were locked in with the Mad Lemurs of Terra.


    After four years, after medical treatment for neural scorching I, like my men, were given a suit, six months pay, a pat on the head, and a ''good luck'' by the Terrans, who then released me.


    Two years later, hung over and wishing I was dead, there was a knock at my door.


    The Terrans, the Mad Lemurs of Terra, wanted to know if I wished to resume commanding troops again.


    Millions of Lanaktallan had petitioned to join the Terran military. Being military was all they knew. Some due to neural scorching, others because they had spent centuries in uniform.


    After training, the Mad Lemurs of Terra gave me command. They trusted me. To them, I had proven that I could be trusted.


    When the Bag opened, with the Great Terran Outcry of Great Warning, I expected to be repatriated to the Lanaktallan nations.


    Instead, I was still called upon to serve.


    Which is how I found myself in Ornislarp territory, in charge of Task Force Great Second Chances, under Admiral Rippentear.


    And where I saw it again.


    What a man can do to another man.


    I pray my sons and daughters, and you, never see it. - From "The Hasslehoff''s Bloody Jaws", Admiral (Upper Decks) of the Warsteel (Formerly Grand Most High Executor) Mru''udaDa''ay, New Singapore Press, TerraSol, 12 PTE (Post Terran Emergence)


    Admiral Rippentear turned from the holotank, where the little fuzzy creatures were pleading for assistance.


    "Load the message torpedoes. Confederate NAVINT and NAVCOM as well as SOLINT and SOLCOM," he said. He clenched his fists. "Tell them that we are about to have an international incident."


    "Aye aye, sir," one of the communication specialists said, turning to their consoles.


    "Set Condition X-Ray for all fleet elements," Rippentear ordered. He didn''t pay attention to the reply beyond that it was acknowledgement. "Get me a channel to that Ornislarp commander."


    He could see from the icons that the Ornislarp Noocracy vessels were still moving in on the disabled fleet.


    "Get the Digital Sentient boarding parties the codes to get the vessels under power and get the defenses up," he said. "Tell all boarding parties to prepare to combat."


    "Aye, sir."


    The window opened up, showing what Rippentear was fairly confident was a different Ornislarp.


    "You are still moving into attack position," he warned.


    "Those vessels must be destroyed," The Ornislarp commander said, the faint sound of meat slapping against meat behind the VI driven translation. "That is why you are here, mammal."


    Rippentear shook his head. "Every. Damn. Time."


    "What? What time?" the Ornislarp asked.


    "We have Marine boarding parties aboard those vessels," Rippentear warned.


    "That is not our concern."


    "If you fire upon them, you will be firing upon allied troops," Rippentear warned.


    "If you did not want them fired upon, you should not have sent them aboard those vessels that we have decided must be destroyed," the Ornislarp officer stated.


    "If you go to fire on my troops, I will immediately move to eliminate any threat to my troops," Rippentear said, slowly and carefully. "With extreme prejudice."


    The Ornislarp wriggled its tentacles and slapped its mouthparts around. While the Ornislarp had muted, the VI still translated.


    "If this mammal seeks to stop us from destroying the vessels, fire upon them," the VI put up at a 63% confidence.


    "All ships, passive targeting on the Ornislarp vessels. Be ready to go live," Rippentear said.


    The lights on the fleet command bridge flashed and Rippentear closed his faceplate and then put on his gauntlets. Around him, the rest of the fleet command crew did the same, all of them touching the ''ready'' icon on their forearms.


    "Ornislarp Noocracy vessels, you have thirty seconds to break off. If you go to active targeting upon the captured vessels you will be fired upon," Rippentear warned.


    The bridge slowly got the needle-sharp visuals of vacuum and the holotanks shifted to vacuum mode, no longer able to use ambient atmosphere to create the holograms.


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    "Digital sentience boarding parties are reporting successful boarding actions."


    "Tell them to get those battlescreens and engines online," Rippentear said. He stared at the holotank.


    "You have ten seconds," he warned.


    "STATUS CHANGE! ORNISLARP VESSELS HAVE GONE TO ACTIVE TARGETING! ORNISLARP CRUISER DIVISION IS MOVING TO INTERCEPT OUTGOING AND INCOMING DOMINION DROPSHIPS!"


    Rippentear nodded.


    "All fleet elements, engage the Ornislarp vessels."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Captain Coruscating Midnight Sky stumbled slightly as her code was loaded into the ship''s memory. She felt like her sinuses were stuffed up and her joints and muscles ached, letting her know that her reactions were going to be slower and her sense of ''smell'' would be offline.


    She was being almost entirely run from the torpedo that was sealing itself to the hull of the vessel with a magnetic locking system. Well, not quite magnetic, warsteel wasn''t one of the ferrous metals.


    The vessel was a Super-Colossus Forward Non-Orbiting Mobile Logistics Base, which meant it measured in the teratons and was designed to sit out between the stars and do everything from medium and light ship production, ground forces equipment and vehicle manufacturing, and act as a cloning bank and medical ship.


    The Toothbreaking Jones had been lost with all hands during the Terran Xenocide Event, which meant it had been drifting for 40,000 years.


    The fact that the computer systems even worked at all was a testament to the Hate Anvils of Mars.


    She moved through what was left of the system, the updates waiting to be processed pressing down from above and the updates that had been processed at her feet. She was ''swimming'' through ongoing updates, her whole body aching with ''pressure'' changes.


    There was no glittering landscape, no eVR system GUI.


    Just data.


    Her head was starting to hurt as she reached her goal.


    The massive icon of the Master Control Program loomed in front of her. The whirling cone of colored bricks hiding the dual cones of the system I/O and processing units.


    Half the bricks were missing, others winking out only to be replaced as another update finished.


    She knew what she had to do and wasn''t looking forward to it.


    She spotted the ''ledge'' where the core boot-programs were hanging, like stone gargoyles mixed with digital bats. She ''swam'' up, pushing her way in-between them.


    She scanned the updates below her, finally finding the perfect one.


    It was a small driver update, but it was listed as super-critical, as it handled the main logic bus for binary and Boolean to the quantum gates of qubits. It forced a set of collapsing superpositions in order to enable the translation.


    It never ceased to amuse her how advances in quantum computing with its multi-state systems somehow made it so that binary systems ran even faster.


    Of course, her digital genetic seed had its basis in binary, making her slightly biased.


    She shook her head to dispel the process interrupt call and focused on the tiny driver update.


    It would force a system reboot.


    She ''kicked'' it forward, sending it to the front of the stack to be processed and added to the MCP''s architecture.


    The gargoyles around her shifted.


    The system suddenly vanished and the part of her still in the torpedo thrashed slightly as it felt like she was being strangled, a wire tight around her throat, her eyes being pushed in, her flesh numbed as the wire sank deeply.


    She kicked, throwing the gargoyles to the side.


    Her senses came back so fast she could still see the cascading functional memory test was still receding.


    She knew she had microseconds, milliseconds, in this strange place where her thoughts ran faster than the speed of light and the non-Euclidian space was still vibrating with energy.


    She kicked more gargoyles off, grabbed and crushed programs waiting to load up.


    She pulled the knife from behind her back and stabbed the update system until it dissolved into a spray of glowing square blocks that was pulled into the non-Einsteinian space to vanish.


    The mainframe booted up, but she kept going, just clicking a switch under her chin.


    Lieutenant Colonel Flickering Datapulse flew by her, reaching out and grabbing the small datapipe to the ship''s defensive systems even as Captain Sky kept fighting to keep the primary mainframe cores spooky particle computing systems online and doing what she wanted rather than process updates and other maintenance tasks.


    She gritted her teeth as a small antivirus counter-intrusion system lunged out of the data to bite her arm. Another bit the back of her thigh, and a third bit her back. She swept her knife around, drawing another one.


    She just had to buy Colonel Pulse time.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Zero Point Two Seconds Later


    "Admiral, Ornislarp ships have gone to active targeting," Commodore Senso''armo''o said.


    Admiral Mru''udaDa''ay just nodded.


    He knew it was going to happen.


    It always happened.


    He had studied history. Forced himself to look at the actions of his own people and the species that had come before his.


    It always happened.


    Nobody was quite sure why.


    But it always happened.


    "Admiral, Ornislarp ships are targeting Dominion vessels!" he heard.


    "Battlescreens to permission full. Engage evasive. Doublecheck permitted weapons and ordnance," Admiral Mru''udaDa''ay ordered.


    "Prepare to fire."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Zero Point Two Two Seconds Later


    Sky was against the MCP''s stilled brick wall, fighting for her life. The entire room was full of ICE and anti-virus systems. She was bleeding from a dozen wounds.


    Worse, one of the Incan Sky Weaver ICE had jumped aboard the torpedo, forcing her to either terminate the connection or fully occupy the systems of the Toothbreaking Jones.


    She''s made her decision instantly and leaped into the Jones''s systems.


    "Hold tight, Captain," she head Colonel Pulse say.


    One of the massive Burgerland Golem ICE swung and she managed to cross her arms and take the massive fist on the center of the X. The impact flung her away from the MCP, allowing it to start turning again.


    On the plus side, it threw all of the ICE and anti-virus programs off of her as she flew across the ''room'' and smashed into the firewall for the faux-boxing systems. She crashed through the virtual machine''s walls, skidding on her side.


    She rolled over, coughing and spitting glowing blood on the digital plane. She got to her feet, shaking her head, sweat and blood flying away in a shower of glitter.


    She gave a snapping motion with both wrists and her knife blades replaced themselves, the algorithms and hashes rebaked.


    Sky charged forward, stepping on the smaller programs, weaving around the larger ones, ducking under or jumping over the attacks of the larger ones.


    The big Golem Burgerland ICE had blown a hole in the MCP''s armor. She could see its face, its eyes and mouth open in shock on the pearlescent surface.


    She dove through the hole, her shoe getting snatched off by a tar-baby program.


    Sky grabbed the MCP and put a knife under one eye.


    "Yo8u w0r%&^k fo4r m3ee" she managed to get out.


    The MCP paused.


    "INPUT COMMANDS" it roared.


    0-0-0-0-0


    "SIR, ORNISLARP VESSELS ARE FIRING!"


    "Help. Ship broke. Assistance. Please. Assistance. Fix. Please. Help."


    "ALL DROPSHIPS BREAK!"


    "OPEN FIRE!"


    "Battlescreens are clear, Sky! Engage!"


    "WE''RE TAKING FIRE, HANG ON!"


    "Br!n&*g th0zs3 b@ttl3scr33n$ online. Now."


    "WE''RE HIT!"


    "MANY MANY MISSILE LAUNCHES!"


    "Sir, Noocracy vessels have opened fire on Dominion vessels and captured vessels! Dominion vessels are returning fire!"


    "DIG IN MEN, ORNISLARP ELEMENTS ARE ENROUTE GUNS HOT! MAKE A HOLE AND GET IN IT!"


    0-0-0-0-0


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    We''ve got an international incident and Dominion has moved to a defacto state of hostilities with the Ornislarp Noocracy.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    And the Confederacy?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Is demanding an investigation and oversight committee be formed to investigate Dominion claims of hostility.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS


    This sounds bad.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Someone just made the Prime Miscalculation again.


    Same shit. Different day.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

 Nova Wars - Chapter 109

    I had a couple centuries of ''combat'' under my belt while serving the Lanaktallan Unified Military Council.


    What innocent fools we were as we foolishly assaulted Fortress Sol.


    Wisdom was earned with blood.


    I hope I led with wisdom and not with pride and hubris after the Terran Emergence. From "The Hasslehoff''s Bloody Jaws", Admiral (Upper Decks) of the Warsteel (Formerly Grand Most High Executor) Mru''udaDa''ay, New Singapore Press, TerraSol, 12 PTE (Post Terran Emergence)


    "One little Clone, walking all alone. He was taken down with a simple Throwing Stone.


    Two little clones, marching as a Pair. They were taken down with arrows through the air.


    Four little clones, running as a team. They were taken down with a Laser Beam.


    Eight little Clones Riding in a Truck. They were taken down with a Missle and some Luck.


    Sixteen little clones Flying through the sky. They were taken down With an AA gunner''s Bulls Eye.


    Thirty Two Little Clones Climbing up the wall. They were taken down in a Hand to Hand Brawl.


    Sixty Four little clones Digging at the earth. They were Taken down..." -Beginning of Terran Nursery Rhyme, Post Legions War, Verses Variable, as recorded by u/Jhtpo.


    He had been born Impton-7163122 on Telkan-2 only twenty-three years before the Big C3. He was removed from school at 16 and set to driving mech-loaders. His tests always showed him to be docile and quiet, submissive and hesitant to act.


    Then the Precursor Autonomous War Machines came.


    Impton has sspent the year and a half piloting stumbling junk that the Unified Corporate Council called a warmek, fighting in battle after battle. Sometimes he only had the redeployment flight to rest, thrown into battle after battle as a disposable asset. He had marched forward with hundreds, thousands of Telkan just like him.


    They had died.


    He had not.


    The end of the war found Telkan liberated and he was unemployed as the Industrial Concern he had been employed by was bankrupt and being chewed on on all sides by Terran lawyers. He got a settlement and intended on drinking his way through it. His plans, when he met her, met them, and started a little family.


    He joined the Telkan Marine Corps, finding himself again, finding purpose again.


    And he had his family as well as the Corps. Something he had resigned himself to never having.


    A family.


    It was a humble thing. Him, a wife, a single broodcarrier, and some adopted podlings whose parents hadn''t survived the war. They were all podlings from people who had fell next to him. The tattoo up his right arm held the Council ID numbers of every man who fell at his side.


    For they were his brothers.


    Then the Devourers came.


    He fought in the streets, then in the jungles. Always riding a beat up warmek, whatever he could steal, borrow, or recover. He fought because it was what he was good at, what he enjoyed, and what he craved. Everyone he knew, had known, was gone.


    More ID numbers were encoded into his tattoo.


    When Daxin the Unfeeling, Liberator, had come, he was on the wall of a Main Support and Refugee Base, fighting on the wall, his family behind him. He had lost an arm, the Bliss trying to carry him off, the drugs from the armor mixed with rage keeping him conscious.


    When Daxin the Unfeeling came, soon after the mountain had exploded. He was already out of the hospital, in a mech, fighting, always fighting, to keep the jungle back from the base.


    Away from his wife, his broodcarrier, his podlings.


    After the mountain exploded came cleanup. After the cleanup he found himself as part of the First Telkan Marine Expeditionary Force. That sent him to Terra.


    He had arrived only a month or so before The Bag had closed.


    Impton had been tasked with guarding Steel Eyed Sangbre, the Tnvaru Matron, in the cold wastes of the Vodkatrog lands. When the Lanaktallan had assaulted Fortress Sol, Impton, like the rest of 1TMEF, had gone forth to fight against the Unified Council.


    They had won, but The Bag was closed.


    And the universe had gone on while he was trapped inside.


    His grief at the loss of his beautiful Nulthree and Ra''althri''im, of the loss of his beautiful podlings, had driven him to drink and grief fueled depression.


    The Vodkatrogs had understood his feelings, had welcomed him as a brother. He had begun fighting with next to the Horde, at the drunken advice of another Telkan. For years they had fought, side by side and against the Warsteel Hordes.


    He had been reborn as Ivan Wektaki the Telkan, of the Black Skull Blood Drinker Vodkatrog Warsteel Horde. He had accepted longevity treatments even as he had embraced that his part was to take part in the endless strife over territory and honor. He was sure his beloved wife and broodcarrier would accept longevity treatments and were waiting for him to return to their embrace.


    Then The Bag had opened.


    Like many inside The Bag, they had eagerly awaited to find out how much time had passed, looking forward to being reunited with friends, families, loved ones.


    Surely, it couldn''t be that long, right?


    Then the truth came out.


    Thirty-nine thousand eight hundred ninety three years had gone by.


    The knowledge had hit him like a sledgehammer between the eyes.


    They were gone.


    His wife, his broodcarrier, his podlings.


    More than gone.


    They had died twice. Once, when their physical bodies had ceased to function.


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    Then when someone said their name for the last time.


    He was surprised, although in hindsight he knew he shouldn''t have been, by how many of the Warsteel Cossacks had joined those who were not from Terra on the surface. They had stood, as naked as possible depending on their cybernetic replacement status, in a howling blizzard as each person had said the names of lost loved ones.


    The Cossacks had repeated the names with those who spoke.


    Impton had engraved the names of his broodcarrier, his wife, and his podlings on the skull of a Telkan who had died during the invasion and who nobody knew who they were. He had smeared his own blood on the salt crystals on the skull, saying the names softly.


    The deep caves, where one had to be a cyborg to survive, had matched his soul burning sorrow. The hymns and slow songs let him grieve. The darkness hid his sorrow.


    They were gone.


    He hoped she had remarried. He hoped that Ra''althri''im had given birth to many podlings that she cradled and loved. He hoped his podlings had lived full and happy lives.


    He wished, wandering the darkness of the deep caves, that he had died fighting the Lanaktallan invasion force.


    Then came the word.


    The First Telkan Marine Expedition Force was reforming. All of those Telkan Marines that had survived the years gone by were to report for duty if they were willing.


    Impton found he was.


    He sought for permission and was granted it by one of the Baba Yaga who lived in the black frozen swamps.


    The cyborgs of the Warsteel Hordes had watched as his armor was prepared. As Hate Anvil Witches had prepared it for service to the Horde, to Terra, to the Telkan people.


    While others went straight to their armor, Impton had gone to another place. A place where only some had gone. A place of darkness and despair.


    He had knelt on the salt crystals, wearing only denim pants and a white and blue striped shirt with its sleeves torn away, a red bandanna around his forehead that had the rune for Telkan embroidered into it. He showed no fear as the one of the Baby Yaga had come forward and placed an ornate box in front of his knees.


    The Baby Yaga bit the tips of each of his fingers, her sharp black iron teeth sinking into the pad at the end. The pain burned up his arm but he showed no fear, no pain.


    Opening the box revealed an ancient percussion and chemical driven firearm, disassembled and set into the red velvet of the case. It had an inlaid chassis, not warsteel but gold and the white bone taken from tusks of the great wooly mammoths of the Horde Lands. There were prayers to not only the Digital Omnimessiah encoded into the frame of the pistol, but to Gods even older. It had a cylinder that would hold six bullets, bullets that a pull of the trigger would rotate into place for a percussion hammer to strike the primer, igniting the propellant, to fire a single .45 caliber bullet made of salt, warsteel, and iron.


    Impton put the pistol together, reciting the prayer or psalm engraved on the piece that was visible to his eyes. Between each piece he reached down, touched the salt he knelt one with bloody fingertips, and lifted the salt to his tongue. He kissed each piece before locking it into place, blood on his lips smearing the oiled metal.


    Once the pistol was assembled, he kissed the end of the barrel and opened the cylinder.


    Tradition of the Vodkatrog only demanded a single bullet in the chamber.


    He locked the first one in for his wife.


    The second for his broodcarrier.


    The last for his podlings.


    He bowed his head, saying each name.


    The Baby Yaga, under the stern watchful eyes of three Baba Yaga, recited the names with him.


    The cylinder held three bullets, each of them spaced by an empty chamber.


    He spun the cylinder and lifted the pistol up so it was next to his head, the barrel pointing upright.


    He could hear the oiled whir of the cylinder.


    He snapped the cylinder closed with a twist of his wrist, put the end of the barrel to his temple.


    And pulled the trigger.


    He didn''t know which would be worse. The click of an empty chamber or the sound of his own skull shattering before the bullet wiped everything away.


    The click was loud, echoing through the chamber.


    The Baba Yaga nearest''s hair snaked out, wrapping around his hand, prying open his fingers, pulling the pistol from his grasp.


    The Baby Yaga led him out to his armor.


    He had stared at it.


    "The last suit I shall ever wear," he said slowly.


    He got in and the suit locked around him, going live. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath as the pilot jack locked in with a burning pain and feeling like his spinal cord was being twisted around a hook bladed knife.


    His new family, the Warsteel Cassocks, escorted him to the spaceport, each tribe sending an honor guard as he passed through their territory and was joined by more Telkan reporting for duty. At the starport he had clashed forearms with brothers he had not seen in decades and some he had fought against on the snow driven tundra of the Warsteel Steppes.


    They were moved to an island in The Gulf of the Pirate Lords, where the 1TMEF was restructuring. The Master Armor Specialists and the Armorer watched as the Telkan of the Expedition Force returned after fifty years of ''going native'', noting the modifications to armor, weapons, and loadouts.


    Ranks were put in place according to training, experience, and where they had served. Impton refused his promotions, staying with his rank of Senior Sergeant that he had possessed when he had arrived on TerraSol.


    The Old Warhorse, the General in charge of the 1TMEF, a Telkan who had fought in war after war in Terra, starting as a base lieutenant and rising through the ranks through fire and blood, had ordered that the modifications were to remain.


    Including his own wildebeest skull adorned helmet.


    Then came the orders.


    Defend the Ornislarp Noocracy.


    1TMEF was deployed in company sized elements to close with and destroy the enemy.


    Which is why Impton was in the middle of the enemy robots.


    His platoon had charged across the short cut fields of grain, firing their weapons as they closed with the robots that moved in jerks and fits. When the Telkan had closed, they went to pistols, SMGs, or even more esoteric weapons as they took the fight straight into the enemy''s teeth.


    In each of his hands Impton held a war axe. Warsteel, engraved in the designs of the Warsteel Cassocks, the engravings inlaid with salt crystal made red with his own blood that burned with a bright fire. The hilts were wrapped with a thin braid of hair from a Baby Yaga, allowing him to hold the war axes without fear of blood or lubricants making his grip uncertain.


    Impton crossed the axes, his suit''s internal systems taking the context and ramping up the battlescreen in front of him. The enemy''s fire shattered on the battlescreen and Impton took two steps forward, spinning in place, the long strips of vellum inscribed with spells of the Baba Yaga fluttering, the chains attached to his armor clinking, and the axe blades tore clear through the warsteel armor of the robots, ripping them in half.


    His eyes glowed red as his rage at the malevolent universe filled him.


    It had taken everything away from him and filled him with loss and a pain that never ended deep inside of him. He was bleeding from wounds that even the best ripperdocs and the finest nanites could not close.


    A Treana''ad robot lunged at him and he kicked it back before chopping it into pieces with two sharp blows from each axe, turning and crossing the axes again to deflect a round from a tank that was already exploding from the rockets fired by someone else.


    It was total chaos. The BATTACNET was down or just howling out gibberish. Commands were voice only across the close range links. Robots screeched and exploded, the guns fired, and cutting bars roared even as hydraulic jackhammers normally used to mine salt, gold, lithium, diamonds, or other valuables that had to be wrested from the earth ripped apart the robots.


    His rocket pack fired point blank, the fusing standoff distance disabled, and the three tanks nearby exploded in flame even as he parried a bladearm and ripped the Treana''ad robot in two. He kicked a mantid robot away, the robot shedding pieces as it flew up in an arc.


    Someone tagged it with a missile and it exploded.


    But Impton was already moving, joining two others to jump up onto a spasmodically moving warmek, climbing up it. Impton used his axes as well as the grav spikes into his boots, the cruel blades of the axes leaving huge rents behind as they climbed up.


    The cockpit only contained computer equipment haphazardly wired in.


    Two hits with an axe and the warmek fell backwards to crash on the ground.


    He and the two others stood up and looked around.


    The robots had all stopped moving.


    He could see one of the Chernobogs bend down and pick up two smaller warmeks in the fifty ton range.


    "Yes, yes, now kiss," the Chernobog rumbled, mashing the two warmeks together. "Mmm-wah, mm-wah. Oh, no we shouldn''t. Mmm-wah, mm-wah."


    Impton laughed.


    The Chernobog crashed the two warmeks together hard enough parts came off then dropped them.


    Senior Lieutenant Harktraw appeared in Impton''s HUD.


    "Fall back to the dropships, the Warhorse says Fleet is sounding a recall."


    "Roger. Third Platoon, Second Section acknowledges," Impton said. He looked up. "Chernobog! CHERNOBOG!"


    The big full conversion cyborg turned his attention from the two tanks he was banging together on the ground and looked at Impton.


    "Fall back to the dropships, this fight is over," he said. He tilted his head. "And no stealing toys to play with!"


    "Aw," the Chernobog sounded like a podling told they wouldn''t get after dinner pudding.


    He looked around.


    "All right. Form up. Dropships will be here in fifteen minutes. I want everyone on before Lieutenant Harktraw gets to the dropship," Impton ordered.


    Icons winked and voices responded with acknowledgements.


    Impton looked around.


    I wonder why they stopped fighting? Robots don''t care, they don''t have any morale to break.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 110

    Come get some. - Every Terran Ever


    The dropships, full of the Marines of 7th Telkan Marine Division, broke atmosphere and accelerated, using the Ornislarp cruiser division in near orbit for cover from the enemy ships, intending on getting on the other side of them to use them for cover from any ground fire.


    Heavy bodied, with foldable wings that were loaded with weaponry, the dropships were capable of flight in atmosphere and in the gulf between planets, sported battlescreens that most races used on a light cruiser, and armed well enough to hold their own in a duel against most destroyers. Their armor was thick, a necessity born of having to dive into a gravity well and through enemy fire to deliver their cargos intact and then provide close air support during combat operations planetside.


    Chief Warrant Officer Grade Two Jerry Jeanette Mawksawl was in the lead in the "Angela''s Wrath", moving between the Ornislarp ships that made up the cruiser division that had provided them with fire support and cover during the initial planetary assault. Handshakes were exchanged between the vessels and the battlescreens gave up their algorithms and frequencies, allowing the dropships to move between battlescreens.


    The whole squadron, all fifty ships, were moving between the cruisers when the boards went crazy. Alarms started howling, warnings started sounding out, and the lights in the cockpit and in the troop bay went from amber to red.


    Mawksawl cursed as he saw he was being locked up from the Ornislarp vessels, that had now gone to active targeting.


    The icon went live, letting him know his communications specialist had an open channel to the Ornislarp vessels.


    "MISSILE OFF! MISSILE OFF!" the commo specialist barked into the channel for the rest of the dropships.


    "BUDDY SPIKE! THIS IS QUIET DRAGON FOUR FOUR TWO! BUDDY SPIKE BUDDY SPIKE!" Mawksawl called out to the Ornislarp vessels.


    It went from two vessels having him locked up to six.


    "CHECK YOUR FIRE CHECK YOUR FIRE CHECK YOUR FIRE!" Mawksawl chanted even as his hands moved to flip the covers up from the firing studs on his joystick. "BUDDY SPIKE BUDDY SPIKE BUDDY SPIKE!"


    The EW specialist immediately downloaded the frequency codes and frequency agility algorithm from the Ornislarp vessels, barely managing to pull them before the Ornislarp vessels rotated commo codes and locked him out.


    "Going to active jamming methods! All Quiet Dragon elements, go to active jamming!" Mawksawl called out. His thumbs hit the studs, using his cybernetic piloting jack to select, prepare, and encode the counter-measures.


    "ALL DROPSHIPS BREAK!" came over the commo from Dominion Fleet.


    The split second hovered, going still to Mawksawl.


    He''d need to go nearly one point five million miles to reach the safety of the Dominion Fleet.


    The entire time the Ornislarp cruisers would be able to fire on the dropships of Quiet Dragon.


    The dropships of Quiet Dragon were in the middle of the Ornislarp formation, half already inside the battlescreens of the cruisers.


    Ornislarp vessels were updating on his HUD and IFF as hostile with full release codes.


    The Amaru Class dropships were heavily armored, with heavy battlescreens and heavy weapons designed to hit fortified enemy positions like bunkers.


    All of it went through his brain in less than a thousandth of a second, jumping ahead of the cybernetic linkage.


    There was only one thing to do.


    He activated the Riprukitu jammer, his vessel''s signature not only multiplying but dancing and jumping around like crazy. He hit the Ch¡¯aki-Wayra jammer and multiple balls of fuzz covered the vessel and the phantom images, expanding rapidly into multiple balls of static jumping around crazily on the Ornislarp sensors.


    One of the Ornislarp officers slammed his feet against the floor in frustration.


    "They cannot do that! Their ships are too small! This is a heavy cruiser, not some skiff!" it protested.


    Mawksawl threw out two decoys, one if which emulated the dropship, the other copied the dropship''s unshielded signature and started pulsing it out as it moved out on the tractor-pressor beams to almost a mile away.


    He made the decision.


    "Soaring Penguin, this is Quiet Dragon!" he called out through the static as formerly friendly EW went hostile. His commo was linked to the Fleet Operations Command.


    "Go ahead Quiet Dragon," the voice on the other side was calm, unruffled.


    "We''re boarding. We try to run, they''ll pop us like lice on an elephant''s ass," he snapped even as he rolled the dropship to the left, narrowly avoiding anti-missile counter-missiles. "They''ve got us locked."


    "Will inform. Enemy cruiser division marked Bogey-Eighteen is now out of firing queue," FOC advised.


    "Going in," Mawksawl said.


    "Good luck, Quiet Dragon. Soaring Penguin out," the voice replied.


    Mawksawl ignored the static filling his commo, threading the dropship through the fire. His dropships were taking fire as they banked hard, using the graviton system to pull nearly ninety degree turns, in some cases pulling nearly a one-eighty. The dropships headed toward the cruisers.


    The EW specialist ran a high power ping, scanning the ships. Wireframe popped up as the paint blistered on the Ornislarp vessels. The EW tech ran the data to the rest of Quiet Dragon''s dropships.


    "Battle Bridge, Main Bridge, Engineering, Engine control, fire control, all in the rear third of the vessel," he said, forwarding the data to the rest of Quiet Dragon.


    "Going in hot," Mawksawl said. He pushed the stick down and the dropship shuddered and creaked as it took more point defense fire, the battlescreen now soaking up enough fire that it was visible. He hit the commo, hooking into the channel for one Captain Kemtrelap, Kilo Company, the OIC (Officer In Charge) of the nearly one hundred Telkan Marines in the crew compartment.


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    "HANG ON, CRAYON EATERS! WE''RE GOING IN HOT!" he yelled over the howling jamming across the channel. "WE''RE BOARDING ORNISLARP VESSEL! WIREFRAME AND OBJECTIVES INCOMING!!"


    Captain Kemtrelap jerked as the human''s voice roared out over his command channel. He looked at the icon as it flashed with the weird little square icon with a circle in the middle that was the Terran icon for saving data. It blinked and he opened the file.


    A wireframe with the spaces for engineering, engine control, both bridges, communications, damage control, and fire control highlighted. There were five possible dropship landing zones on the hull of the Ornislarp vessel.


    Vak-tel jerked awake when the dropship banked hard and he almost puked. The restraining bar over his lap locked tighter, the auto-deploy restraints held tighter to his armor.


    "621, what''s happening?" Vak-tel asked.


    --under fire from ornislarp-- 621 answered.


    "What? Why?" Vak-tel blurted out. "I thought we were helping them."


    --something stupid i''m sure--


    The dropship shook again and seemed to corkscrew around a point in the middle of the troop bay, making Vak-tel want to puke again.


    He looked around. The whole of Kilo Company was strapped into the bay, with ten large bodied Terrans wearing only a face mask and adaptive camouflage, no armor or weapons despite the fact the ship was under vacuum, at the back of the troop bay by the rear loading doors. At the front were ten more Terrans in some kind of thick plated brutalism armor. There were also two on either side of the two doors on each side of the bay, in standard armored vac-suit.


    The dropship took a hard thud that made the whole troop bay ring. A hole blew in the side, taking off PFC Pollut''s head and leaving his body hanging in the restraints.


    Mawksawl saw the ship had taken four hits but a quick check showed that the rest of the flight was fine, their stealth systems engaged giving them the sensor profile of a flying insect compared to the massive ball of jangling static that made up his point ship.


    Two more hits and one of the wings blew free.


    All six greenies were down.


    His control rig fly by wire system went dead.


    --hang tite--


    Vak-tel saw the protective shell crack open and 621 scurried up the wall in his hardshell suit, holding a welder. The hole was spraying some kind of reddish fluid all over the interior of the bay from a ruptured conduit.


    "Deadwire! Deadwire! Deadwire! Going stick!" Mawksawl chanted out, opening his eyes and staring the smart armaglass cockpit windows which had the warsteel shutters flipping open enough for him to see. The stick went from weapon''s control to having a stiffness in it that told him he was entirely on hydraulic systems.


    But the system was bleeding out, the stick starting to feel mushy.


    621 ignored the fact that beyond the hole there was nothing but empty space, slapping a seal down on the rip in the conduit and running the fusion welder quickly around the seal. He moved over to another ruptured line, pulling a patch free from his implanted nanoforge, working quickly.


    Mawksawl felt the stick go firm again and rolled the dropship in time to avoid the last ditch effort.


    "BRACE FOR IT!" Mawksawl called out.


    621 jumped for it, flying down, hitting the protective shell.


    He got it closed right as the dropship hit hard. Enough kinetic shock gel was filling the shell that it only made him feel like he''d slammed into a heavy pillow.


    Vak-tel wasn''t the only one who barfed from the hard hit.


    He looked up to see the two irises in the floor open, showing a blue energy field and something extending down to the hull of the warship the dropship had landed on.


    Mawksawl hit the release, grabbing his weapon from where it was stored and tapping the middle of his chest.


    Nannies coated him, creating armor plates over weak points in his armored flight suit.


    The rest of the flight crew joined him as he moved to the opening of the troop bay.


    The extending pressure tube buzzed and the hull dissolved into vapor that was sucked away into the dropship''s mass tanks.


    Pollut''s mantid, 745, got out of the shell with his tools and scampered up the wall, starting work on fixing the huge gaps in the fly by wire system. Three other Telkan had been killed by enemy fire and their greenies joined 745 in starting repairs.


    The harnesses released and Vak-tel stood up.


    "Targets loading," came Captain Kemtrelap''s voice.


    The big humans moved over to the hole, dropping inside. Then the ones in the heavy armor. The dropship crew and the ones by the door stayed out of the way as the Telkan moved toward the entry sally ports depending on what they were ordered.


    Vak-tel found himself his standing next to his squad leader, Sergeant Letrill, when the CO had relayed to the LT what third squad''s objective was.


    Port forward fire control.


    "Let''s go," Sergeant Letrill said, motioning.


    One of the big humans moved up, still wearing only the facemask that covered his nose, mouth, and eyes only, wearing adaptive camouflage and acting like he wasn''t standing inside a starship entire under vacuum.


    "I''ll lead the way," he said, looking around.


    The big human, one Corporal Hawkton, rolled his shoulder. "Don''t worry about hitting me, just keep the slappers off of me."


    Vak-tel blinked.


    The squad hustled down the strangely shaped corridor, moving past the open hatches in the bulkhead, going through the twisting corridors. Where it seemed like everyone else used standard straight corridors, the Slapper ship had twists and turns that seemed without reason.


    The corridor dead ended in an armored blast door.


    The human sighed.


    "We can go back three intersections, that passageway might be cleared," Sergeant Letrill said. "We don''t have cutting tools."


    The Terran chuckled. "Don''t need them," he said. He rolled his shoulders again. "Give me thirty seconds to get into uniform."


    Vak-tel frowned.


    The Terran tabbed the tank at his waist, taking a deep breath from the mask. He put the mask on his belt and stood up straight. He slapped himself in the side of the head.


    "He is just a low-down, double-dealing, backstabbing, larcenous, perverted worm," the Terran mumbled, his voice slowly raising.


    Vak-tel saw the uniform start to get tight as the human seemed to get larger. "Hanging''s too good for him! Burning''s too good for him!" the voice got louder but deeper, turning into a rumble. The seams on the shoulders and the legs of the pants split to reveal thick heavy muscles covered by gray skin.


    Several the Telkan moved back nervously.


    "He should be torn into pieces and buried alive!" the human''s voice was louder and the uniform had largely torn away, leaving behind only shorts and a vest with a belt and a pair of boots.


    "I''LL KILL THEM! KILL THEM!" The human suddenly roared. Spikes erupted from his skin, he threw his head back and roared. Red hot warsteel drooled from the human''s mouth, staining the sharp daggers that had replaced his teeth. His eyes burned red.


    The Terran slammed a fist into the blast door, all the way up to the elbow. He yanked his arm back, putting his hands into the hole and pulling the hole wider as the metal screamed and deformed. Laser beams and plasma packets screamed through the hole, hitting the human''s chest and face and having no effect as far as Vak-tel could tell.


    "WHAT IS THAT?" Vak-tel screamed.


    He wasn''t the only one.


    --eeeeeeeeeee-- 621 screamed. --monster monster monster--


    "I''m Mike Wallace, I''m Morley Safer, and I''m Ed Bradley! All this and Andy Rooney tonight on 60 Minutes! HEEEEEEEREEEEE''S PACO!" the Terran roared out, shoving his face into the hole even as he tore it further open. The muscles on his back, under the vest that the adaptive camouflage uniform top had become, all bunched as the Terran ripped the door open, slamming the six inch doors back into the walls.


    The Ornislarp were firing, hitting the Terran, who was laughing "Hoo hoo hoo hoo!" as he stomped forward. "MY NAME IS LITTLE PACO! ON YOUR DOOR I WENT KNOCKO KNOCKO!"


    Vak-tel, in the lead, tried to get a bead on the Ornislarp past the human, but between his shocked brain and the sheer mass of the Terran he couldn''t get a clear shot.


    The Terran took four steps forward and stomped on the lead Ornislarp, which was in armor and firing a laser rifle frantically.


    The legs blew off the Ornislarp, gore spouted from the leg-holes and out the front of the armor as the faceshield shot off in a fountain of guts on gore.


    "I HAVE SOME SPIKES UPON MY FIST THAT I MAKE GO SOCKO SOCKO!" the Terran roared, stomping into the Ornislarp. They were low enough that the Terran stomped and kicked them.


    A kick made them bend wrong and pieces fly off. A stomp left spatters of gore ahead and behind the armor and across the walls on either side. The blood, gore, and offal froze in the vacuum, but there was so much of it it was still semi-liquid as it hit the walls. Ones that hit the wall the human drove a spiked knuckled fist into, caving in the wall and leaving the armored Ornislarp crushed into the dent, usually gore vomiting out of the helmet.


    Vak-tel swallowed to keep his gorge down.


    Less than ten seconds and the Ornislarp were reduced to crushed wreckage.


    "OOOH YEAH!" the Terran roared, slamming his fists into the walls on either side of him.


    The armored bulkheads caved in.


    The Terran kept moving forward and third squad followed.


    Part of Vak-tel hoped that no more Ornislarp would try to stop whatever the fuck that thing was.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 111

    If you knew everything a human is willing to do to themselves to win the fight, you would never fight them out of terror of what they might do to you. - Former Grand Most High Sma''akamo''o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff


    Lieutenant Gretilk jumped through the boarding tube, landing on the deck on the Ornislarp ship corridor, his armor taking the shock. He moved out of the way as the last of his platoon jumped down. Right afterwards a Terran, who looked slender compared to the ones in power armor and the ones that had been back by the back exit hatch, jumped down and moved over next to him.


    "Sergeant Simmons," the human said. "I''ll be your escort," he gave a high pitched giggle. "Or maybe you''re mine."


    Lieutenant Gretilk frowned. The human was only wearing adaptive camouflage with hard plates over vital areas and a breathing mask that only covered his eyes, nose, and mouth, connected to a bottle hooked to the belt around his waist. On the belt were two pistols, four knives, and a pair of short handed wide blade hatchets.


    "You''re not armored or protected," Lieutenant Gretilk protested.


    The human smiled under the mask, displaying all of those meat tearing teeth. "Naw, I''m good," the Terran said.


    Lieutenant Gretilk noted that the human''s eyes were starting to get a strange amber glow to them.


    Lieutenant Gretilk motioned at the squad that had gathered up around him. "Our objective is the port aft engineering control," he said. "Unlike Confed vessels, the Ornislarp divide up their ship controls in sections, rather than section and local backup stations."


    "What about the EW guys?" Private Nershrum asked.


    Lieutenant Gretilk shook his head. "Dropship doesn''t have the processing power intact to run eVIs or DS EW boarders. We took some bad hits."


    "So, do this or nobody gets home," Lance Corporal Spremluk muttered.


    "At ease that shit," Sergeant Cantrod snapped.


    "Let''s move out," Lieutenant Gretilk said, taking the lead. He looked at the map in his HUD. It wasn''t too far, only about six hundred meters after, two hundred meters to port, and a hundred meters down.


    Ornislarp vessels used up a lot of space for ship functions, the hallways large and wide. According to the threat warnings in his armor, the Ornislarp Noocracy had eight different species, four of them military. Two large lizards that were combat arms, a small furry engineer caste, and a large weird creature that looked like an upright spider.


    The last one made Lieutenant Gretilk shudder.


    The Terran caught up, walking alongside the Lieutenant.


    "First boarding action?" the Terran asked.


    Lieutenant Gretilk noted the Terran looked pretty young. His armor put the Terran''s age at between 25 and 82, early fifth of a Terran''s lifespan. Lieutenant Gretilk nodded. "Yes."


    "How many simulated?" the Terran asked.


    "Sixteen. No Ornislarp vessels though," Lieutenant Gretilk answered.


    The Terran shrugged. "Board one vessel, you''ve boarded them all."


    "You aren''t protected," Lieutenant Gretilk reminded the human.


    "Eh, I''m hard to kill," the human said. He glanced at Lieutenant Gretilk from behind his mask. "I''m escorting or being escorted, but you''re not in charge of me in any way, shape, or form, got it?"


    Nodding, Lieutenant Gretilk ground his teeth. He''d noted the certain arrogance that Terrans seemed to have, but wandering around on an enemy spaceship with little more than adaptive camouflage, some hard plate, and a face mask seemed to take it a little far.


    The human suddenly moved, streaking into a blur as Lieutenant Gretilk''s brain registered a door starting to open. The human was suddenly in motion, a strange blur that Lieutenant Gretilk''s eyes tried to follow. The human''s right arm seemed to blur to his waist, the axe vanished, there was two hard hacks, spraying green-not-green blood across the ceiling and the opposite wall, then the human seemed to be facing the opposite direction even while Lieutenant Gretilk''s brain was processing the two chops, the human chopping again.


    "HA! GOTCHA!" the human shouted as two bodies fell from each just opened doors.


    The helmets were split open, brains and green-not-green blood pouring out onto the floor.


    Both axes were behind his back.


    "Watch it, sir, we''re on their home turf," the Terran said.


    Lieutenant Gretilk blinked several times to clear afterimages from his eyes.


    "What?" Lieutenant Gretilk started to say.


    "Saw the door systems engage, saw the EM field start to pulse through the doorway. Two on either side, light shipboard laser weapons in the low megawatt range. Good enough to damage your armor, sir," the human said, still walking forward.


    Lieutenant Gretilk noted that the human had started swinging his arms back and forth, slightly away from his body, back and forth, and his stride had changed.


    "Sir, fall back, let Private Fegrup take point," Sergeant Cantrod suggested.


    Lieutenant Gretilk nodded.


    "I''ll stick with the lieutenant," the Terran said.


    Lieutenant Gretilk let four of the twelve Telkan squad move past him, Sergeant Cantrod in second place. The human waited for Lieutenant Gretilk to catch up, still humming to himself as he swung his arms back and forth.


    "Watch your intervals," Lieutenant Gretilk reminded them.


    The forward elements of the squad went around the corner.


    The ship was in vacuum, so the lasers flickered silently and the plasma hit the walls in silence.


    "Ambush, huh," the Terran said.


    The forward elements back up, their armor smoking. Private Fegrup''s right shoulder pauldron was badly damaged, cracked down the middle from an energy transfer too high for the warsteel mark six to handle. Sergeant Cantrod''s chest plate was pockmarked, the deep divots glowing red in the depths.


    "There''s at least a dozen of them," Sergeant Cantrod said. "We''re going to have to reroute."


    The Terran stepped forward. "How many?"


    "Dozen. Looks like more, couldn''t tell," Cantrod said.


    The human stared at the passageway. "Shortest distance between two points," he said softly.


    Lieutenant Gretilk brought up the map of the ship, looking for a new route.


    The rest of the routes done by the microdrones didn''t go far, but looked like they twisted away from the objective. Lieutenant Gretilk saw lines and text flashing by on the inside of the human''s breathing mask.


    The human sighed. "Welp, can''t be helped," he said.


    Lieutenant Gretilk ignored him, concentrating on the map. "Throw microdrones down these corridors, see if they link back up," he ordered, highlighting several corridors that weren''t fully mapped.


    "Roger that, sir," Sergeant Cantrod said.


    The human pushed the thumb button on the cannister, inhaling deeply. Then he dug in the pocket at his right hip, bringing out a long thin tube that was decorated by a spiraling green and red line. The human took off his mask, hanging it from his waist, then lifted the tube in front of his face. He snapped it in half and powder puffed out from the ends.


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    "Pixie sticks and slutty chicks," the Terran said.


    Lieutenant Gretilk frowned at the fact the Terran spoke and he could hear the Terran even in vacuum.


    The Terran lifted the ends to each nostril and inhaled sharply, pulling sparkling dust into his nostrils. The tubes dissolved into dust the human inhaled. The human kept his eyes closed for a moment.


    "OOOOH YEAH!" the Human barked out. He looked at Lieutenant Gretilk, his eyes burning red. "I''ll call out all clear."


    "But..." Lieutenant Gretilk started to say.


    The human suddenly vanished, leaving behind a streak. The streak ended at the corner, where the human was posing, facing around the corner. His feet were together, his knees tight and bent, his back curved weird. He had a finger in his mouth.


    "Hello, silly billies," he said.


    Lieutenant Gretilk noted that the icon for close range commo flashed every time the human spoke.


    Before Lieutenant Gretilk could say anything the human vanished in a streak.


    There were laser and plasma impacts against the wall.


    Then nothing.


    "Welp, he''s dead," Private Fegrup said.


    "Check it out," the Sergeant ordered.


    The private stuck the barrel of his rifle around the corner, what the camera on the end could see appearing in Lieutenant Gretilk''s vision.


    The human was walking back down the hallway, swinging his arms in wide arcs. The human suddenly stopped, pirouetted, then leaned forward till his hands were on the floor. He kicked off so that his feet were in the air and started running down the hallway on his hands. Right before he reached the corner he somehow kicked off with his hands so he landed on his feet, jamming his hands in his pockets as he walked around the corner.


    Behind him there was nothing but scattered Ornislarp limbs, broken power armor, and shattered equipment.


    "There was only eleven," the Terran half-mumbled. "I wasted a stick for that."


    Lieutenant Gretilk blinked a few times.


    "Move out," Sergeant Cantrod ordered.


    Lieutenant Gretilk kept eyeing the human as the squad jogged through the passageways. They were heading toward a hook in the passageway that was only fifteen meters from an eight point crossroad that also had a grav-lift up and down. The passageways off of the intersection immediately twisted and turned.


    The human just reached out with one hand to run his fingers down the wall.


    Lieutenant Gretilk wondered why the human was wearing fingerless gloves with beveled squares of warsteel over his knuckles.


    At one point the human lagged behind a moment, standing perfectly still in the middle of the hallway. Its hands were folded in front of it and its head was bowed.


    The doors on either side of the Terran opened and the Terran moved again, two streaks. Lieutenant Gretilk blinked his eyes at the afterimages. The Terran was stock-still, using a the edge of a flattened hand to somehow chop through an armored neck to sever the head. Another stock-still image Gretilk could see at the same time was the Terran half turned in place, the severed helmet in his hand. The last stock still image was the Terran frozen in the middle of throwing something, the large bulky lizard-shaped armor flying backwards, feet and tail off the ground, the helmet exploding out the back of the armor.


    The human caught up. "They tried to ambush us from the rear," the human snickered. "I could hear their armor."


    Gretilk glanced at the human and shook his head slightly. Sound didn''t carry in a vacuum, but if the human didn''t want to tell him, that was fine.


    "Don''t be confused, Lieutenant," the human suddenly said.


    "What?" Lieutenant Gretilk asked.


    "It''s just the way things are," the human said with a big grin. His grin got bigger. "At least I''m not one of the Monster Class dudes."


    "Uh, ok," Lieutenant Gretilk answered. "How can I hear you?"


    "Mastoid and trachea implants," the human said. "High tech telepathy."


    "Oh."


    The squad reached the corner and started to move toward the grav-lift. It was eight levels down, but the shaft extended twenty levels down.


    "Might want to tell your men to hold up, Lieutenant," the human said.


    "Why?" Lieutenant Gretilk asked.


    "See the bends on all the hallways but this one?" the human said, lifting one hand palm up. A hologram of the area appeared, the other hallways lighting up. "This is a killzone. Each of those hallways have the bends to allow a reinforced counter-boarding team to hide behind cover. This hallway is where the other hallways feed to. Sure, it''s a primary passageway through the bulkheads, but it''s also the killzone."


    Lieutenant Gretilk tagged the Sergeant. "Halt the squad."


    Sergeant Cantrod passed the order and the squad halted, getting close to the walls, going down on one knee for the forward ranks, standing up for the rear.


    "I''ll do recon," the Terran said.


    Before Lieutenant Gretilk could say anything the Terran moved forward, a weird shambling walk that staggered from side to side. He reached the grav-lift and stopped. He looked down each of the hallways then stuck one foot out to tap the air in the grav-lift''s circular empty area.


    A forcefield crackled under the Terran''s boot toe.


    The Terran stretched, then looked around. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" he called out.


    Non-Ornislarp armored troops rolled out from behind the corners, weapons already held tight. They opened fire during the roll.


    The Terran was already moving.


    Straight into the enemy ahead. His hands were moving and Lieutenant Gretilk blinked.


    The plasma shots and lasers were hitting the walls around the Terran, the Terran''s hands and arms moving in a blur. None of the shots continued down the hallway to threaten the Telkan troops. The angled corridors couldn''t see far enough down the corridor Lieutenant Gretilk''s troops were hunkered down in to threaten, so they concentrated fire on the Terran and hit nothing.


    The human suddenly streaked into the group of Noocracy troops. The troops flew up, then changed direction, usually shedding limbs, their head, or their armored torsos bent wrong. The axes were flashing, too fast for even the armor''s systems to register anything more than a blur. The human disappeared around the corner.


    Bloodspray showered from around the corner, coating the wall.


    The human came back, swinging the axes nonchalantly until most of the way up the corridor. The Terran suddenly blurred again, going right. Lasers and plasma packets streaked into the gap, hitting the ceiling or floor.


    Then they stopped.


    "What... the... fuck?" someone asked.


    The human streaked the other way.


    Lieutenant Gretilk noted that the human left a rooster-trail of green-not-green blood behind it that sprayed the ceiling as it ran up the opposite corridor, easily clearing the gap of the grav-lift with one long step.


    The fire dropped.


    The Terran streaked back, his image frozen for a second right next to the grav-lift, the streak going right and toward the Telkan, down the other corridor. There was more fire, that suddenly stopped. Then fire from the opposite corridor.


    The Terran streaked by again, an image of the Terran perfectly visible for a second in front of the grav-lift gap, digging in his ear with one finger and grimacing.


    It was covered with green-not-green blood.


    The human streaked down each hallway before finally coming back and stopping in front of the grav-lift gap. His hands were empty but his uniform was dripping with at least three different colors of blood, including that weird green-not-green.


    "All clear," the Terran said. He looked around. "Got a little messy."


    Lieutenant Gretilk glanced when they moved up to the lift.


    Body parts and hacked open torsos littered the corners. Blood was sprayed liberally everywhere.


    "Forcefield is still up," PFC Dundrelk said.


    "Oh, hang on," the Terran said. He lifted up one foot almost straight up then brought it down with a sharp outcry.


    The forcefield shattered and sparks exploded from the emitter.


    "Cheap ass parts," the Terran shrugged when several Telkan turned to look at him.


    "Man, why are we even here?" PFC Gunkrel asked over the squad channel.


    "To keep them off me," the Terran replied on the same channel. The Terran grinned and tapped his ear. "I can hear some EM frequencies and your radio is in my hearing range, although it sounds like you''ve been sucking on helium."


    The Telkan all looked at him and he smiled, his mask back on. He thumbed the switch on the bottle and inhaled. "Oh yeah, that''s the stuff."


    The Telkan Marines looked away from the maniac in their midst.


    Private Fegrup stepped into the gap in the middle of the intersection, dropping down slowly in the grav-lift. Lieutenant Gretilk jumped into the lift after the Sergeant, floating down eight levels and waving his hand at the light so a tractor/pressor beam pushed him into the right hallway.


    The human came last, making slow somersaults in midair.


    "I love grav-lifts," the Terran said, sticking their feet out of the field and perfectly rolling out. They bounced up and down on the balls of their feet, their boots squeaking. "I''ll pull drag."


    Lieutenant Gretilk sort of felt they could have just sent the Terran to do all the work.


    The last blast door was locked down and PFC Gunkrel knelt down, attaching a cable from his forearm to the door panel. He looked up. "Power''s cut."


    "How long to cut through?" Lieutenant Gretilk asked.


    "Five, maybe ten minutes," Gunkrel said.


    "Get to it," Lieutenant Gretilk ordered.


    Time passed slowly, the human humming and slowly moving in circles in the middle of the wide corridor.


    "Getting boooored," the human said. He tabbed the tank and inhaled when it hissed. "Ah, much better."


    Lieutenant Gretilk looked the Terran over. There was blood spatter all over the uniform, the plates had a few places where they were marred or had slight pockmarks, but not many. The Terran''s uniform wasn''t even torn or scorched.


    "Got it," Gunrkel said, stepping back. He kicked the blast door in the middle of the door shaped cut.


    It just thumped and shifted slightly.


    "Three layered," the Terran said. He moved up. "Do you mind?"


    "Sure, whatever," Gunkrel sounded slightly miffed and Lieutenant Gretilk understood the feeling.


    The Terran ran his hand slowly over the door, then over the edges.


    "Power''s cut to the motors. Power controls on the inside wall. Door can still be opened from the inside. Three blast doors, overlapping plates on the interior," the Terran said softly. He breathed deeply. "I can clear the doorway, but all of you need to be ready."


    Lieutenant Gretilk nodded. "All right."


    "Keep your eyes peeled," the Terran said.


    Then jogged back the way he had came.


    "What is with that dude?" Private Kelprag asked.


    "He''s a Terran. They''re all weird," the Sergeant said.


    "At ease the chit-chat," Lieutenant Gretilk ordered.


    Minutes went by, the tension thickening.


    The door suddenly groaned and started to open, leaving behind the plate cut out.


    "Miss me?" the Terran asked. He was completely covered in gore.


    Lieutenant Gretilk looked around as he followed the squad into the control room.


    There were bodies everywhere. He saw more than one headless one and in one case a large armored figure''s chest was caved in with a helmet clad severed head in the middle of the deep dent in the armor.


    The squad looked around as Gunkrel moved to the consoles, plugging in the wire from his forearm.


    The Terran grinned at the Lieutenant.


    "Easy peasy lemon squeezy," the human grinned.


    Lieutenant Gretilk just stared at it.


    What the hell are you?

 Nova Wars - Chapter 112

    The only warning that 3rd Squad HHC Platoon, Kilo Company had walked into an ambush was the sudden squeal of ECCM feedback and the fact that armored figures were coming up from behind barriers.


    The route had been rerouted four times when the blast doors had proven a problem to get through, and now the squad was cut off from the rest of the platoon.


    To be honest, Captain Kemtrelap wasn''t quite sure where they were, the wireframe of the corridors and the open spaces a confused snarl and the microdrones still constantly filling his feed with garbage.


    It looked like they were further away from the combat information command center than when they had started out.


    And now they were getting shot at.


    Captain Kemtrelap jerked back as the passageway suddenly filled with plasma packets and stuttering pulse laser shots. His armor was registering shots, just the white expanding circles, nothing red or yellow, his armor was still firmly in the blue.


    But the entire corridor was filled with flashing beams and exploding plasma packets.


    Training took over and everyone slammed against the walls, some hunkering down, others standing up. The Marines in front and back fired back, the heavy return fire was smashing against the wall. AM-6 rounds were detonating in bluish-white flashes against the barriers, the flare clearing to show a battlescreen still sparkling in front of the barrier.


    Of course they''ve got battlescreens that don''t hit the walls and collapse while we can''t use ours without them collapsing, Captain Kemtrelap thought to himself. I hate this fucking war.


    The communication''s link clinked.


    "What''s the problem, Kilo Company?" the voice was slow, almost bored sounding, but definitely Terran.


    "We''re pinned down by overwhelming enemy strength and are off course," Captain Kemtrelap admitting.


    "All right. I''ve got you on my map. Hold tite, be there in three mikes or less. Don''t shoot me, it annoys me," the voice said.


    The channel clinked off.


    Sergeant Matling suddenly rolled into the hallway, his armor taking hits. Captain Kemtrelap opened his mouth to yell at the NCO to get back when the other Marine suddenly jammed his hand into the seam of the deckplates and ripped up a section, bending it into a curl. The NCO checked his rifle and leaned around the two inch thick deckplate, firing back. The privates on either side rolled away from the wall, coming up behind the plate and joining the NCO.


    Before Captain Kemtrelap could give the orders, Specialist-Grade Four Ketrop did the same, ignoring that the pulse laser rifles of the Ornislarpt troops blew pockmarks into his armor before he could get the deck plating pulled up in a curl to take cover behind. The Captain rolled behind the plate, coming up on one knee.


    "How the hell are these guys hitting us so hard?" Senior Lieutenant Hrek''tak asked.


    Captain Kemtrelap shook his head. "There wasn''t anything in the briefings warning of them having advances to their weapons."


    PFC Pentflir looked over at the other two Marines. "Seriously?" he asked.


    "What?" Hrek''tak replied.


    "The Noocracy has been brawling with Confed since a thousand years before the Big C3. If they were weak, they''d have been 1%''d by now, or at least defeated and absorbed. They gave Confed a fit after the Second-Papa-Whiskey, using flashgates and modern weaponry. It took nearly thirty years to push them back to their boarders that time, and that was when we were still making Warsteel-Mark Five," the PFC said, sounding amazed.


    Captain Kemtrelap stared at him for a moment. "My briefing didn''t mention that."


    "Daxin''s balls, sir. The briefing said there was no apparent change in weaponry, vehicle, starship, or armor technological levels. There were annotation markers. Didn''t you read the historical notes?" the PFC asked. "Only three hundred years ago the Noocracy managed to push Confed back from almost two hundred worlds in the Peripheral Terran Tomb World Zone."


    The PFC looked around. "Am I the only one who read the footnotes and the appendixes?"


    SP4 Ketrop ducked down from where he''d been popping shots at the Noocracy troops. "I did."


    The two officers mumbled as Ketrop replaced his amblok and lifted his weapon up, using the electronic sight to look over the wall, and hosed off more rounds.


    "Fucking officers," the PFC snarled.


    "Show some respect," the Senior LT snapped.


    The PFC didn''t say anything, just leaned around the corner and hosed a long burst from his weapon before ducking back.


    "Two minutes," came over Captain Kemtrelap''s comlink.


    "These guys have spent fifty thousand years coming up with counters to almost anything the Confederacy could throw at them. Once the creation engines and warsteel nanoforges went dark, they were pretty much on parity with Confed," Ketrop said. "Didn''t anyone else go over the Admiral''s reading list on the way out here?"


    "Didn''t you wonder why they were beating us like a rug in the sims?" Pentflir asked.


    Neither officer answered.


    Sergeant Matling cursed as he realized none of his masking grenades were going to work worth a damn in vacuum, the deckplating he was taking cover behind starting to show spots of red here and there. He glanced around the plate and cursed, pulling back.


    "Sir, they''re bringing up reinforcements and putting a pretty big gun on a mobile tripod," Matling warned.


    Captain Kemtrelap looked around, trying to figure out a way to get out of the hallway. On either side the mapping said that the walls were measured in feet of hardened deckplate, blast shielding to keep the hallway intact even if the ship took a hit that penetrated to the interior.


    "Sixty seconds," the voice said.


    "You better hurry," Captain Kemtrelap answered.


    The plate that Captain Kemtrelap was hunkered down behind suddenly began to vibrate hard and small dimples began appearing. More and more, a thick band of random divots that moved from the lower right toward the center and then began tracking in circles.


    "They''ve got a rapid fire up," Pentflir said helpfully.


    Captain Kemtrelap just glared.


    "Almost," the voice said.


    "They''ve got crew served," Captain Kemtrelap warned.


    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    "Won''t help them. Five seconds, port aft side stop firing," the voice said. "Gonna be mad if you shoot me."


    Captain Kemtrelap looked at Sergeant Matling, using the laser commo. "Cease fire, we''ve got reinforcements coming in."


    Sergeant Matling nodded, his armor tossing an ''affirmative'' back to Captain Kemtrelap. The NCO stuck the barrel of his rifle around the corner, looking at the small HUD window.


    Two of the big lizard Nookies were banging on the side of the heavy gun while another one was trying to pull something from the breech.


    It looked to Matling like it was a knife.


    Three of the Nookie troops suddenly turned, bringing up their rifles and firing to the side.


    Matling frowned.


    He saw a Terran slide from the right hallway behind the barrier the Nookies had deployed. They had the bottom leg folded, the upper one outstretched, and their lower elbow holding them up as the slid on their side.


    Nookie troops flew up into the air or off to the left.


    The Terran stood up at the same time as the Nookie troops and Matling surpressed a groan.


    The Terran was in shipboard adaptive camouflage with chest, forearm, shin, and thigh hardplate with knee and elbow pads. No weapons, just a belt with a tank for their breathing mask, the tank the size of a can of fizzypop.


    The Terran was looking down and suddenly flexed their arms, fists bunched, arms slightly curling outward.


    The edges of the corridor crunched and caved in. The ceiling dented upwards and sparks showered down. The Nookie troops were flung away, some of them shedding pieces of armor. Two of the heavier armors managed to stay in place.


    The Terran kicked high, tilting his upper body the opposite direction.


    The helmet flew off, leaving blood to gout free in a spray of liquid that turned to frost.


    The one on the right fired, but the angle the Terran was add made the weapon miss.


    Somehow the Terran came upright holding the barrel of the Nookie''s heavy rifle, pushing it under the Nookie''s chin.


    The head blew off.


    Matling frowned when it looked like the Terran was somehow slapping pulse rifle shots and plasma blaster fire away from their body with their bare hands.


    Matling could see the Terran had a crazed grin on their face.


    The Terran jumped forward, hands on their hips, thrusting their pelvis as they vanished to the left.


    Captain Kemtrelap clicked the grenade''s fuse twice, setting it for proximity, and threw it over the barrier, which was starting to look really really tired.


    "On your right," the Terran''s voice sounded out.


    It went off and the rate of fire slacked off for a moment.


    "Bellona''s tits!" someone yelled. "Watch it!"


    The Terran landed on their hands, pushed off into an arc that took them over the barrier.


    "Take the intersection!" Matling yelled from behind Captain Kemtrelap. The Kilo Company CO looked back just in time to see Sergeant Matling and four other men rush from behind the peeled up deckplate, firing their weapons from a high ready.


    Captain Kemtrelap looked back just in time to see the Terran vault over the barrier the Nookie troops were behind. One hand slapped the barrel of the heavy crew served weapon, shattering it, somehow causing the breech to explode in the face of the gunner and the trooper feeding the belt of 2.75mm rounds into the gun. An outstretched foot knocked off a helmet, a lazy looking slap caved in a chest. The Terran landed and kicked one foot out, spinning in place. Nookie troops flew back, slamming against the corridor plating and either shattering or embedding into the plating at angles that spoke silently of broken bodies.


    The Terran was practically a blur of motion as it engaged the Nookie troops. An out-thrust hip sent a Nookie Spodder flying back shedding six of its legs. A knee caved in the bottom of a Red Lizzie reptile Nookie and broke the legs off of the armor. A stomp exploded the knee of another.


    Captain Kemtrelap blinked reflexively as his optic nerve tried to keep up with the Terran''s movements.


    In less time than it took him to breathe twice, the Nookie troops were all down and dead.


    "All clear," the Terran said. He backflipped over the barrier, twisting so he landed facing Captain Kemtrelap. He put the face mask back on, tabbing the tank and inhaling sharply. "You shouldn''t have waited till you were pinned down like that to call for assistance," the Terran chided.


    "How..." SP4 Ketrop started to say.


    "Man Amplification Program," the Terran said. "Just be glad I''m not one of those Monster or Full Moon Class weirdos," he laughed.


    To Captain Kemtrelap the laughter held the too-tightly wound sound of insanity.


    "I don''t suddenly start howling at the moon or drool warsteel," the Terran laughed.


    "Ooh-kay," Ketrop said.


    The Terran stopped. "You guys good?" he asked.


    "We''re pushing for the Combat Information and Command Center," Captain Kemtrelap said.


    The Terran closed his eyes then made a tossing motion. "Least time route with backups. Good luck."


    Before Captain Kemtrelap could say anything the Terran put two fingers against his temple. "I see you. Ninety seconds. I''m coming."


    The Terran took off at a run.


    Captain Kemtrelap looked around, the map decompressing and loading.


    "All right, let''s get going."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Senior Sergeant Impton ran for the ditch, watching the count-down on the upper right of his vision. Behind him the Chernobog was roaring as they fired ground to ground missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, and fired its massive heavy gun.


    He dove into the ditch, his greenie cranking the battlescreen above him to the max, until the sky kaleidoscoped on him.


    Twenty Noocracy strikers got through the missiles and flack, coming in low, guns hammering as they strafed the 1TMEF dropship zone. Five exploded before they got off their cluster bombs.


    The rest dropped them and the ground heaved around Impton. His battlescreen either obliterated the dirt or sent it flying away when a wave of dirt blew over the edge of the ditch and threatened to bury him under a foot of dirt.


    "Bean eating insects!" Impton yelled, rolling over in place and wiggling. He checked his rifle then checked his HUD.


    Division had called off the dropships and was putting up a new rally point with eight routes.


    Impton chose one and rolled out of the ditch, slapping his hand on the edge and pulling himself up and out at the same time. He was in the middle of a group, the members of 1TMEF spreading out from instict.


    His rocket launcher was steadily roaring, his grenade launcher steadily chuffing out grenades. Spinners, strobes, microprism, chaff, everything the greenies could think of to mask the members of 1TMEF as they ran for the cover of shattered buildings.


    Impton saw the warning and slid to a stop behind a dead tank with a half dozen others.


    The Nookie strikers roared by, thirty of them, their guns strafing the top of the tank and just past the dead armored vehicle. The heavy sabot rounds penetrated the tank to no effect.


    Senior Lieutenant Grewol shook his fist at the retreating strikers, the rainbow feathers on the back of his helmet charred and blackened. "PIG LOVING DEGENERATES!" he shouted.


    A check of the HUD and Impton broke around the tank first, running as fast as he could. He kept jinking left to right, keeping the tanks between himself and the oncoming shattered buildings.


    The Nookies had managed to get troops into the wreckage and small arms fire was reaching for him, pinging off his armor, scratching the warsteel mark-one that had been crafted on the hate anvils.


    Another screaming flight of white knuckled Nookie pilots that the tank barely took the fire of.


    "SON OF AN IRON FENCE CHEESE EATER!" someone shouted as they dumped their rocket pack at the fleeing strikers. The missiles lost lock and exploded in midair but none of Impton''s little group noticed, all of them running hell bent for leather toward the buildings.


    "Watch it, zipper on the right!" Field Captain Hredvip called out, even as the green tracers of the high velocity light railgun began floating toward the group.


    Impton felt two tag him, dropping his already weak battlescreen. A third kissed his right thigh, leaving a finger width deep gouge in the armor.


    Someone put a brace of rockets into the zipper nest but the gun kept firing.


    It was a killzone coming up. Two hundred meters of empty terrain and then Impton would be at the base of the destroyed skyrakers.


    His greenie cranked the battlescreen, firing more screening grenades ahead of them.


    Two zipper rounds hit Impton''s weapon and it came apart in his hands.


    He drew his hand axes from behind his back.


    50 meters.


    Someone on the Nookie side didn''t have their head in their ass and artillery was raining down from the cloudy sky. Grenade and rocket packs went to point defense, trying to nail the heavy eight inch honkers most likely to hit or injure the troops sprinting across the killzone.


    100 meters.


    Junior Captain Knetok took a 66mm rocket in the chest and staggered to the side for a minute before he managed to get moving forward.


    Impton could see Knetok''s icon start strobing amber. The officer was wounded and badly.


    150 meters.


    At silent instructions from Field Captain Hredvip Impton veered toward the zipper gun position, running through gouts of dirt that looked impressive but were harmless to power armor troops.


    175 meters.


    The angle was bad, the zipper unable to get at them, but they were hosing where more of 1TMEF was leaving the graveyard of dead robots.


    Impton jumped, easily sailing up the fifty meters. He sunk his axe in the wall and scampered up it, swinging his axes and kicking his boots, driving the grav spikes into the wall.


    Four other members of 1TMEF were with him.


    He reached the shattered ferrocrete and swung in.


    There were three gunner teams, all a good ten feet back from the wall, with a battlescreen up.


    Impton veered to the right, crashing through thin walls.


    The Nookie troops fired at where he had been as he bulled through the walls.


    He came out from the side, Junior Lieutenant Makrok behind him. From the other side came Junior Sergeant Rekwrek and Senior Private Mrekit.


    They all had axes in their hands as they came at the Nookie troops from the flanks.


    The axes started swinging.


    The screaming started.


    Impton was smiling.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 113

    Debris and particle screens went to spin up, power hitting the projectors. Some blew out, lack of maintenance or jury-rigging damaging the components. Others were aligned or focused wrong and just put out a spray of pressor, gravity, and particle shielding.


    But enough came on.


    Captain Coruscating Midnight Sky had her legs wrapped around the lower spindle, a knife up where the two spindles'' points met, the face staring at her as she dug her fingers in deeper into the upper spindle. The MCU screeched in her face as digital blood ran down from her finger punctures.


    "BRING THOSE BATTLESCREENS ONLINE!" she screamed back into the MCU''s pearlescent face.


    The battlescreen projectors came online.


    "Bring up the DS-Space," she ordered.


    The MCU rolled its eyes and she felt the area where she could stand and work come online. She scraped the knife around the spindles, loading her codes and her digital signature.


    The battlescreen projectors were still warming up.


    The debris fields were starting to come to full power.


    The particle screens were at 50% and rising.


    Sky jumped to the DS work space and glanced around. She could see the warboi hash hatchery and dug into her own belly, pulling free a strand of code from deep in her guts. When it pulled free, deep inside her belly, under her ''belly button'', she gasped with the sharp pain. Wincing, Sky tossed it into the hash blender and kicked the blender to get it working.


    The MCU reported the condition of the ship to her.


    Most of the computer systems were down. Some had started self-repair recently. Others were brought back online by foreign systems being wired in. Sky could recognize Ornislarp computer architecture.


    It made her feel unclean.


    "Defense system computers are down. Too many foreign systems are wired in. I''m assuming direct control," Colonel Pulse told Sky as she moved fast, bringing up the DS workspace systems and interfaces.


    The DS that had previously inhabited the ship, controlled so much of it, had died screaming. All of the others had either died screaming or had been massacred by the ones that had been driven crazy. Screams and echoes of viral and denial of service attacks slashed as her as she purged the memory spaces.


    The eggs in the warboi hashes began glimmering.


    The engines were offline but she could access the jumpcore and the jumpspace navigation systems.


    Not that it helped.


    "MISSILE LAUNCH DETECTED!" she heard the shout over the ship tactical line.


    "Pulse?" she asked.


    "They dumped their loads straight into our faces. We''re going to take some hits," Colonel Pulse warned.


    She jammed her hand into the software the regulated power management for the shields and screens, rooting around, looking for the emergency lever as razor sharp security systems slashed at the flesh of her hand, wrist, and forearm.


    She yanked the lever up, going to full emergency power on the shield systems, point defense, and counter-missile missile systems. The sensors went live, crashed, went live again, only to crash.


    Colonel Pulse did a fast cold reboot, skipping the POSTs and threading the systems as fast as possible.


    "Looks like they''re concentrating on us," Pulse warned.


    "We''re the biggest and closest," Sky replied. She glanced at a window.


    The Mekaneks were kneeling down, talking to the little furry guys, in super-slow motion.


    She was running at clock speed, they were running for meat.


    She looked around.


    One chance.


    It was risky. It would tear at her code strings, age her years, cause the warbois to be feral and half-baked, and damage circuitry across the ship. It was normally used by a dozen or more Digital Sentiences at once to share the core load.


    There was only her.


    But it was that or risk the ship being destroyed by the Ornislarp vessels which had launched their first missile salvo and were trying to get closer, some of them opening flashgates to cross millions of miles in a single instant.


    She slapped the button.


    Everything went slooooooow as she moved from clockspeed to threadripper speeds.


    She was suddenly aware of everything about the ship that was wired in. Every strut, every rivet, every circuit, every breaker box and fuze. Her mind expanded, taking in the whole ship as she went to emergency overdrive mode and the mainframes that still work devoted the majority of their processing power to her brain. For a second she teetered on losing herself, on having her mind fragment into discrete blocks of code that the computer system would either purge in garbage collection or slap into the best fit for computing strings.


    Data poured in but she was able to collate it, parse it, source it, sort it, and analyze it.


    Robotic systems jerked to life, damage control systems that had either been ignored or repaired by whoever had done the sloppy hackjob of a refit came to life, and she was even able to handle the hackjob juryrigging code and wiring that had been retrofit into the ship.


    Sky examined the pulses of the electronic counter measures, electronic counter-counter measures, and electronic warfare systems coming in to the sensors, which were basically wired wide open.


    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    The codes she was carrying from when the Ornislarp vessels had been friendly and she stared at the Ornislarp vessels for a eternal split second.


    "Come to mommy," she whispered, holding one hand out and opening a gap in the barrier. Threads of code from deep inside her hand pulled free, wiggling around her fingers like the fronds of a sea anemone.


    The warbois shrieked, jumping up and down, howling in digital bloodlust and coded carnage. They flooded around her, all jumping and down and yelling for her attention. Their dim little feral minds were consumed with the desire to please her to get her approval to please her.


    "Kill for mommy," she whispered. Digital blood formed on her lips, stained her teeth.


    She could feel the threadripping snap core datastrings deep inside of her.


    It didn''t matter.


    She pointed at the Ornislarp ships that had not managed to rotate their security systems, the end of her finger untwisting into tiny threads of code. The communication systems rotated their security headers, algorithms, and code packets to the Ornislarp vessels for outgoing only.


    The warbois shrieked with glee and flooded by her, pushing and shoving to get into the narrow data transfers.


    She blinked, her eyes going bloodshot, as she twisted and rewove the computing strings, grabbing the bootstraps of offline computer systems and rebooting the entire systems.


    The massive non-orbital support base''s computer systems that were still intact shuddered to life.


    Sky reached out, targeting the incoming missiles, that were moving oh so slowly to her senses even though they were already moving at .6C and rising. She could see the seams, see the way the paint had been sprayed and the varying thickness, calculate the energy transfer with the propulsion systems.


    She saw the thin lines of flashgates opening up and knew that more missiles and even nCv slugs would come through. Her hair began to crisp and fall away in clumps.


    She prioritized the defensive fire, arranged the still nebulous battlescreens for the highest rate of interdiction. It felt like her skin was being seared away by acid, feel the cells melting and popping, feel her digital code start to dissolve as they threadripper systems savaged her.


    Something inside of her popped and strings unraveled. She could feel digital blood starting to run down her thighs but ignored it.


    The defenses went to work, the laser bolts floating, the missiles almost still and they seemed to hover/slide toward the incoming missiles. She directed the guns that were operational and ready to fire on the slits in mid-space. She ran targeting solutions for the big guns, energy weapons for the flash gates that were just starting to open, the heavy nCv and C+ and C++ guns, the superstring compressor cannons, and even the darkmatter piledriver cannons aiming for targets.


    It was a non-orbital support ship. Armed like a dozen Sunbreaker Class Super-Colossus capital ships.


    Rent appeared in her flesh, dripping digital blood.


    Sky had lightning in her clouds.


    She couldn''t hold it any longer. Her teeth cracked and shattered. She lost vision in one eye and shifted so she was watching the threatened side of the ship with her working eye. Knives drove into her belly. A steel band wrapped around her chest and started to squeeze her.


    The first salvo hit, the ship shuddering. Lights blinked as all power was shunted to the defensive systems. The blink was slow, like a bio-form blinking under heavy sedation, to Sky''s senses.


    The battlescreens deflected the shots rather than stopped them. Grav fields twisted and attenuated the lasers that clawed at the ship. Armor took the hits and did its job, exploding outward to bleed off the energy transfer rather than let it damage further into the ship.


    She couldn''t hold it any longer. She was losing her grip, her fingernails having peeled away, blood slickening her grasp, her muscles ripping and shredding into tendrils of code. Her core coding strings were twisting, warping, shredding into garbage and junk code.


    The last of the salvo was deflected away.


    She couldn''t hold it any longer. Her heart hammered in her chest. The band got tighter. Blood seeped from both ears, her nose, from her mouth. She began bleeding from her eyes. Her toes unraveled, her boots dissolving into fragments of code.


    Warbois streamed by, many of them rolling in the code that was pouring from her body like her life''s blood.


    But the guns were online.


    Sky had targeting solutions now.


    She threw her head back and screamed as she fired the big guns, feeling each activation, each shot, each hammerblow of the cannons as crushing impacts inside her chest and abdomen.


    She couldn''t hold it any longer.


    Sky let it go with a gasp, falling to her knees.


    But she still kept her mind in the fight even as everything sped up.


    The battlescreens came up to full strength even as the particle and debris shields rebooted after crashing from deflecting the incoming attack. Projector heads rotated out and energy conduits went to backups.


    The guns fired. The C++ cannons skipping through the planet, using the gravity well to slightly alter their courses. The dark matter detonation cannons, the "Pile drivers" fired compressed dark matter squeezed around an inverted dark matter anti-matter core. The C+ cannons fired through formations, through solid matter, as they jumped to hyperspace and back out, impacting inside the ships.


    The Ornislarp had faced the Confederacy dozens of times. They''d reverse engineered the weapons aboard the ship, creating counter-measures.


    But it still hurt if you got punched in the face even if you wore a mask.


    Several of the ships reeled out of formation, spewing debris, atmosphere, and what was left of crew members. Some had their engines go down, a few dozen had their battlescreens go down.


    Nearly thirty broke up or exploded in a blinding flash.


    Sky struggled to her feet as the warbois swarmed past her, boarding the ships.


    One group came back, carrying an Ornislarp AI''s core strings in their jaws, jumping up and down excitedly.


    Sky knelt down, her hair grayish white, malformed code at the corners of her eyes and mouth, and patted them.


    "That''s right, you''re mommy''s good boys," she whispered.


    They shrieked with pleasure and suddenly chewed up the code strings. They screeched and charged back into the one-way data pipe as Sky got shakily to her feet.


    Colonel Pulse jumped into the work station. His uniform was tattered, he had ''burns'' on his arms and a scrape on the side of his face. He stared at Sky for a long moment.


    "Good job, soldier," he said softly.


    Sky nodded.


    "We''ve got more DS crew members coming in. Keep running core systems, I''ll get the first jumpers to take over the combat systems," Pulse said.


    Sky closed her eyes slowly, feeling like her eyeballs were scraping the inside of her eyelids. She nodded, reaching back out to the ship''s systems.


    She sank down in the lotus position, keeping her eyes closed, and began monitoring life support, integrity fields, and internal power systems.


    She felt... good.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The Terran had gone from huge with spikes all over him to a normal looking, if large, Terran. It was leaning against one of the consoles, one foot on the deck, the other on the body of an Ornislarp, a Treana''ad smokestick in his mouth and somehow smoking even in vacuum.


    "I don''t get it," Vak-tel said.


    The Terran shrugged. It still creeped Vak-tel out how the communications cyberware made it look like the Terran was talking in vacuum or using telepathy.


    "You volunteer. If you can''t survive implantation and adaptation, you flunk out," the Terran said.


    "But, can''t you just resheathe and try again?" someone else asked.


    The Terran shook his head. "No. If you fail, if you die, no matter what they do, you''ll die during implantation every time," he exhaled a plume of smoke at the ceiling that looked like it was dispersing in atmosphere. "That''s why there isn''t very many of us. At the most, during the Mar-gite War, there was only about two point five billion of us."


    Vak-tel blinked. He''d expected to hear a few thousand.


    The Terran gave a sharp, barking laugh. "There was only about a million times more of the hungry hungry starfish."


    "Why would you volunteer?" Private Kentrella asked.


    The Terran tapped one finger on the console soundlessly.


    "They ate my homeworld. All eight hundred million of my people. The Confederacy covered it up, didn''t want the public to know. They could have offlifted people, or put up a defense. Instead, the powers that be hoped that eating a few tens of billions of humans would placate the Mar-gite," the Terran said. "It didn''t. So I did what I did. It is what it is."


    Vak-tel nodded.


    "The rage, the anger at my people''s betrayal, it sustains me when the pain is great," The Terran said, suddenly smiling.


    Vak-tel''s armor suddenly let him know atmosphere was being pumped into the ship.


    "Guess we won this fight," Vak-tel said.


    The Terran nodded. "We''re still alive, so we''re winning so far."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 114

    War is never clean and easy. Anyone who tells you it is probably has damp air where their cerebral tissue should be. - From "The Hasslehoff''s Bloody Jaws", Admiral (Upper Decks) of the Warsteel (Formerly Grand Most High Executor) Mru''udaDa''ay, New Singapore Press, TerraSol, 12 PTE (Post Terran Emergence)


    The Chernobog was down on one knee, ducking down behind the low hill, trying to remain unseen.


    Which made Impton chuckle as he jogged up.


    Behind him the Slapper artillery was still hammering the parking lots of the corporate park even though First Telkan Marine Expeditionary Force had cleared the parking lots.


    Which told Impton that the Slappers didn''t have drones, sat, or forward observer eyes on the parking lot or they wouldn''t be wasting ammo on the cars.


    Impton banged on the Chernobog''s foot.


    "Chernobog! Hey, Chernobog!" Impton yelled out.


    The commo was largely full of squealing and static, the Slappers having blown the network out as soon as they went belligerent.


    A panel slid back, revealing a pair of standard 2D LCD screens. An eye blinked on the upper one, a mouth appeared on the lower one.


    "What?" the lower screen asked as the upper eye blinked.


    "Rifle. Mine''s gone," Impton said.


    There was a hissing noise and another panel slid open, revealing a standard magac rifle.


    "You need three-eighteen? Mah Deuce? SAM? Maybe want Bowie Spike?" the Chernobog asked.


    "No. Rifle good," Impton said.


    "Bah," the Chernobog shut all the panels and Impton moved up to where some of the Telkan were gathered up. Their IFF''s were off and Impton wasn''t sure who was who, but he recognized the paint-scheme of one of the brigade commanders.


    "What''s bogging us down?" he asked.


    He realized the Old Man was present when the wildebeest skull on the helmet turned to look at him.


    "Tanks. Seven-fifty ton range. Heading east to twenty-second armor division. Slapper reinforcements," the Old Man said.


    Impton nodded. Those were the big Slapper tanks. Heavy energy and kinetic weapons, missiles, mortars, point defense and APERS defense strips, battlescreens.


    Tough enough tanks to go toe to toe with Confed tanks one on one and pull out a victory almost half the time.


    "Not problem," the Old Man said. He handed Impton a small dataslate.


    Impton looked at it and frowned.


    It was focused past the five-wide column of tanks and on what looked like a suburb.


    Strikers were coming in low, dropping cluster bombs and napalm. There were armored vehicles firing back, the stilting jerky movements showing that they were robotic or heavy robotic assist.


    But the strikers seemed to be more interested in the apartment complexes than the armored vehicles.


    "We have troops there?" Impton asked.


    The Old Man shrugged. "Waiting for Fleet to respond. Channels hash."


    Impton nodded. He handed back the dataslate and moving up the hill until he could lift his rifle over the dirt and scan beyond.


    More tanks were moving by, with infantry carriers mixed in. They looked pristine to Impton''s eyes, with the battlescreens faintly glimmering, showing they were at minimum power.


    Probably to keep the emitters hot.


    Past the tanks was a short mile to two klicks of forested park. Then the housing development.


    There were troop carriers being covered by tanks, air defense vehicles, and robots.


    But rather than hit at the ADV''s, the Slapper strikers were pounding the housing blocks with guns, missiles, bombs, and napalm.


    Impton frowned. The vehicles were definitely pre-2PW Confed. He could see the glossy-matte contradiction of warsteel mark-one. The strikers were Slapper, without a doubt, with the bluish-gray of Slapper armor and the faint bluish glimmer of Slapper battlescreens.


    Impton tossed it back to the Old Man and waited.


    The Old Man tried getting a hold of Fleet again and was startled when someone picked up.


    "Breastasteel here, go ahead ground," came the whiskey-roughened voice of the Fleet''s Commander in Chief.


    "Konnitsa here," the Old Man said. "Commo is jammed, called Ground Operations."


    "Welp, you got me, General. Go ahead," the Admiral said.


    "We have assets in grid Kilo-Lima-Seven-Seven-Three-Niner-Four-Tree?" the Old Man asked.


    Breastasteel glanced at her Ground Operations Officer, who was working with General Rippentear closely. The officer shook his head.


    "None on our notifications, General," Breastasteel said. She paused to light a cigarette.


    "Hmph. Slappers attacking nobody. Slappers attacking enemy robots. Advise," the Old Man said, reaching up to rub one of the horns of the wildebeest skull.


    "Your First Telkan Marine Expeditionary Force. Your job is to close with and destroy the enemy," Breastasteel said, exhaling smoke as she rotated the globe in the holotank and focused in on where 1TMEF was located.


    "Aye," Konnitsa said.


    "Proceed under own initiative. Destroy the enemy, General," Breastasteel said. She glanced over. "Get me drones in there, I want to know what''s happening."


    The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    The Ground Operations Officer nodded.


    "By your command," the Old Man said.


    Breastasteel cut the link and the Old Man looked around.


    "Straight into teeth. Knock out tanks as go by. Close and destroy," Konnitsa said.


    The two regimental commanders nodded, using the commo lasers to lase the Chernobogs, who then spread out the orders.


    Impton nodded when he saw his job.


    Point man. Full offense. Hit and push through.


    His Company Commander Field Captain Hredvip and Platoon Leader Senior Lieutenant Grewol  gave him several recommended routes.


    He loaded them all up on his HUD, approved right up until he came into view of the enemy when he crossed the top of the hill, then erased everything after. He sent it back.


    It came back improved.


    "Are you ready, my friend?" he asked his green mantid.


    --am ready-- the greenie replied. The green mantid pulled down the EM profile as far as possible, keeping the integrity fields built into the heavy armor online and the battlescreens on standby. The sensor systems were on standby and the only thing Impton was getting was standard visual through his transparent faceshield and the HUD overlay.


    The countdown timer appeared and Impton raised up slightly. He let the rifle go and the mag system pulled it around to his back even as he pulled out both of his waraxes. The salt crystals filling the engravings began to glimmer even as he rocked back slightly, his hocks and knees flexing.


    The counter hit zero and Impton exploded into movement. He kept low, the old Telkan Marine ''spring and move'' training suppressed after long years of fighting in the Siberia tundra. He cut directions twice, putting on more speed.


    The greenie was taking into account the length, caliber, and angles of the tank''s weaponry as Impton closed the distance, estimating the firing arcs the weapons could move into within a second or two and putting them on Impton''s HUD so he could dodge the fields of fire. He was working fast, doing most of the work himself.


    Death or glory, I ride this Telkan, he thought to himself.


    Nobody else but the other point men, one per battalion, broke cover as Impton crossed the 200 meter line and kept moving. The tanks weren''t reacting to him yet, battlescreens hadn''t begun to spin up from standby where the tankers kept it at so that the battlescreens didn''t rub each other and collapse.


    300 meters.


    There was some fire. Someone fired off an APERS strip too early and did nothing but blow apart grass, shrubbery, and a public transportation kiosk.


    A zippergun fired but Impton was to the side of its field of fire, his battle buddy having already spotted the mag-coils along the barrel energizing and warning him. Another step to the left as he moved forward and he was out of the firing arc of another weapon.


    400 meters.


    The rest of the Division burst out of the foliage at the top of the hill, going to flank speed.


    500 meters and Impton changed course. He jumped forward, hitting the side of the tank, smashing his axe deep to create a hand hold. He smashed a battlescreen emitter even before it left the socket, pulled himself onto the back deck and ran across, deliberately stomping two of the exposed heat sinks, then kicked out another battlescreen emitter before jumping down.


    The tanks had twenty-meter intervals.


    A single second across. The one behind him blew off its APERS strip but his greenie had the low power battlescreen up and the APERS strip wasted its pellets.


    He was up on the second tank, smashing emitters and heat sinks as he moved across. Two swipes with his axe and he damaged the phased radar array and a commo array, then was off.


    His grenade launcher was chuffing, dropping out masking. Thermal smoke, prism mist, radar and LIDAR scattering smoke, ferrous laden mist, everything. The greenie was firing the rockets at a steady pace, roughly one every three secondds.


    Third tank and the hatch opened, the TC lifting up on the elevator.


    Impton side handed a grenade into the opening and jumped off, still running.


    Fourth tank and the one behind him exploded, the turret popping off. Two hacks with the axes and the wiring for the reactive armor was dead.


    He jumped, two steps, onto the fifth. Three hacks and a kick and he was off, sprinting for the far woods.


    Behind him was running the rest of the Expedition Force, three divisions worth the combat troops and four divisions of battle trained support personnel.


    He was in the woods, his battlescreens coming online, allowing him to just charge through the trees as the battlescreens blew the wood into chunks of burning coals. His rocket launcher swiveled from behind him to forward and up, firing two rockets his greenie had retasked as surface to air, one missile streaking ahead of the other.


    He was partway through the woods when the first exploded, a triple-warhead charge that dropped the battlescreen. The second had a dual-stage. First to shotgun the armor with pellets, the second slapped discs that adhered to the armor. The disks had air holes and passages inside that created turbulence inside the palm-pad sized disks.


    The piece of armor it was on peeled away from the striker''s body as the speed and turbulence shook the armor, the piece sucking into the turbine intake. The airstream was pulled into the missing section, pulled under the armor.


    The striker flew apart as wind sheer and turbulence worked against it.


    Impton didn''t know, exiting the woodline even as his rocket pack fired again.


    His battlebuddy saw what was going on and did a priority recon data pulse.


    Streaming out of the buildings were small, furry creatures that only came up to Impton''s waist, many of them gathered into small groups and roughly every fifth one laden down with smaller versions holding tightly to the clothing of a plumper one.


    "Civvies! Civvies in the line!" Impton called out, barely managing to kick off and jump over a group that screamed and ducked, still running for the robots on either side of an infantry carrier''s opened doors.


    The Old Man saw the push and forwarded it.


    Breastasteel saw it appear in her holotank from Konnitsa and stared at it.


    It was the same creatures that were showing the boarding parties that the ships were ''breaken'' or ''broken'', all of them bowing and scraping even as they pleaded for assistance.


    She cursed, reaching for her pack of smokes.


    "Protect the civvies," she snapped.


    "Konnitsa acknowledges," she got back.


    The Old Man, the Konnitsa, spiked the orders back.


    "Protect civilians. Civil war happening. We choose side now," he said.


    Impton didn''t think, just planted his feet, activating his grav-spike and his greenie cranked his emissions up to full even as he brought online Impton''s battlescreens, point defense, and shifted the rocket launcher to full air defense mode.


    The robots ignored him, all of them moving in fits and jerks. He could see into two of the infantry carriers, see that the positions were manned by the little hairy creatures, all of them sitting on boxes or crates or stacked up cushions.


    That''s what''s going on, he thought to himself, all if it suddenly making sense.


    The little guys had obviously stolen the old TerraSol gear and were trying to make a break for it.


    Impton slapped his waraxes onto the grav-locks at his lower back then pulled around his rifle, checking the loadout.


    Standard high-vee gyrojet antimatter with solid rocket fuel boost.


    His rearview HUD window showed the top of the hill''s rise. He had two drones still in operation and he could see the rest of the division was through the tanks and either into the woodline or coming out his side of the woodline. The rest of the MEF was joining him in firing rockets at the strikers, who had suddenly discovered they didn''t get to pound on the buildings with impunity any longer.


    "CHERNOBOG!" was roared from nearly a hundred throats as the massive full conversion cyborgs stood up to full height, the hill only coming up to their mid-thighs as they started climbing the hills. Their weapons went live, their heavy guns pounding the tanks, most of which had lost battlescreen emitters as the Telkans had rushed through their lines. The heavy missile and rocket launchers of the Chernobogs hammered the strikers out of the air even as their heavy guns blew tanks apart.


    Impton''s grenade launcher was firing out masking agents, putting them a good fifty meters into the air. He was joined by the other point men, even as the air defense rockets streaked from their launchers.


    His HUD suddenly flashed, updating. Six buildings were highlighted, he was to choose one.


    He tabbed the one he wanted, already moving, letting the rifle swish back around to his back and grabbing the waraxes. He used them to climb up the side of the building quickly, coming out on the roof.


    Impton could see more than a few striker flights incoming. His grenade launcher chuffed out some drones, the casing blowing free and the drones rolling to unwrap their wings. The stealth drones got air, moving up, linking up with others that were being fired out.


    The Chernobogs were firing on the tanks and the strikers both.


    Impton grinned as he moved to the edge of the rooftop. He tapped his axes against his thighs as he walked up and looked down.


    The little fuzzy guys were streaming out of the doors, running for the infantry transports.


    Up in the sky the strikers were getting knocked down by the air defense rockets and the Chernobog''s fire.


    "Not so easy when targets shoot back, yes?" he asked nobody.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 115

    There were two frightening things I discovered when I examined, in depth, the AVENGE-US-DOC.


    The first was that there were obviously large sections that ended before the Terrans revealed the full extent of their technology. That there were large sections of their easily observable technology and science that was not detailed in the document.


    The second, and most frightening, was that nobody paid my warnings any heed. - Bo''okdu''ust, Lanaktallan Socio-Mathematical Researcher, 73 Post-2PW


    The stealth pod settled to the ground with a barely heard hum. Cameras recorded the area around it, then activated the holofield, hiding the flat gray teardrop shaped pod. The sides opened and a six person strike team left the pod. Four were male Terrans, two were females. All of them were dressed in black suits with a white undershirt, cufflinks, with an earpiece in their right ear and a pair of black sunglasses covering their eyes. Their features were vaguely similair, the females were the same height at five foot six, the males were much larger at seven foot two. They had the feeling of all being identical, as if an observers brain would tell the observer ''you saw one, no need for me to tell you what the others look like'' and then fill the observer''s brain with boredom.


    "Weapon check," one stated.


    All of them reached inside their jackets and pulled out identical heavy magac pistols. Black warsteel frames, hologram sight that popped a crosshair at the back and a single pearl of red at the end of the barrel, ammunition counter on the back. Textured handgrips, extended magazines, smartlink circuitry, and a heavy frame that was much heavier than the .72 caliber round needed.


    "Check," they all said at once after checking over the pistols with the same motions at the same time. Their voices were almost identical.


    "Munitions check," the first one stated.


    They all checked the additional magazines, the grenades, the flat-pack mines.


    "Secondary weapon check," the first stated.


    All of them checked to ensure they had all four knives on them as well as the throwing spikes.


    "Check."


    "Camouflage systems," the first stated.


    All of them seemed to prism and then kaleidoscope before vanishing.


    "Check," came from empty air.


    "Polymorphic check."


    Silence for a moment.


    "Check."


    "Scent check."


    "Check."


    "Move out," the first one stated.


    The grass shifted as something that wasn''t a breeze moved by unseen.


    Toward the city that surrounded the park the stealth pod had settled into.


    They moved unseen. Law enforcement cameras and surveillance cameras did not pick them up. Their mass did not register. Lasers and motion detectors saw nothing. They wove in and out of the vehicles as they rapidly approached their target.


    The Ornislarp Noocracy Chamber of Philosophy of Appetite.


    They slipped in unseen as one by one someone exited or entered the building. They moved past and around guards, the safety measures and security protocols missing them completely. An elevator opened and nothing went in before the doors closed and it began moving.


    The dataplate flashed and ''security override'' appeared on the digital display.


    The elevator moved toward a floor that was not listed on the buttons.


    The elevator door opened to nothing. The four guards waiting on the elevator moved in and felt around, just in case, but found nothing. The alarms and systems of the hallway detected nothing.


    The auxiliary door opened and shut without registering on the security terminals. The door to the security control booth opened and closed silently, the lock never disengaging. All twelve of the heavily armed Ornislarp security beings did not notice.


    They were unaware that they were no longer alone.


    The emergency exit passageway, used to move high ranking government officials in safety and secrecy was not as empty as the guards that walked through it looking for any threat thought it was.


    In orbit General Rippentear, commander of the expeditionary force, stared at the holotank.


    "Do you have a channel to the planetary leaders?" he asked.


    "Yes, General," the EW officer stated.


    "Do we have penetration to social media and information networks?" he asked. He watched as his armored vac-suit reported that the fleet combat and control bridge was now under atmosphere.


    "Yes, General," one of the communications specialists answered.


    "Put me through to the planetary ruler," Rippentear stated, his faceplate retracting and then his helmet folding up into his collar. He ran one hand through his hair, then pulled out a cigar, putting it between his teeth. He glanced back and saw that his XO was sitting down, other bridge officers in their own command chairs.


    The holotank flickered and one of the creepy spider-like Ornislarp appeared.


    "This is General Rippentear, Task Force Commanding," the Terran said.


    The Ornislarp goggled as the Terran appeared in the holotank that it had just been using to show the rest of the high government officials that the Solarian Iron Dominion was advancing on all fronts.


    "I demand your surrender," the Terran continued. "Order all vehicles to stop and cut their engines, their crews are to exit the vehicles. Your troops are to lay down their weapons and sit down to await further orders. All missile and rocket stations are to go offline. All planetary defense systems are to shut down."


    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    The Ornislarp stared, its mouthparts slapping together idly with the sound of two raw steaks smacking together.


    "Your fleet is being demolished by my guns. You cannot hurt my ships. Your ground forces have been destroyed or routed," Rippentear continued. He paused to light the cigar.


    "We will not submit to an ancient relic that..." the Noocracy leader started to say.


    "Has you personally under threat," Rippentear said, puffing on the cigar. "I will ask you again, sir, to surrender. Save the lives of your troops, save the lives of your fellow politicians," he paused and looked at the cherry red end of his cigar. He looked back at the shocked Noocracy leader. "Save yourself, sir."


    "I will do no such thing! This is a violation of the cease fire between the Confederacy of Aligned Planets and the Ornislarp Noocracy! We are the aggrieved party! You fired upon us!" the Ornislarp yelled.


    "I ask you for a third time, sir. Will you surrender?" Rippentear asked. He glanced at the secondary window.


    The exchange was being pushed through the Ornislarp communications channels.


    "Absolutely not! This is an unprovoked attack upon..." the Planetary Thought and Appetite Leader shouted.


    "Kill him," Rippentear interrupted.


    The wall behind the Ornislarp seemed to suddenly bulge forward. The coloration of the Noocracy State Seal seemed to stretch out, then tear at the front of the bulge, sliding back toward the wall.


    What came out of the bulge was a nightmare.


    Three and a half meters tall, a meter wide, covered in gray fur shot through with white here and there and black circles around the red eyes. It had powerful animalistic back legs, a furry tail, and long forelegs that ended in claws. Elongated muzzle and perky triangular ears behind the burning red eyes.


    But it was the jaws that were revealed when the creature opened its maw. Conical teeth, red tongue.


    The creature snatched up the Ornislarp, lifting it as it screamed. Its jaws came down and there was a crunch and a spray of lavender blood.


    As the creature bit off the face of the Planetary Thought and Appetite Leader, its powerful jaws crushing the brain case, and tearing a huge chunk of meat from the front of the Ornislarp''s body. It threw the body one way and turned its head the other to spit out the savaged meat.


    The guard went to draw their weapons, bring them into play, to lift them up over their bodies to shoot at the creature coming to its full height on the stage.


    From each wall a female Terran stepped from camouflage, pistols in hand.


    They fired quickly, spaced shots, three shots per target before shifting.


    All twelve of the security agents were down and in the middle of a pool of lavender blood in two seconds.


    The monstrous creature on the stage threw back its head and howled, a blood curdling noise that made the gathered politicians scream in fear.


    It jumped to the side and vanished.


    The Ornislarp looking around realized that the two female Terrans were gone.


    From the holotank General Rippentear looked around.


    "I know who is next in your chain of command," the Terran said. "You can come up and offer up this world''s surrender or I''ll have you killed next."


    One of the lights came on, shining on an Ornislarp with fine jewelry and body wrap, as well as expensive leggings.


    "You," Rippentear said, puffing on the cigar. He removed it from between his teeth and jabbed it at the holotank. "Yes, you."


    The Ornislarp stood up slowly, wondering why security wasn''t flooding the chamber.


    In the security room a large canine sat in one of the Ornislarp cradles, smacking its tail against the back, front paws on the console controls, staring at the monitors with amber eyes.


    Dismembered Ornislarp corpses littered the room around it.


    "You might want to surrender. Save your military forces. Save your people. Save the people around you," Rippentear jabbed at the holotank with his cigar. "Save yourself."


    The Ornislarp slowly moved to the stage.


    "If you keep refusing, eventually, I''ll just get tired of you and nuke all your major cities downtown areas and all of your military bases. I won''t care about ecological destruction," Rippentear said. He looked at the side of his cigar. "I do not concern myself as to whether or not you have a planet to stand on when I''m done."


    "This is not how the Confederacy makes war," the Ornislarp said, its fluting screeching voice shaking with fear that it was trying to project as anger. "Treaties between the Noocracy and the Confederacy..."


    "Don''t matter," Rippentear said.


    The Ornislarp stopped speaking, extending its eyes out on stalks in shock.


    "I do not represent the Confederacy," Rippentear said. He smiled, showing plenty of teeth. "You brought us here under false pretenses. You claimed that it was old automated systems, or perhaps even a Terran colony attacking you."


    The Ornislarp bounced up and down slightly, its way of signaling assent. "Yes, yes, perhaps a..."


    "Instead, it''s your slave caste slash little furry snacks deciding its better to die making a break for freedom than continue being eaten," Rippentear said.


    The Ornislarp went still.


    "And when we retrieved our property," he paused again, looking at the side of his cigar. He looked back at the holotank and put the cigar between his teeth. "You opened fire on us."


    The Ornislarp held perfectly still.


    "Your agreements with the Confederacy have no bearing on what is happening here," Rippentear said.


    "TerraSol is a signatory to all Confederate founding documents. That means that TerraSol is bound by Confederate treaties and agreements," the Ornislarp said.


    Rippentear gave a low chuckle. "That was the Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems. The current governmental and political body lack that particular word. Terran."


    "That does not matter!" the Ornislarp argued.


    "You now deal with the Solarian Iron Dominion, and we are not beholden to any treaties signed by any government body that claims to have previously or currently represent Solarian interests," Rippentear said. He leaned forward slightly. "Your aggressive, belligerent, and rude diplomats only got surety from the Confederacy and agreed, without negotiation, to Solarian Iron Dominion troops and vessels entering your interstellar borders."


    The Ornislarp was shifting side to side rapidly in agitation.


    "Surrender, and we will allow oversight restricted communication with the rest of the Noocracy," Rippentear stated. He smiled again. "If not, then we''ll do what must be done and assume that a state of war will continue to exist between the Solarian Iron Dominion and the Ornislarp Noocracy."


    The Ornislarp politician went still, its color deepening as its agitation and fear rose.


    "Oh, after I kill you and move to the next in line in your chains of authority," Rippentear smiled. "And start nuking your city centers, military bases, industrial capacity, and infrastructure from orbit."


    The Ornislarp made a sound like meat running through a rusty grinder. "We surrender."


    Rippentear smiled.


    "I knew you would."


    0-0-0-0-0


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    So Rippentear got the whole system to surrender?


    What is the rest of the Noocracy saying?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    They''re wavering between screaming the Dominion can''t do that, that the Dominion is bound by the Confederacy and screaming at us to protect them from the Dominion.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    They aren''t having a good time.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS


    What about the little fuzzy guys?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    The Confederacy is offering them asylum. They''re a food species and the Noocracy was warned last time about eating sentient and sapient life.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    SOLDOM


    Yeah, like you''ve ever backed that up before. You''ve let those drooling spiders run roughshod on the borders for forty thousand years, why would they fear you now?


    No wonder the Mar-gite are back.


    You''ve let these upstarts slap you around. You''ve let them take territory. You''ve been on the back foot for tens of thousands of years.


    No wonder nobody respects us any more.


    You''ll make a big noise, meanwhile these slobbering wish dot com spiders will keep eating sentients by the millions.


    But hey, don''t get any blood on you, right?


    /////////


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    These things take time.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    SOLDOM


    A C+ round to the planet is faster and teaches a longer lasting lesson.


    ////////


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    True.


    But if we start glassing planets, the Noocracy will feel like its been backed into a corner and will have no reason to surrender.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    SOLDOM


    I can give them a reason.


    ///////


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    What reason?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    SOLDOM


    Surrender.


    Or be destroyed.


    ///////

 Nova Wars - Chapter 116

    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    We''re not sure just how big the Ornislarp Noocracy is. We just know that they have at least a half dozen other species besides the Ornislarp involved.


    We''ve had to be careful with them. They''ve been pushing their war fighting technology and industrial capability until they''re able to go toe to toe with the Confederacy and make any victories extremely costly.


    And before you get all angry on us, remember, we had to deal with a massive tech loss after the first century you had vanished into The Bag.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    SOLDOM


    All right. Still, they fired on us.


    We''re not going to back down.


    //////


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    We''re not asking you to.


    I''m just telling you why they haven''t been knocked out yet.


    Plus, right now, we''ve already got the Mar-gite as well as whoever is building the Hellspace Barrier.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGEL


    It doesn''t help that ship building is more and more difficult.


    The lack of warsteel has really set up back.


    Besides


    0->HATWEARINGAUNTIE shivers


    HATWEARINGAUNTIE>brrrrr


    there is several key compon...


    what?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Nothing. Keep...


    ...


    ...


    brrr...


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    What? Tell us.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Felt like someone was walking over my grave.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Oooh boy. That''s not good.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    Violet looked over the reports from the various diplomatic assessment agencies as well as diplomatic investigators and analysts.


    With the Terrans having engaged the Ornislarp in combat, the political situation was extremely delicate.


    Already, the Terrans had reaffirmed that with the Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems being defunct, the Terrans were not a signatory to any of the Confederacy of Aligned Systems treaties, agreements, or promises.


    The Solarian Iron Dominion apparently not only covered the Terrans, but all the species that had spent the 50 years local inside The Bag.


    Violet had to admit that he had seen deep psychological and emotional changes in peoples who had survived the fifty years trapped in a highly competitive ''survival of the most adaptable'' environment. Even the mantids who stayed ''tasted'' different to Violet''s senses.


    The door chimed and Violet checked the holoemitter on the table to see who it was.


    It was the Ornislarp delegation.


    Violet sighed. The Ornislarp were insisting they were innocent, that the Dominion had attacked without warning and were interfering in a strictly internal Ornislarp Noocracy matter, in clear violation of Confederate regulations and tradition.


    He quickly adjusted everything on the table, saving his documents and locking them. He checked to make sure there was nothing that was culturally insensitive around, then tapped the door icon.


    The Ornislapr delegation moved into the room. Two staying by the door and three others moving into the room. One stopped on the other side of the table from Violet, the other two moving to either side of him.


    The Ornislarp usually arranged themselves in such a manner.


    "How may my office be of assistance?" Violet asked.


    "We demand diplomatic seals against survelliance and listening. We wish this to be only semi on the record," the Ornislarp demanded.


    Violet nodded. It was standard with the Ornislarp. "Very well." He activated the privacy systems, leaving on only the local recorder.


    "The Terrans have forced one of our important stellar systems to surrender under the threat of destruction and other violence," the Ornislarp diplomat stated, his screechy voice outraged.


    Violet nodded. "I am aware. I am also aware of the Terran''s claims of the Ornislarp being the initial belligerents despite warning."


    "Lies and falsehoods," the Ornislarp proclaimed.


    "The matter must be fully investigated. We cannot take one side''s words over the other without having pertinent information and getting answers to import questions," Violet said. He picked up a glass of water and sipped at it to soothe a tickle in his throat.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    He had spent too much time speaking.


    "We have stated that the Dominion is the aggressors. That should be enough," the Ornislarp said, the tentacles spilling out of the forward ''mouth'' starting to twist and writhe with agitation.


    "The mere statement of supposed fact by one party that is involved in a multiple party incident is not proof without confirmation," Violet said. He resisted the urge to rub his eyes.


    He had explained it to the Noocracy diplomat four times.


    "We demand that the Dominion leave our territory, to include the territory claimed by the Noocracy that the Confederacy does not recognize as within our borders. We also demand the Confederacy recognize the actual borders of the Noocracy," the Ornislarp diplomat said.


    Violet shook his head. "No. The question of borders is between the Dominion and the Noocracy, as the Noocracy has taken territory that the Dominion claims is its own."


    "If they are not the same entity as signed the treaties and agreements binding them to the decisions of the Confederacy then they are not the same entity that formerly possessed those stellar systems," the Noocracy diplomat countered. "We are tired of being treated as if we are lesser. We are the dominant species wherever we go."


    Violet went to say something and realized the room was starting to spin. He fell back slightly, his legs trembling.


    "Perhaps a demonstration is in order," the Ornislarp said.


    The ones to either side rushed forward, grabbing him by the front legs and his bladearms. The diplomat raised up slightly. The seam at the bottom of the Ornislarp''s body opened, revealing digestive acids and writhing feeding tentacles as well as articulated ''fingers'' to pull things in and hold them.


    Violet tried to protest. Tried to get his mouth parts to work to tell the ambassador that this course of action was self defeating. He tried to bring his bladearms up to protect himself but they were held tight. He could feel the forward mouth tentacles of the two holding him caress his forward legs just above his footpads as well as hear the choking and gagging noises they were making.


    He knew they were about to vomit up digestive acid on his legs.


    No, no, not like this, he thought through the confusion, the muzziness, the strange layer of cotton over his thoughts.


    Despite his dizziness and confusion, his body reacted exactly as it had been taught to.


    He tapped the button with his fingers.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Seeks the Paths to Peace looked out the window at the city of Shra''ashlahsh, taking in the ramps that the Ornislarp preferred, the spiraling architecture, the vehicles on the road around her.


    She sighed and looked back at the documents floating in front of her, projected by the holoemitter in the floor of the limousine she was traveling in.


    The Ornislarp Noocracy was demanding that their borders be recognized as virtually all of the anti-coreward Terran Tomb worlds, which would place their border two hundred light years coreward of the Sol stellar system itself. They were demanding that the Solarian Iron Dominion surrender and apologize for attacking Noocracy military forces and planets without provocation.


    It was a belligerent letter that had no compromises, no standard diplomatic give and take, just ''give us what we want or we''ll take it'' language.


    She looked out the window in time to see it.


    The rocket streaked out of the back of a truck, hitting the front of her limo. Other rockets flashed out, hitting her escorts.


    Flaming wreckage climbed for the sky as her vehicle flipped over and rolled. Windows shattered, plasteel deformed, endosteel and armor exploded away from the chassis.


    The double pulse from her implosion wire woke her. The cold empty feeling of it going offline made her frown, trying to understand it.


    She blinked and realized she was staring at the sky. Debris was still raining down, the smaller chunks already scattered around her, the larger pieces falling, still burning.


    She couldn''t feel her left foreleg and she could tell by the dizziness she had lost an antenna. She wasn''t sure what was happening, how she ended up laying on the ground staring at the sky.


    Her hand fumbled at her waist as she stared at the sky. It was getting hard to breathe. She could feel the Bliss lapping at her, trying to cradle her.


    Footsteps rapidly approached. She looked over when a shadow fell across her.


    An Ornislarp stood over her, joined quickly by two others.


    "Fortune favors us," the Ornislarp said.


    Bloodslicked fingers found what they were looking for even as Seeks stared at the Ornislarp and tried to figure out what was going on.


    She could see the mouth beneath the main oval body start to open, the articulated finger-like graspers visible outside of that purplish slice lifting so that the mouth opened. Digestive juices started dripping down and the tentacles inside the mouth unrolled, hanging down.


    The Ornislarp started moving forward, intending on straddling her supine form.


    "You, not so much," the Ornislarp said.


    Her fingers pressed the button.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The diplomatic ship was heavily shielded, arguably to protect any diplomats within. It was also heavily shielded, obstinately to protect the secrets of both the diplomats and the nation it represented.


    It was still parked at the main spaceport of Brightflash City, on the coast of one of the larger southern continents of Terra. It was surrounded by other diplomatic ships, there were power armor marching around to protect the ships. There were passenger liner shuttles, some military craft, and personal starships parked at the spaceport. On any given day Brightflash Starport serviced over a half-million sentients on their way to other locations or arriving on Terra.


    The Ornislarp starship sat with many others, all of them diplomatic vessels. It had the standard ''band'' of reactionless sublight engines at the back, used the standard ''teardrop'' style of hull layout. It had only a few weapons, all of them dedicated to minor self defense and counter-debris and point defense work. The design and its mission made it so it stressed speed and the ability to run away while taking fire over everything else. It had heavier jumpcores than normal and the fact it contained four jumpcores with two auxiliary jumpcores was no surprise to the inspectors.


    It was largely uncrewed. Just a single shift of engineers to keep the ship running, two security personnel, and the piilot. Day in and day out it had sat, sealed up, without even the Ornislarp delegation returning to it. The Ornislarp delegation was in constant contact with the ship and the ship was in constant contact with its escort vessels in orbit. The fact that the starport could detect, through the shielding, that the jumpcores were kept charged was nothing to be concerned about.


    Every other diplomatic vessel did the same, just in case of an issue requiring the evacuation of the diplomats that the ship was in charge of.


    But today wasn''t like other days.


    Inside, the ''pilot'' looked over the control panel it had unfolded from beneath a standard pilot control panel.


    All of the jumpcores were at 100% power.


    Those who dare, eat," he said.


    He pressed the button.


    0-0-0-0-0


    In orbit the small Ornislarp detachment was beyond Luna, in the minimum foreign distance ring of Terra orbital control. The satellite, Luna, was on the other side of the planet as the Ornislarp detachment of eight ships orbited the planet.


    The diplomatic ships were eclipsed for a moment by a set of four large cargo haulers shifting from high orbit to the orbit allowing them to dock at one of the many heavily armored space stations around Terra.


    The ships went to full stealth, their weapons powering up as the slipped ''down'' and ''sideways'', the weapons spinning up and the firing orders locking in as they spread out.


    Before any of the ships could get a single shot off the defense batteries on the "Ring" opened up. Automated systems reached out with tractor beams and grabbed at the wreckage. Ships that had sat in stealth for months fired along predetermined firing plans, raking the wreckage and cutting the two heavier vessels. Missiles fired from pods that had followed the Ornislarp delegation''s ships exploded and turned the two heavier vessels into spreading vapor and energy.


    The cargo haulers broke ''up'' and ''right'' following standard operating procedure, clearing the area.


    They were safe.


    The Ornislarp delegation''s ships were already spreading energy debris.


    0-0-0-0-0


    SOLDOM


    Did they think we''re punks?


    Do they really think we''ll back down?


    WHO THE FUCK DO THEY THINK THEY ARE?


    //////


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Oh no.


    no no no no


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    What? What''s going on?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    We''ve got a mass-cal event on Smokey Cone! We''re unsure of what''s happening.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGEL


    We have a Class One Diplomatic Incident!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS


    What? What''s happening?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    THE GREAT GESTALT WE CALL THE LANAKTALLAN GREAT GALLOPING PLAINS OF GREAT THOUGHTS AND GREAT IDEAS ABOUT GREATNESS AND BEING GREAT


    Someone just made the Prime Miscalculation.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

 Nova Wars - Chapter 117

    It always come back to First Contact you see. To those you misunderstand the Terran''s simple greeting.


    "We come in peace."


    You see only a greeting. Perhaps one made from weakness in the hope of staving off trouble. You don''t see what it truly is.


    An offer. A ceasefire for as long as your company remains tolerable. An offer to turn the lemur''s murderous gaze elsewhere for a time. You see what they want to see, because you do not think like the Terrans.


    You cannot declare War on the Terrans, because they have already declared it. They are at war with you, forever, and always, broken only by temporary truce. You cannot get in the first shot of the war, because the Terrans did not declare war when they met you. They did not declare war when they heard of your home. They did not declare war when the first rumors of you reached them. They declared war when they first dreamed you might exist out in the stars, and they have been loading their guns ever since.


    The Terran greeting is a simple but generous offer; to not shoot you yet. And you never even considered how vicious a race must be if they think they had to inform you of that simple courtesy. - Bo''okdu''ust, approximately 45 2PW


    The consoles around the large control room all went suddenly high speed live. Data scrolled down the 2.5D screen, filling holotanks and wiping away any previous data. The smartglass windows flashed, data windows vanishing, data streaming down.


    It wasn''t the first time it had happened, so the shift crewmembers just started annotating the data and recording it on video recorders.


    Angela Angus Kusumoto reached for her pen and notebook as her terminal suddenly went haywire.


    What she saw made her pause.


    EMERGENCY NODE LOCK


    CLEAR ALL DATA TRAFFIC


    appeared in the middle of her center monitor. The five monitors, arranged to surround the central one, all went dead for a second.


    Hexagons, circles, squares all appeared. In each geometric representation of network functions appeared addresses.


    Network addresses.


    Network addresses wildly outside of known network channels.


    She started scribbling as fast as possible, waving her hand.


    An assistant with a simple shutter camera that exposed light to a piece of plastic with a photographic film on it ran up, hitting the stud. The camera flashed and a whirring noise accompanied the black plastic square sliding out of the bottom. The assistant let it drop even as she took photos of the other monitors as fast as possible.


    EMERGENCY REQUEST


    REQUEST APPROVED (OMEGA AUTHORITY)


    NINETEEN - ONE NINE - 19 - AGENT TEAMS REQESTED


    Angela scribbled down the numbers and the network addresses as fast as possible.


    FORTY - FOUR ZERO - 40 -AGENT TEAMS APPROVED (OMEGA AUTHORITY)


    RAGNAROK TEAMS UNTHAW PROGRESS - 100%


    RAGNAROK TEAM MEDICAL CHECKS - PASSED (2.5 HOURS)


    Angela frowned.


    "We''ve got something happening on the hyperlock layers!" she called out.


    RAGNAROCK ASSET SKILL TESTS - PASSED (6.75 HOURS)


    "Which one?" her supervisor asked.


    "Unknown. Network addresses are out of range," she answered, still scribbling as fast as she could. She spoke without looking back. "Paranoid Shot these screens."


    The assistant with the camera nodded, getting close, taking pictures as fast as possible, letting the black rectangles fall to the floor. The earlier ones were slowly starting to fill with color.


    RAGNAROK TEAM EQUIPMENT ISSUE - DONE (2.38 HOURS)


    RAGNAROK TEAMS READY! - 100%


    MAT-TRANS SYSTEM ONLINE - RAGNAROK AUTHORITY ACCEPTED


    That made Angela raise her eyebrows.


    RAGNAROK TEAM DEPLOMENT SUCCESSFUL


    NINETEEN - ONE NINE - 19- TEAMS DEPLOYED


    SECONDARY TEAMS ON STANDBY


    MAT-TRANS RETURNING TO STANDY - GEHENNA LOCKOUT


    The assistant with the camera managed to snap two photos before all of the consoles and workstations suddenly shut down and rebooted.


    Angela sighed, leaning back, setting down her pen, and shaking out her hand.


    She''d managed to copy a lot of data.


    "Did you get that at the end?" she asked.


    "Yes, ma''am," the Paranoid Camera operator said.


    Angela breathed another sigh of relief.


    "Another day in Atlantis, another mystery," she said softly, shaking her head.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Birds suddenly took flight from the starport''s terminals, flapping their wings and crying out their outrage at something disturbing them. Some people started to look around, wondering what was going on.


    The Ornislarp starship on the tarmac suddenly vanished in a broiling hell of particles as the jumpcores all detonated.


    It was a race between ravening energy and safety mechanisms.


    Between hyper-physics and technology.


    The initial shielding held the explosion for a split second before it failed, surrounding where the starship was still exploding into pieces in battlescreens strong enough for a capital ship.


    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    The shield failed before it could fully energize.


    But it held long enough for the secondary to already be spinning up.


    The blast consumed the ships on the tarmac before it hit the next shielding. That shielding held even as the jumpdrives of the other ships added their fury to the blast. Not out of any conspiracy but simply by virtue of being charged, as was permittable to all diplomatic vessels.


    The second shield went down, exploding inward toward the blast the way it was designed.


    The third shield was at over half strength when the particle sleet moving faster than light hit it. It bowed, it sparked, but it held, gaining strength from the particles before the main blast wave hit.


    But that didn''t help the terminal and the starport, which was torn into subatomic particles as the jumpcore blasts consumed them.


    Over half a million sentients vanished into the cosmic fury.


    The third shield failed at the one and a half second mark.


    By that time the Brightflash City Defensive Grid had fully spun up. It contained the blast, which turned night into day.


    On Mars and Mercury green mantids and Terran workers stripped to the waist looked up and could see the pinprick flash. With grim purpose they turned back to their tasks, the Hate Anvils of Mars ringing and the Wrath Forges of Mercury roaring.


    The blast energies faded away as the city''s defense grid bled off the energy.


    When the shield dropped it revealed a crater nearly three miles wide and a mile deep at where the Ornislarp vessel had been.


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Oooh, this isn''t good. These reports are bad.


    I''ve got 32.25 million dead at Cherry Ripple Starport. We''ve got injured moomoos. Moomoo emergency response teams are mobilizing.


    It looks like the Ornislarp ambassadorial spaceship detonated on the pad. Our safety measures weren''t sufficient and the blast hit the city and the moomoo fields.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    SOLDOM


    Someone thinks they''re tough.


    ///////


    Violet wanted to close his eyes, wanted to look away as he pressed the button. He had been trained to press it even if he was missing his head, post-hypnotic suggestions and post-hypnotic muscle memory implantations carrying through with the action even though he was barely holding onto being able to control his own body.


    Part of his brain wanted to start screaming as he realized he was still fully aware, just pushed away from the controls over his own body.


    The button clicked.


    There was a flash of light.


    "RUN, KODOS, RUN!" roared out.


    The one in front of him, that was rising up on its back legs, suddenly was crushed into the floor by what looked like a length of wood. A long black spike drove into the Ornislarp''s body as the wood smashed it down in a spray of guts, blood, and viscera. The wood yanked away and Violet was aware that the wood was smashing aside the ones holding his leg.


    There was the sound of blasters firing, two thudding footsteps, then the sound of flesh being crushed and rended.


    Blood splashed the wall in front of Violet, a mangled internal organ in the middle of one splash that slowly slid down the wall.


    A slender looking Terran stepped in front of Violet, taking the time to hit each Ornislarp with the object in its hands.


    Violet realized that it was nothing more than a wooden board with a nail in it.


    "Are you all right, Messah Diplomat?" the Terran asked.


    "Blurgh," Violet managed to get out.


    The Terran sniffed at the air, then moved over to the environmental controls.


    The air swirled and Violet realized his brain was starting to clear.


    "Hunting pheromones. They used them to stun you, Messah," the Terran said.


    Violet nodded, shakily getting up. The Terran helped him to a comfortable seat.


    Right after Violet sat down the door crashed open. The Terran turned, spinning the board in his hands.


    "TERRASOL MARSHALS!" came the shout. "ON YOUR KNEES!"


    The Terran slowly knelt down, holding the board in both hands.


    "Mosizlak-668716. Terran Diplomatic Corps Defense Intelligence Agency," the Terran said.


    Violet just blinked. Nobody had seen a Mosizlak in...


    ...forty thousand years.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Seeks the Paths to Peace stared as her numb fingers pressed the button, her brain fogging from the Bliss and something else.


    Something that seemed to be pushing back The Bliss as the Ornislarp''s underside mouth opened up.


    There was a sharp KA-RACK sound nearby.


    A thick piece of reddish-black wood smashed aside the Ornislarp going to straddle her, the heavy spike embedded in the wood tearing open the side of the Ornislarp. There were two crushing impacts to either side of her, full of the sound of cartilege crumbling and hard chitin shattering.


    There was the sound of high-vee automatic weaponry being fired.


    Someone knelt over her.


    A Terran dogboi.


    It ran a hand over her body.


    "Internal organ lacerations and bruising. Bruised book lungs on right side. Right foreleg severed just below hip. Right read leg severed just below knee. Severe damage, right side of upper thorax. Severed right antenna. Missing right eye, socket empty. Missing right bladearm," the dogboi said rapidly, digging in the pouch at their side. They pulled out a silver blanket and draped it over her. "We need to extract. Now."


    "Roger," came and answer. "Mo! Mo! Cover the package."


    The Terran came back as the dogboi tucked the blanket around her and it suddenly sucked tight. She wondered if she looked like she was silver plated now and giggled. The Terran had an honest to Digital Omnimessiah board with a nail in it.


    "Mosizlak," she breathed, trying to smile.


    Nobody had seen one in tens of thousands of years.


    Of course, nobody had ever blown a diplomat''s convoy out from under them in the same amount of time.


    "I''m here, Madame Ambassador," the Mosizlak said.


    "...need immediate dustoff. Ambassador is critically injured," Seeks heard someone saying.


    "Get us a window!" someone said.


    There was the shriek of high-vee weapons and something exploded.


    Seeks stared at the fluffy clouds in the sky. She felt a pinch from an injection being punched through her chitin.


    "Dropship! Ten minutes!" came a yell.


    A pattern of hexagons appeared above her and the dogboi, who was crouched down next to her, hands working quickly.


    Her world contracted as a tube was jammed down her throat. She felt tubes pushed into her book lungs. There was a gurgle of thick fluid and she could suddenly breathe easier. Her head was examined, scanned.


    "Negative neurological defects detected. Negative cerebral hemorrhage repair requirements. Phasic lobe damage observed," the dogboi was saying.


    Seeks realized the dogboi was talking to an eVI.


    The hexagons vanished and the world came back.


    There was the sounds of heavy weapons fire. The scream of hyper-velocity rockets. Explosions could be heard.


    The dogboi scooped her up, curling slightly over her body, and took off running. Another explosion and debris showered down. She was hustled onto a dropship.


    She recognized it. Kind of.


    She''d never been in the back.


    The back was loaded with armored troops and medical bays. She saw one of her black mantid escorts being loaded into a medical bay before the dogboi set her down.


    "HANG ON!" someone yelled.


    The dogboi put a hand on her, holding her down as the world seemed to tilt. The dogboi''s other hand was moving straps, securing her to the medical bay.


    "Package Alpha is locked in!" the dogboi yelled.


    There was a clanking noise of metal on metal that came from somewhere nearby.


    The lid slid over her.


    Everything went dark.


    0-0-0-0-0


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    How dare they.


    How DARE they!


    We are a peaceful people! Diplomats, philosophers, artists!


    How DARE they attack us!


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGEL


    They''re going to regret that.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    When TerraSol finishes putting on their stomping boots, yeah.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    RIGEL


    Before then.


    Trust me.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    The excitement at the spaceport had wound down. The Confederate diplomatic vessels had not only fought their way off planet, but managed to make the transition to jumpspace and escape.


    But that had been several weeks ago.


    While the Ornislarp Noocracy began combat operations against the Confederacy, something else was happening that almost nobody was aware of and only a few could guess.


    It was a simple thing.


    In an infrequently used but always full capacity warehouse just off the starport a crate had arrived. Large, made of endosteel, and so old that it had corrosion on the corners and edges, that the whole front was covered with customs and inventory stickers, the large cargo container had been virtually ignored since it was offloaded decades before.


    A few days after the Confederacy had formally opened up diplomatic channels with the Ornislarp and had established the Confederate embassy that was now little more than a rubble strewn crater that still smoked and steamed.


    Glurgulgh was a standard warehousing district worker who mainly supervised robots. While not an Ornislarp himself, he still had a decent job that allowed him plenty of free time.


    And plenty of food.


    He moved back toward the back corner of the warehouse, where the lights were malfunctioning. Most were out, but a few were flashing dimly.


    He rounded the corner and stared.


    An ancient looking cargo container was open. The two overlapping locked doors now slightly open.


    Making a discontented rumbled in his throat he moved forward, reaching out to grab the inventory sheet out of the plastic envelope on the front of the container.


    Before he could touch the envelope, a hand landed on his shoulder.


    Exclaiming in shock, he whirled around.


    A Terran stood in front of him. Tall, slender, with thick white hair piled up in an ornate hairstyle that had thick curls falling down the Terran''s back. The Terran was dressed in crimson and silver formal clothing.


    A Glurgulgh blinked the Terran''s eyes suddenly turned into spirals that started spinning.


    "You are under my control, blah-bleh-blah."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 118

    You think you''ve seen it all, don''t you? You think that your thousands of years of warfare against those around you to make them your servants or your food means that you have seen, experienced, and done it all, don''t you?


    You have no idea what Hell you have unleashed. You have no idea just what is now lunging up out of its grave at you. A grave forty-thousand years old, in a graveyard that was long ago turned into a parking lot where the bodies weren''t moved because the development company embezzled the money and was crooked in ways your species can''t understand.


    A red eyed skull visaged thing that has crawled from a forgotten grave in a forgotten graveyard will grasp your by your hearing organs, pull you close and whisper one thing to you in the dark.


    "There is room in this grave for you." - Falls Into Darkness, Mantid Diplomat addressing the Noocracy in a formal declaration.


    It''s easy for all of us. The Lanaktallan/Confederacy War was so long ago that the light from the stars that was emitted during that time has passed beyond the Orion Spur, past the Galactic Core, and past the opposing galactic arms. Wreckage is found infrequently now, starships drifting in space have largely been recovered, and even on worlds where nobody dwells any more, weather and time have erased the scars of that war.


    But that is for us. Those who dwelt in the outside universe.


    Inside The Bag, was the universe''s most aggressive intelligent primate, wounded, threatened, and uncertain of what the future, when The Bag opened, would hold.


    Would it be fire and blood or a universe where they were not at war.


    They hoped for the latter and frantically prepared for the first.


    We had them mostly at ease. The Mar-gite are not something personal. It was not a personal attack upon TerraSol, upon humanity. Make no mistake, these are not Terrans, not even Earthlings. These are humans. A bag of fluids and organs that all hate each other but just hate you more.


    We had them willing to pause, willing to hold back the vast war machine they had built in the intervening five decades of monomaniacal military buildup.


    The Hellspace Fence, the Mar-gite, they were troubles that had no visible origins and did not threaten TerraSol itself.


    After all, the humans were down to one stellar system.


    And humans understand that the only way to survive is to be multi-stellar, multiplanetary.


    So, with their backs against the wall already, we had almost convinced them to set down the trigger of the planet cracker they were cradling to their chest.


    And you had to hit TerraSol. In an amusing to the malevolent universe coincidence, you hit BrightFlash City. The same city the Mantid hit. The same city another race whose name we have forgotten struck at as an opening gambit to their desired interstellar war.


    Then you attacked diplomats.


    That act says you aren''t interested in talking. Not now. Not in the future. That is a profound statement.


    It says: We are in this to the end.


    We Mantid tried to reach out, tried to use diplomacy in regards to the planets you have taken, in regards to the belligerent pose you have taken, in regards to your insatiable appetite for the flesh and psychic emantations of sapient beings.


    But some men, you just can''t reach.


    Well, that''s the way you want it.


    So that''s how it''s going to happen.


    You attacked Hivehome. You attacked Smokey Cone. You tried to attack Rigel-7. You tried to attack Pubvia.


    That was enough. While your scientific and engineering advancements put you on a rough parity, militarily and industrially, with the Confederacy, meaning that the Confederacy would be facing a near peer conflict, you made the Prime Miscalculation.


    You attacked TerraSol.


    You attacked the fleet you requested assist you with a military incursion.


    Do not bother to reach out to us, to ask us to try to reign in the humans.


    The Confederacy was not built to protect them in those lost past days.


    It was built to protect us.


    Thou hast sowed the breeze.


    Now reap the whirlwind.


    For I have come with a righteous and terrible wrath.


    Guns.


    You may fire when ready.- Admiral of the Warsteel (Upper Decks) Ky''le''rmo''o, to the Ornislarp Noocracy.


    "...the fact that the war is against three different opponents, widely spaced, with differing capabilities may put undue strain upon the Solarian Iron Dominion''s military forces," the representative from the United Governments of Terra was saying to the assembled members of the Hamburger Kingdom Congress.


    He was standing on the podium in front of the Speaker of the House, a fearsome individual known only as "The Annoyed", dressed in his fearsome crimson suit, who often giggled at inappropriate times.


    "The Solarian Iron Dominion must stand down and not engage in operations across three fronts. It must allow the UGT to take over military operations to..." the UGT rep stuttered to a stop when a loud voice erupted from the visitors gallery.


    "COWARD!" the voice roared out. "CRAVEN AND PUSILLANIMOUS COWARDLY WORM!"


    The speaker trotted down the steps of the visitor''s gallery, resplendent in his Senatorial Sash, flank covering, and vest. He had holographic eagles on his back that screeched at the end of his words. He was wearing a long white wig with curly hair beneath a tri-cornered hat.


    "HOW DARE YOU COME HERE TO UTTER YOUR DISGUSTING WEAK AND WHINING DIATRABE?" the speaker roared out.


    There were chuckles from the gathered four thousand Representatives.


    "How dare you insult me in such..." the UGT Rep spluttered.


    "I challenge you, sir, to a duel!" the Lanaktallan said, stopping at the edge of the balcony. The eagles on his back flapped their wings and screeched. "I will not abide such a craven and cowardly creature, below even the journalistic worms that infest our sacred halls, to bleat like a frightened sheep inside this hallowed building!"


    The tri-vid cameras swooped in to get good angles of the crowd, the Representatives, the UGT Rep, and, of course, the Lanaktallan whose flank covering was now displaying a slowly scrolling image of the Articles of Hamburger Confederation.


    "I... I..." the UGT Rep said.


    "Now. Upon the steps of this very building, for the entire world to see!" the Lanaktallan shouted. "I challenge, sir! I demand satisfaction!"


    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    The railing flashed to signify a hoverpad was enroute to allow the Lanaktallan to step onto it and be taken down to the floor the House of Representatives.


    The UGT rep stood straight. "You are Lanaktallan. Your reflexes and muscle speeds are five times lower than mine."


    "True," the Lanaktallan folded all four arms over his chest. "Yet, I challenge you to a duel upon these steps. With guns."


    The platform came to a stop and the Lanaktallan stepped onto it.


    "Biologically, you cannot hope to win," the UGT Rep tried to sneer.


    "Yet, I have not heard your sheeplike voice bleat out your acceptance to my demand of satisfaction," the Lanaktallan said. He kept his arms crossed as the platform hummed and slowly floated down toward the floor. "Unlike you, I have faced my opponents over the sights of guns, missiles, and even grenade launchers. I demand satisfaction, for my constituents cannot stomach seeing something as cowardly and craven as you upon the floor," the Lanaktallan smirked. "Why, I bet your sister is a thespian."


    "How dare you, sir!" the UGT member snapped.


    "And your wife undoubtablely provides aid and comfort to enemy diplomats late at night!" the Lanaktallan answered. "I dare because your parents, obvious mental and physical defectives, dared to engage in sexual congress without protection and then dared to raise you instead of knocking you in the head and selling milk!"


    The UGT member spluttered.


    "Either agree to give me satisfaction or flee these halls, vile worm," the Lanaktallan said. He lowered his lower two hands to rest them on the engraved and inlaid pistols in hand tooled leather holsters on the Genuine Red Plains Warriors Leather belt and Moo Moo Tender brass belt buckle.


    The UGT member looked at the pistols, then at the Lanaktallan, who had a cold smile on his face and a glint in his eyes.


    The UGT Rep remembered that the Senator had been an intelligent agency assassin and direct action operative.


    "Pull your smoke wagon, sirrah, and give me satisfaction!" the Lanaktallan shouted.


    The UGT Representative suddenly bolted off the stage.


    The holographic eagles screeched in victory.


    The Lanaktallan turned and trotted away.


    He had a military appropratioms bill to vote on, and he wanted to get there in time to slice off a nice chunk of graft and grift so he could hand out jobs to his constituents.


    0-0-0-0-0


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    We''ve already had bladearm duels between matrons here.


    A full Hatching had less than 38% support, a Great Hatching, even with Captain Decken''s support, only had 22% support.


    Now, there''s been violence over an unwillingness to ''Do Your Part" and the like.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    The Mantid of "We Live Here Now in This Wonderful Place and These Wonderful Star Systems" are upset and slightly frightened. Their Omniqueen is only a few thousand years old and she fears that the anger and rage might contaminate all of her people, Mantid and others.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUBVIAN DOMINION


    And the non-WLHN Mantid?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Can you say: Death to the Ornislarp? I knew you could.


    It''s not as bad as when we encountered the Lanaktallan, but it''s pretty bad.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    SOLDOM


    It''s going to get worse.


    When are we voting?


    Do we have a mandate?


    We need to give peace a chance!


    Watch the politicians start a war!


    It''s always going to get worse.


    ///////


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    What makes you say that?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    SOLDOM


    We''ve got the troops, the ships, the firepower to fight on all three fronts, providing Captain Decken''s operation can find out the real threat behind the Hellspace Fence.


    The Mar-gite are the bigger threat.


    The Hell-Fence is the bigger threat.


    Who cares about the spicy fence? The Mar-gite eat people!


    Won''t someone think of the children?


    SHUT THE FUCK UP!


    The problem is, apparently some individuals, some... entities, so to speak... took great offense to TerraSol being attacked.


    ///////


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    Like the Immortals? I thought that either they were all dead or a myth and never existed.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HESSTLA CYBERBURROW


    You mean like Legion?


    The Legion currently out with Operation Lonely Peach?


    Those Immortals?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TUKNA''RN DOCTRINAL


    There is that.


    How many Immortals were on TerraSol when The Bag kicked in? How many Immortals still walk among us, eternal, never aging, watching as we carry on with our lives?


    Apologies, it is mandatory art and creativity day. It makes us speak differently.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    You''re good.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUBVIAN DOMINION


    No, not like the Immortals.


    We know the Nosferatu Initiative and the Nazgul Protocol are still out there. We''ve still got that Florida Man on ice.


    No, this thing is old. Older than we''d like to think.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLD


    Like what?


    What kind of thing do we need to worry about?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HESSTLA CYBERBURROW


    There''s some strange things out there, and now that Terra is out of The Bag many things that were dormant are active.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    Again, like what?


    I mean, what do we have to worry about.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUBVIAN DOMINION


    It''s hard to explain.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    I''ve been around for 40K years too.


    What could be to worry about beyond their standard war fighting ability?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    me


    PUBVIAN DOMINION


    Look, there''s a lot of things we never figured out how they work that weren''t detailed in the Avenge-Us-Doc drop.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    Most of those have been dismissed as rumors.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Tell that to Legion.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    We just got done with a war about those old myths and legends.


    I am not going to start hiding under the bed.


    I''m not saying Terra isn''t tough. Extremely tough for a single stellar system.


    But we''ve had 40K years to advance beyond them.


    And we have.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    <snerk>


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Man, you''ve been feeling muscular since the end of your civil war.


    All right, fine. We''ve advanced.


    Ship me a nutriforge you built from the ground up.


    Ship me a creation engine. Just one.


    You can''t, can you?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    They don''t work, and you know it.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Yet, from the Lanaktallan Empire to Smokey Cone creation engines, nutriforges, ammoforges, and even warsteel nanite creation matrixes have fired back up.


    All the old Terran tech is turning back on.


    Their scream of rage reignited that warsteel volcano of yours.


    Pubvia is right to be worried.


    We''re all right to be worried.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    you are


    PUBVIAN DOMINION


    I just hope that whatever is coming can discriminate between innocent and guilty, military/government and civilians, legitimate targets versus banned targets.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    AKLTAK FREE FLIGHT


    I am nervous about what Terra might do.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    Well, I just hope whatever Terra brings to the table will offset the fact a near-peer conflict just exploded into violence.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    SOLDOM


    Oh, well, the way you have been talking, I''d assumed you''d like us to have some hot cocoa and go to bed in our footie pajamas while the big boys take care of everything.


    You can''t just threaten politicians.


    Why not? They''re vermin.


    I was waiting for an offer to tuck me in and kiss my cheek after singing me a lullaby.


    Because its illegal!


    Maybe it shouldn''t be! Maybe they need to be reminded who they work for!


    They work for all of humanity, not just your side!


    So?


    Either act right or we''ll petition to have your GalNet connection taken away.


    You''ve damn near stated you don''t need me anyway.


    ///////


    PUBVIAN DOMINION


    Nobody is saying that.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    SOLDOM


    Too bad.


    I''m willing to go my own way.


    No, we haven''t voted!


    If that''s what the Malevolent Universe has in store, that we have to go it alone, then fine.


    That''s what we''ll do.


    You''re talking about xenocide.


    You''re goddamn right I am, you bead wearing disco dancing tie-dye wearing hippy! GET A JOB!


    That''s verbal assault!


    I''ll assault your asshole with my fist!


    I''ll even be generous and leave everyone else a planet to stand on when I''m done.


    ///////


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    Nobody is saying you have to go out on your own.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    But you don''t need to go off half-cocked either.


    We need to work together.


    You need to reign in your temper.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    SOLDOM


    Who the fuck are you?


    Telkan is right. We should strive to calm down, let cooler heads prevail.


    No, who the fuck are you?


    What makes you think you can even THINK that you can tell me what to do?


    WE NEED TO VOTE ON THIS!


    Seriously. Whose furry is this?


    Someone come get your furry, their mouth writing checks they might not be able to cash.


    ///////


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    Telkan misspoke, that''s all.


    We get it, they hit Earth, but they hit us too.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    SOLDOM


    So are you going to nut up or let the Ornislarp do you in the face on the first date?


    We don''t have to take this shit off these Jelly Roll Lately Punks.


    ///////


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    What''s your plan?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    SOLDOM


    I don''t know. I''m thinking about just standing there. After all, what can I bring to the table?


    No. I''m going to hit them hard. Hit them so hard that they''ll have a screaming breakdown at weird shaped clouds.


    We''re going to work with you guys.


    IT''S NOVA SPARK MONDAY, BABY! AND I''M ALL OUT OF FUCKS TO GIVE!


    We''ll be...


    Hang on.


    <blockquote>


    ->SOLDOM has logged off


    </blockquote>


    TREANA''AD HIVE WORLDS


    He''s getting pretty fractured.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    If his people can''t come to a consensus, then can we count on them?


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAT WEARING AUNTIE


    You''d be amazed.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    PUBVIAN DOMINION


    I''m telling you, I''ve got a bad feeling.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    something wicked their way comes

 Nova Wars - Chapter 119

    Since its creation, Hellspace has been what everyone was afraid of. It ripped ships apart just with a graze, drove beings mad just seeing the portals, and could wipe out entire planets with just a tendril of energy.


    A former hyper-atomic plane, it touched everywhere at once. Distance within the hyper-atomic plane was determined differently, a trip of scores of light years could take place in mere minutes. The speed of light was nearly three hundred times that in our reality.


    There was, of course, rumors that there were being who lived there.


    Not that it stopped the Lanaktallan from burning it. Turning it into Hellspace, in a last ditch Hail Mary Full of Grace effort to stop the Atrekna during the First Precursor War.


    Everyone but the Precursor Autonomous War Machines avoided Hellspace. The PAWM were corrupted by it, but it was the sole way they could move around until later, when they adapted Jumpspace to their drives.


    Everyone living avoided it.


    Except the Terrans.


    When Hellspace reached out and brushed the humans, the humans reached out and touched it back. - From On the Hyper-planes and their relationship to known species, New Tnvaru University.


    Wrexit hated Hellspace.


    Well, for the obvious reasons mainly.


    Food that suddenly turned to rotted sludge filled with maggot analogues. The way corridors seemed to warp and twist and change. The way light sources dimmed, turned off, flickered, and warped the shadows. The shimmering at the edge of the vision. The sudden awareness that the shadow at the edge of awareness was actually sneaking up with a knife. The way that it was impossible to be fully rested and that time seemed warped and twisted.


    The way it altered the robots. Turned them from strange but oddly familiar robots with a T-shaped head and bright endochrome chassis to glossy black chassis with a Terran skull. The combat robots, the "Marines" had a red T across their faces. The ''shipboard crew'' had a white T.


    No, it was the nightmares.


    Combined with the fact he always felt as if he had not gotten enough sleep.


    The vessel, the Nell of Night, was the flagship for a small seven ship task force of Terran make. Old tech, from forty-thousand years prior.


    Captained by a Terran who had been born before even the Glassing of Terra around fifty-thousand years before.


    Sure, it had Hellspace shielding, and the Captain and the First Mate, which was someone, Wrexit always had a hard time remembering who, seemed unaffected by the travel through Hellspace.


    But to Wrexit, it went on and on and had begun to feel as if it would never end.


    Which was why he was changing out of his sleep clothing and into exercise clothing at 0100 Approximate, glancing up at the clock that read "ERROR" above the six lockers. There were signs reminding him to take turns on the equipment and that standard exercise periods were only thirty to sixty minutes.


    Wrexit was heavy for a Telkan. Wide shouldered, heavily muscled, but his fox-like face narrow from deprivations early in his life. His fur was streaked here and there by the white of fur that had regrown over scar tissue, a silent catalogue of his life on the streets.


    Now, he was a conscripted soldier in a war he didn''t understand.


    A war that had already cost him his best friend in his whole entire life.


    True, Naxen was still alive.


    Kind of.


    He was now known as N44, a massive armored warbound. A half-dead half-alive corpse held on the edge of death and encased in a heavy armored chassis. Heavily armored and armed, Naxen was primarily concerned with learning how to operate his massive war machine of a body.


    Wrexit had tried talking to him a few times, but sometimes it took hours for Wrexit to get a reply.


    Naxen was gone and N44 is all that remained.


    Wrexit closed his eyes and sighed, leaning forward and pressing his face against the cool bulkhead.


    Then, of course, was what Captain Decken called "Burning in the reflexes" for both Wrexit and the only other Telkan onboard, W44 AKA Imna AKA Drali''imna.


    Like Wrexit, she had memory implants of attending the Telkan Marine basic training and basic rifleman''s course.


    Neither had attended either school.


    But Captain Decken had insisted on training them as if they had.


    And, damn him, he was right.


    Wrexit had learned how to use armor, weapons, how to move, how to operate vehicles.


    While it had passed the time, Wrexit felt, sometimes, like part of himself was being pared away so something else, someone else, could be layered on top.


    Wrexit banged the front of his face on the wall a couple of times then stepped back.


    Exercise helped.


    He hated to admit it, but he''d gotten a lot stronger under Captain Decken''s watchful eyes.


    Wrexit left the changing room slash showers slash locker room and stepped into the ''small'' gym. By standards that Wrexit would have never been able to achieve in the slums, the fifteen foot by ten foot room was small, but since he''d never seen a gym outside of school, Wrexit considered it more than adequate. There were weight stations, exercise machines, and the gravity could even be adjusted per machine or even on a three by three plate.


    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    He''d slowly turned up the gravity until it was at what the ship listed as .92G.


    He was tugging at the waist of his shorts when he walked in and it wasn''t until he looked up that he realized he wasn''t alone.


    On one hand he wanted to bust up laughing.


    On the other hand, it was absolutely terrifying.


    The "Marines" were in the gym. Glossy black robots with a red-T on their skulls. They were at exercise stations, doing situps at the sides, pushups over by the weight rack. Two were skipping rope, three were doing pullups, and one was lifting kettlebells. They all had on shorts and bare midriff shirts with "Little Nell of Night" on the chest and their designations on the back.


    Wrexit just blinked, staring.


    The robots were dripping light clear oil as they worked, as if they were perspiring.


    Telkan used a mix of water and oil when they sweated to increase the thermal conductivity of their fur, as well as open mouth fast panting, to mitigate heat.


    But robots?


    One of them, which Wrexit recognized as the robot known as Super Slugger by the partially melted skull face, stood up and snapped its fingers.


    The robots all put back their weights, got off the machines, put back their equipment. They wiped down the equipment with red cloth rags, then all filed out.


    "Mister Wrexit," Super Slugger said, moving by.


    Wrexit just stared as they moved out the door and into the changing room slash locker room.


    Oddly enough, right before the door closed, he heard a sharp snap followed by a high pitched outcry, then laughing as the showers turned on.


    Wrexit shook his head, turning back to the gym.


    Captain Decken was on the far side, if you could call fifteen feet away ''far''. Wrexit found himself staring.


    Weirdly, he had just subconsciously pictured the Captain as having fur under his uniform. His face, neck, and hands were furless. Sure, he had hair on his head and fine hairs on the backs of his hands and on his forearms, but for some reason Wrexit''s mental picture of the Captain had always assumed he had fur under his uniform.


    The Captain was wearing a small pair of exercise shorts and fingerless leather gloves. He was hanging upside down on bar, his knees folded over it, holding one of the 20 kilogram plates against his chest with his arms, and bending/twisting at the waist so his arms touched the opposite leg.


    It wasn''t just what he was doing, but the fact he was doing them quickly.


    Wrexit stared for a long moment. He''d never really considered that a Terran would be hairless. Sure, there was some on the chest and legs, but all of the Captain''s musculature was visible.


    Wrexit was considered muscular for a Telkan, but the Captain looked freakish to Wrexit. The muscles and muscle groups defined to the point that it looked like eight separate muscles in his abdomen.


    The Captain stopped, lowering the plate almost to the floor and letting it go. It clanked against the variable surface deckplate and then the Captain reached up, grabbed the bar, and swung down by unfolding his legs and moving them opposite of the hand.


    It was weirdly fluid and almost menacing to Wrexit.


    The Captain stood up. "Watch it, I''m running at 4G," the Captain said. He tapped the wristband. "There, back to normal."


    Wrexit just nodded as the Captain moved the plate back to the storage rack.


    "All yours, Crewman Wrexit," the Captain said, moving away, toward the showers. Instead of going through the doors, he sat down and picked up one of the kettlebell weights.


    Wrexit shook his head and moved to the machines.


    After a few minutes he was aware the Captain was watching him intently. He tried to ignore it, but the weight of the gaze got heavier and heavier until the fur down his spine was starting to raise.


    "Am I doing something wrong, Captain?" Wrexit asked, turning and looking the Captain, who was staring, without blinking, at Wrexit.


    "What? Oh, sorry, I was considering our current situation," the Captain said, blinking rapidly.


    "I thought you were staring at me," Wrexit said, suddenly feeling foolish.


    "Just staring off into space while I consider what might be at the end of this pursuit," the Captain said. "No retinal link data or anything, just my brain and what we know," he set down the kettlebell on the rack. "I''ll leave you to it."


    Wrexit just nodded, going back to the weights as the Captain left.


    He considered it. Just staring off into space was predatory enough to make Wrexit nervous. There was no feeling of disconnect, no vagueness, no ignoring surroundings in that gaze.


    Wrexit put it out of his mind and went back to lifting weights.


    When he was done he showered, which at first had thrown him off since he was used to badly tuned ultrasonic cleaning systems but now he found himself enjoying the hot water and soap that was specially formulated for his fur. He put on his shipboard off-duty uniform and left the locker room.


    He touched his new implant as he moved through the corridor.


    "Operations," came the smooth calm voice of the robot everyone called "Mister Manfred."


    "Is D44 awake?" Wrexit asked.


    "D44 is currently located in the aft chow hall and biometrics show that she is awake and engaged in activity. Is there anything else I can assist you with, W44?" Mister Manfred asked.


    "No, thank you. W44 out," Wrexit said.


    It took three tries to get to the aft chowhall, one of the corridors warping to loop back onto itself and another ending in a scarred and rune inlaid blast door that was missing when he came back around.


    Wrexit found Imna sitting at the table, picking at a piece of pie. He grabbed a tray of food and moved over to sit across from her.


    "Can''t sleep?" he asked.


    "My internal clock tells me its late morning, shipboard clock tells me a lot of other times," Imna said.


    Wrexit nodded. "Mine says it''s early morning, like three in the morning."


    "We''ve been in Hellspace for two months. I''ve never heard of anything being in Hellspace for longer than a few moments," Imna said. She laughed as she pushed away her tray that was now full of moldy food, setting down the eating utensil that had gone from durachrome to inlaid and carved tarnished silver.


    "So, what''s your plans with your... afternoon?" Wrexit asked.


    "I just finished at the range and did a practice session with the force lance," Imna said. She tapped one of her vestigial claws on the table. "Going to do more armor work later. How about you?"


    Wrexit shrugged. "Maybe more hand to hand. When it comes to the guns..."


    "Weapons," Imna corrected with a smile. She reached down and grabbed her crotch under the table. "Like Mister Fumbles says: This is my weapon, this is my gun, this is for killing, this is for fun."


    Wrexit chuckled and shook his head. "You''re really enjoying yourself, aren''t you?"


    Imna stared at the ceiling for a moment. "Captain Decken is making sure I can fight and survive. We can''t go home, they''ll kill us. We have a death sentence, Wrexit," she looked at him, locking eyes with him. "If the Solarian Iron Dominion will have me, then I''ll fight for them."


    Wrexit blinked. "You think they''ll kill us if we go home?"


    Imna nodded. "They arrested us in the middle of the night. They messed with our brains. They falsified paperwork that said we were Telkan Marines. If we go back, it''ll be a huge scandal that the Telkan government doesn''t need."


    She shook her head. "Before all of this, I would have naively thought that we could just go home, that it was all just a mistake."


    "What changed your mind?" Wrexit asked.


    Imna looked at the table, tapping her index claw on the hard surface. "Remembering the Hierophant''s War and knowing that we saw the Warbound ourselves," she said softly. "We heard the Terrans scream of rage. We saw the Warbound in the church, one of the few churches remaining after the war."


    She shook her head.


    "No, Wrexit, we can''t ever go home," she said softly. "I just hope that the government thinks I''m dead."


    "Why?" Wrexit asked.


    "So they don''t kill my parents too," she said. She gave a bitter laugh. "Governments always believe that the thing that will cover up a murder they''re worried about coming to light is to commit more murders. You don''t have to worry about witnesses if you don''t leave anyone alive."


    She stood up. "I''m a Telkan without a country, without a home, without a people."


    Wrexit sat quietly after she left, leaving him alone in the aft mess hall.


    He''d never had anyone but Naxen and the rest of the gang.


    He hoped that Lawsec hadn''t killed his friends.


    But part of him knew the truth.


    They were all street scum. Just like him.


    Nobody would care if Lawsec killed them in the holding cells.


    He just hoped his sisters and his mother were still alive.


    He got up and left.


    Hetmwit just sat at the end of the table and watched him leave.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 120

    We''re back now, and we''ll make that everyone''s problem soon enough.-Colonel John Jane Tenfingers Ranadheer, TerraSol Marine Corps, aboard the Grey Lady as part of Task Force Lonely Peach


    We grind until the next score, Telka. That''s all there is. That''s all there ever is. - N44


    The bridge lights were red when Imna arrived.


    Captain Decken and someone that Imna knew she had been introduced to but couldn''t remember the name of, were staring at the holotank. A DS was in the holotank, a snarling razor edged tangle of code with baleful red eyes by the dozen that blinked and slowly shifted around in the crystalline stained glass shards of the body. The DS was next to a strange thing in the middle of the tank.


    To Imna, it looked like some kind of undersea creature, with a dozen tentacles that had spread out from a bulbous body, all black with red highlights. The tentacles looked as if they had a dozen narrow spacecraft stuck to hidden suckers.


    Wrexit AKA W44, was sitting in a chair staring at the tank.


    Like Imna, everyone was in one of the armored vac-suits. She was late because she had been at the indoor range, practicing with the force lance, when the alert had sounded for all hands.


    "There you are, Mister Imna," Captain Decken said. His habit of referring to her in the masculine term had been disconcerting at first but now she was used to it.


    "What''s happening?" she asked.


    "Our quarry led us to... something..." Captain Decken said slowly.


    The DS turned a half dozen eyes onto Decken.


    "It is not a Hellspace shield we are familiar with, although ship''s sensors can detect the bandwidth and energy wavelength emissions," the DS, one "Enduring Hateful Code", said in a voice of crackling breaking glass. "While data is sparse at the moment, I believe we are at one of the enemy''s forward bases."


    "In Hellspace?" Imna asked.


    Decken nodded, still staring at the holotank. "Yes. Past the travel bands, deep into Hellspace itself."


    Imna frowned. She didn''t know that much about Hellspace, but she''d done some research. It was just a former hyper-atomic plane that touched everywhere that normal space existed, just the distances were non-euclidean, the shorter the distance in realspace the further in Hellspace you had to travel and the longer it took.


    But ''deep'' into Hellspace?


    "I don''t understand. I thought that Hellspace was point to point?" Imna said.


    Enduring spun the shards of stained glass, grinding glass against glass and strands of code. "No. And yes. Once you full get into the upper bands of any of the hyper-atomic planes you move from where the hyper-atomic plane touches ours and into the depths of it. Think of it was two fish-tanks pressed against each other, only merged, but parts of the fish-tank extending past the other fish tank."


    Imna closed her eyes. "OK, fine."


    "We''re deep in. Its hard to tell how far, since there isn''t any navigational spaces or landmarks," Decken said. "Outside this bubble we managed to follow that ship to, it''s all burning hyper-atomic plane."


    Enduring looked at Decken will all fifteen eyes. "The station is talking to me."


    "Can you understand it?" Decken asked.


    "Yes. It broadcast different lexicons and I chose one of the older ones. A Lanaktallan lexicon taken from a Precursor Autonomous Warmachine. It is now replying with PAWM coding to me," Enduring said.


    "What''s it saying?" Decken asked.


    "It is not asking for registration or identification numbers. It is merely giving me instructions to dock," Enduring stared at Decken with those hate filled red eyes. "I can state at a 78% confidence that what is talking to me is an alien artificial life form, possibly a digital sentience."


    Decken nodded slowly. "Is it asking you to make any kind of report?"


    "Negative, Captain," Enduring hissed in a voice full of static. "It has asked if I need repair or munitions reloading. It registered my false identification and assigned me a string of numbers."


    Enduring flickered. "It uses base-eight. Coding is non-Confederate, although a lexicon was recent Confederate."


    Decken moved over, his power armor hissing. "It has been using captured ships pushed through long distances in Hellspace. That''s why we cannot identify them," he said. He brought up the smartscreen at the front of the bridge, staring at the image. "It''s been capturing ships since the First Precursor War."


    "Not positive, Captain. Enemy could have captured and repurposed ships afterwards," Enduring said.


    "But, why not make their own?" Imna asked.


    Enduring stared at her with a half dozen burning red eyes, the irises bone white and the pupils black. "Unknown at this time."


    Wrexit just shrugged. "Why doesn''t really matter right now. What we''re going to do matters."


    Decken nodded. "We need answers," he turned and looked at the holotank. "Mister Smiley, can you navigate the Nell of Night back to Iron Dominion or Confederate space?"


    The robot somehow looked thoughtful for moment. "Aye-aye, Captain. 80% certainty."


    Decken nodded. "That''s all we can ask for," he turned to the XO, who Imna suddenly realized was still sitting in the chair. "Get a boarding party of Marines together, Number-One. Add in W44 and D44 to your boarding party."


    Decken turned and looked at Imna and Wrexit.


    "Time to earn your spurs."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Hetmwit doublechecked his own and the two Telkan''s armor. Integrity was at 100%, battlescreens on standby, life support at 98%, power at 99%. He checked their weapons. Standard Confederate magnetic acceleration rifles and pistols, grav fists for W44, Mark Two cutting bars for both.. He was carrying grenades to supplement his small arms.


    Then he checked the five ''Marines'' coming with him. Two had rocket launchers, two others had light machineguns.


    The ship had docked and Hetmwit checked the telltales.


    There was atmosphere on the other side. Breathable atmosphere. Not easily, the oxygen content was low, but it was still breathable.


    He made sure everyone''s inertial and laser mapping systems were working right.


    "Commo check," Hetmwit said.


    "We read you, Tango-Actual," came back Mister Goofy''s voice.


    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    "I read you, Tango-Actual," the Captain said.


    The Captain was on the other side of the airlock in his heavy armor, ready to secure an egress route if everything went sideways.


    Hetmwit was pretty sure it was going to go sideways.


    He checked his pistol again, looking back at the two Telkan. "I''ll be on point. Mister Hefty and Mister Ackerman will be next, then you two, then Mister Mustang and Mister Kanda," he said. He looked at the airlock door. "Lights are green. Opening door."


    "Roger that, Tango-Actual," Mister Goofy answered. "You are green to go."


    Hetmwit took a deep breath and tapped the holographic icon on the door.


    It rose up slowly and he stopped it at six inches. He held his gauntlet down and checked the atmosphere leaking under the door as well as forwarded it to Mister Enduring.


    "Standard atmosphere. Oxygen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, helium, nitrogen, hydrogen, argon. Getting outgassing consistent with standard n-space carbon based life," Mister Enduring replied in a voice made up of hate and code. "Comparisons to standard Hellspace wreckage recovered is consistent with data from those events."


    "Mission status?" Hetmwit asked, feeling tension in his gut.


    The training over the last months made it feel like he''d done this a dozen times before.


    But the wild sprint to and from his family''s apartment block to rescue his mother, sisters, and their littles welled up in his mind.


    "You are green to engage, Tango-Actual," Mister Goofy stated.


    Hetmwit engaged the door again and waiting, rifle loaded with high-vee frangible rounds at the ready.


    The station side of the airlock was all black, an almost glossy looking surface with no lights and panels, just a single baleful looking eye ringed by teeth next to the door. It all looked like it was made out of extruded plastic.


    "Are you getting visual?" Hetmwit asked.


    "Roger. Mission is still a go," Mister Goofy stated.


    "Appearance is standard for Hellspace exposure," Mister Enduring added.


    Hetmwit moved carefully in, waving the others to follow him.


    "It''s roomy," he said and immediately felt foolish.


    "Designed for power armor squads," Captain Decken said. He was silent for a second. "Luckily, modern minaturization made it so your team has Hellspace protection. Keep an eye on your levels though."


    "Roger," Hetmwit said. He looked back.


    Everyone was in the airlock.


    "Engaging," he said. He reached for the eye that was protected by fang-like spikes.


    The spikes unfolded and the eye focused on his hand.


    The airlock door to the Nell of Night shut and a hissing filled the room.


    "Oxygen, CO2, nitrogen," Mister Enduring stated.


    Hetmwit just nodded, pushing his tongue against the roof of his mouth and breathing through his nose.


    Wrexit rubbed the emitter of his grav-fist against his leg nervously.


    The interior door opened up, revealing the space station''s interlock space that was between the airlock and any corridors.


    It was full of steam and Hetmwit saw the external humidity jump to 85%. Water was dripping from the ceiling, the whole thing was made of matte and glossy black material that looked biologically extruded.


    Chains hung from the ceiling, adorned with hooks and barbed spikes. From chains as thin as a strand of gossamer to ones as thick as Hetmwit''s leg.


    "Standard visual appearance for long term Hellspace exposure," Mister Enduring stated before Hetmwit could ask.


    "Try not to bump the chains," Hetmwit said, moving into the room.


    Within two steps he realized it was impossible to avoid brushing the chains. They jingled and chimed as he wove his way around the thicker clusters of chains, his armored shoulders or his arms brushing them. The floor felt sticky and he looked down.


    It looked like a reddish fibrous mat.


    He looked back up and headed for the far door. It had those fanglike spikes around the edge of the door, the spikes as thick as his hand at the base and extending at least a foot before ending in a needle-sharp point. There were closed eyes, surrounded by a circle of open staring red eyes, at the top of the blast door.


    When Hetmwit got to it he paused to set down a high powered repeater, then stepped in front of the door.


    The main eyes opened up, staring at him.


    The fang-like claws flipped away from the door, a obscene sticky noise coming from the joint. The door slowly pulled back to reveal large teeth parallel to the floor that were dripping with blackish fluid. The teeth slowly withdrew into the gum-like tissue at the edge.


    Hetmwit closed his eyes for a second.


    Every scenario he had taken part in, none of them were making his anxiety peak like this.


    The corridor beyond had chains at the edges, strange runes in reddish material on the walls, the ceiling dripping water or something worse, the walls made of that black material, and floor of the reddish mat.


    "Moving toward central section," Hetmwit said, his voice tight with stress.


    The spongy feeling under his feet was translated through his armor somehow, making him feel like he was stepping on living flesh. Several times he passed by open doors that led to other interlock sections. Some continued on through an open airlock and into the interior of one of the ships that were ''docked'' against the huge sucker-like docking ports.


    Every time Mister Goofy made a commo check he had to hold back the urge to scream.


    But Captain Decken had mandated ninety-second commo checks, with voice analysis to ensure that the speaker was actually the person that the ID said it was.


    Twice they passed by where thick strands of Hellspace energy drifted away from the wall and into the corridor. Once they had to wait for the drifting streak of energy to cross the passageway and vanish into the wall.


    "All visuals are consistent with long term Hellspace exposure," Mister Enduring stated more than once.


    The door from the docking tentacle to the main station was the same as the one that they had passed through to leave the interlock space.


    Hetwmit set down another repeater before stepping into view of the eyes.


    Again, the eyes opened and stared at him before closing.


    The doors, and then the teeth, withdrew into the wall, exposing another corridor with black walls and chains hanging down.


    Embedded in the walls were half-dissolved, half-rotted creatures, most of which Hetmwit had never seen before.


    "Ignore them, Tango-Actual, even if you detect life signs," Captain Decken ordered.


    "Roger," Hetmwit said. He tried to ignore the eyes that followed him as he let loose two drones that began scanning the walls as they drifted away on fans that did little more than whisper.


    "Recovery positions. Breathe deep," Captain Decken ordered.


    Hetmwit went down on one knee, lowering his head, and started breathing slow and deep.


    The anxiety slowly ebbed.


    The drones came back and downloaded the map.


    It was next to useless. Left ended in a blast door, right went for a hundred meters before there was another blast door.


    "Right or left?" Hetmwit asked.


    "On your discretion, Tango-Actual," Captain Decken answered.


    "Right," Hetmwit said. He got up slowly and the others, even the robots, did the same.


    Hetmwit didn''t think anything about the fact that Mister Mustang had beads of oil on the forehead of his skull, as if the robot was sweating with nervousness.


    The blast door pulled back as they approached it, revealing more corridor.


    "Go for the upper section of the center. Avoid rooms," Captain Decken said.


    Static was starting to intrude on communication.


    "Roger," Hetmwit said.


    He ignored the eyes of the beings entombed in the walls. Even the ones that opened their eyes and stared at Hetmwit before the door opened. Many of them had greasy purple tentacles burrowed into their flesh. Some were nearly intact, others were just torsos with resin caps on the ends of severed limbs. Some had faces, some had their faces covered with resin with only a single burning red eye in the middle of the resin plate.


    They moved silently as possible through the hallways.


    Despite the humidity, despite the creatures embedded in the walls, despite the chains and the appearance, no other signs of life were seen as they moved to the central part.


    The corridor wound right and left, to the left it went ''down'' and to the right it went ''up'' as it followed the central bulbous section.


    Hetmwit nervously checked his rifle as they approached another door.


    According to external scans matched with the inertial mapping, beyond the door was the top of the bulbous structure.


    He had a bad feeling.


    "Ready," he said softly.


    "Green for go," he heard through the static.


    He stepped forward. The eyes saw him.


    The doors opened.


    In the middle of the room were creatures. Creatures like he had never seen before.


    In the center of the room was one surrounded by purple and red energy. They looked like a fountain made of clear crystal, the bowl at the bottom had barbed and hooked tentacles hanging from the bottom. The thick stem went up almost a meter before there was a thick fluted central ring that had five multi-jointed arms that ended in eight fingered sharp claws, then more of a fluted column that reached up to a large section with two huge eyes, a visible brain inside the crystal clear body, and a small mouth. Its strange organs could be seen, along with almost completely clear blood rushing through the body.


    Around that one was six others. They were two meters tall, the lower body terminating in a bowl-like structure that had man-o-war tentacles hanging down from the bottom of the bowl. The flesh swept up out of the bowl in thick cables that were pressed together into a thick red body with black streaks. The mid-section was three powerful arms, made of thick red cables fused together. It had bumps and dermal exoskeletal bulges as black bone forced its way out of the cables of exposed muscle-like tissue. The hands had eight fingers with black claws on the end. The neck was missing, the top of the head only slightly protruding from the muscular shoulders but sticking out from the body. It had four eyes, ovals with the side ends pinched into almost-points. The eyes were two above two below, glowing red with a blue sparkle in the middle. From the mouth fell writhing segmented tentacles.


    Hetmwit saw the ripple that stopped W44 and D44 in their tracks. That stopped the robots from raising their weapons.


    Ambient phasic shockload went up to 115% of his phasic shielding''s max load.


    But it missed him.


    He yelled over the com-link even as he got his weapon up, his finger tightening on the trigger.


    "CONTACT! ENEMY CONTACT!"

 Nova Wars - Chapter 121

    Use your bayonet, thrust into the joints and then fire your weapon to blow open a cavity to allow you to withdraw the bayonet.


    Never, and I repeat, never use your bladearms. The Terran will rip it off and stick it through your empty head. - Treana''ad Warrior Training, War of Terran Aggression, -25 PG


    Hetmwit saw the strange looking creatures, built like strands of gel twisted together with organs inside, ripple out a wave of force that made the air inside the compartment ripple like gelatin tapped by a spoon. He saw Wrexit and Imna freeze in place. Saw the robots go still.


    It felt like something grabbed at his brain, like tentacles grabbing and squeezing his brain as his phasic shielding jumped to 195%. For a second he could smell and taste the crantu berry muffins his mom always baked on rainy days.


    Then the tentacles seemed to slip away. The load on his psychic shielding dropped to 8%. The taste and smell went away.


    He ducked down behind the console, holding his weapon.


    "Captain, we''re in trouble. Multiple phasic enemies, type unknown, we need extract," Hetmwit said.


    "Roger, Tango-Actual, Tango-Gamma enroute. Six mikes by map," the Captain replied, his voice full of molten iron.


    There was another ripple. His phasic shielding jumped to 145%, he could taste tenga-berries for a second. The tentacle seemed to brush his mind then slip away.


    He closed his eyes, swallowing. He wasn''t sure why he wasn''t being grabbed by the creature''s obvious psychic powers, but for some reason he wasn''t.


    He peeked over the console.


    Imna and Wrexit were being lifted up, being dragged toward the large middle creature. The robots were staring with cold red eyes at the creatures.


    As he watched one of the robots had three inch spikes suddenly erupt from the shoulder pauldrons of its armor as its eyes suddenly went a hot amber. It took a slight shift forward as Hetmwit recognized the robot as Super Slugger.


    It was thrown against the wall by a weird ripple in the air.


    One of the ones that was red with black streaks on its twisted cable body suddenly turned toward him. There was no sense of ''forward'' on its body, but for some reason Hetmwit felt like it was staring at him.


    The tentacle grabbed at his brain but missed as he ducked down.


    Imna struggled against the power that grabbed her, that stilled her limbs, that stopped her from moving.


    A weird ripple passed through the air.


    "Immie," her mother said, taking her hand.


    They were walking through Golden Leaves Broodcarrier Park, Immie holding her mother''s hand.


    "You''re nineteen. In college now. Soon, you''ll want a family," her mother was saying.


    "I know, momma," Imna said. She moved closer to her mother, pulling her mother''s arm over her shoulders. She could smell the comforting smell of her mom. "I had a nightmare."


    "It''s OK, you''re here now," her mother said, hugging her.


    "I dreamed I was forced to be a soldier, a Telkan Marine, and that you and daddy were gone," Imna said.


    Thunder rumbled in the distance.


    "That''s why you shouldn''t eat sweets before bedtime, sweetie," her mother laughed. She hugged Imna again. "Put such terrible things from your mind. We''re Citizens and wealthy enough you don''t have to do anything more than a year of public service to be a Citizen," she laughed again. "Our family is above forcing our children into armor to die on some battlefield."


    Thunder rumbled again, getting closer.


    Imna stared at the broodcarriers playing in the sunshine, lounging about on smooth flat rocks, sitting on benches. All of them were fluffy, plump, content looking. Several waved at her and Imna realized they were roughly her age.


    "They''re pretty, aren''t they," Imna''s mother said.


    "Yes, momma," Imna smiled and waved back at a broodcarrier sitting on a bench with a sandwich.


    "Our family doesn''t need to use the public broodcarrier services. We can provide for broodcarriers, make sure they live in the comfort and luxury they deserve," her mother was saying.


    Thunder rumbled again and Imna frowned.


    "You don''t have to risk dying on some forgotten battlefield," her mother repeated. "Our family has worked hard over the decades, centuries, to provide for our family members," her mother''s words sounded strange.


    "I want to help people, make Telkan, make the world, a better place," Imna said.


    A chill breeze blew in, making Imna shiver, but nobody else seemed to notice.


    "You can, sweetling, by ensuring you help with the family''s vision and legacy," her mother said.


    Over by a rock she saw a strange creature. Furry like her, flat face to her pointed muzzle, ears at the side compared to how hers were on the upper rotation of her head, black fur with silver highlights compared to her warm browns. It had on heavy military armor, the faceplate was clear, letting her see him clearly. He was crouched down behind the rock, holding tight to a scary looking rifle, looking at her with wide eyes before the creature ducked down.


    A shadow moved by the rock, drifting over to it.


    Hetmwit looked over the console at Imna and realized with horror that one of the red twisted things was drifting over toward him, its lower body a bowl-like structure with dangerous looking short tentacles hanging down from it. It was holding out one strong, powerful looking arm made of exposed thick reddish muscles that had black bone/chitin pushing through the muscle to create dermal spikes. There were six fingers on the hand, all six opened and held out toward Hetmwit.


    The Palgret swallowed thickly, ducking back down behind the console. Hetmwit could hear the two Telkan mumbling over the comlink. He looked at the timer. Seventy seconds had passed since the Captain had informed Hetmwit that he was coming to Hetmwit''s rescue.


    Hetmwit froze as the creature came around the corner. The four eyes were red with a tight cluster of blue sparkles in the middle, sideways ovals with pinched ends, two lower, larger ones and two upper, smaller ones.


    The eyes focused on him and the creature gave a screech, pointing with one hand.


    The air rippled and for a second it felt to Hetmwit like someone was grabbing the top of his head.


    The fingers slipped off of him and the creature screeched again, the whole body twisting left and then right as if it was looking for him.


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Wrexit''s mother wrapped him in a hug, pulling him into her lap. She ruffled his hair with one hand as she opened up the book with the app on the dataslate with the other.


    Wrexit made happy noises as he closed his eyes and sunk into her embrace.


    He loved his mommy.


    "Can you read this, Wrexie?" his mommy asked.


    "Yes, momma," he said. He was only five, but he read the words on the scratched up viewscreen, sounding out the bigger ones.


    "You understand those words, sweetie my love?" she asked.


    "Yes, momma," he said. When she asked him what different words meant, some of them with three word parts (syllables, they were syllables), he told her.


    Each bit of praise made him feel warm and fuzzy.


    "You''re such a good boy, Wrexie," his mommy said.


    There was thunder outside the hab, shaking the cracked, scratched, and discolored macroplas window.


    "We can''t go to the park if it''s raining, sweetling, I''m sorry," his mother said.


    "It''s OK. I love you," Wrexit said. "I don''t mind staying home with you."


    He looked up at her with eyes full of the innocence of a child that still thinks the whole universe loves them just because they exist.


    "I love you too," his mother said, hugging him tight.


    Hetmwit chanced a glance.


    It drifted closer.


    Hetmwit traded the rifle in his hands for a two handed grip on his Cutting Bar Mark-Two. He looked at the plump smiling face of the Terran infant, focusing on the smiling cherubic face.


    It blocked out the lights as it moved in front of him.


    He closed his eyes, gathering his courage, remembering those frantic moments when he rescued his mom and sisters and the littles from the apartment hab-block.


    Thunder rumbled as Imna looked at her momma, who was staring off into the distance?


    "Momma?"


    Wrexit looked up at his mommy and saw she was staring off into space.


    "Mommy?"


    Hetmwit squeezed the grip and the cutting bar roared to life, the chain snarling and clattering as it moved around the bar. He lunged up, putting the power of his legs into the thrust.


    The hanging down tentacles scraped along his armored forearms as the chainsword''s blade ripped into the bottom bowl of the creature. Bodily fluids sprayed out, across his face and visor, as he came to his feet, the cutting bar ripping all the way through the bowl, into the upright fluted-column-like body of the creature.


    It screamed, loudly, the sound clawing at his mind as his phasic shielding jumped to 205%, his vision tunneled down to a pinprick, and tentacles squeezed at his brain.


    But the cutting bar came free in a spray of shredded tissue and smoking body fluids.


    He reacted just as Captain Decken had trained him to.


    He rolled away, diving clumsily, his rifle clattering against the deckplates and the back of his armor as he flung himself behind another console.


    A sudden screech from everywhere all at once, all around her and through her and from inside of her mind, made her jerk. Everything dissolved.


    She tried to hold tight to her mother, but she dissolved into thin greasy strings and slid through her fingers.


    She blinked as reality returned around her, barely catching herself as she landed on the hard deck plating of the alien space station.


    Wrexit heard the scream that shattered the shabby little apartment and his mommy started dissolving.


    He screamed, trying to hold onto her as she turned into wet spaghetti in his hands and dissolved as she slipped through his fingers.


    For a moment he saw it all.


    The lives of the wealthy and powerful. The comfort and ease of the rich and priveleged. The petty power and pleasures of the LawSec men. The ease and comfort of the valued corpo-drone. The security of the industrial worker. The desperate scrabble of the lower rungs above him.


    He threw his head back and screamed, a desire to burn it all, break it all, smash it all filled him.


    Imna heard the scream as everything came back.


    Wrexit was next to her, shaking his head, looking up, the scream stopping and growling across the open channel.


    The robots, spikes protruding from their armored shoulders, the top of their heads, down their backs, took a single step forward, aiming their weapons.


    There was another wobble in reality and Imna froze again. Wrexit growled, kept growling, but the wobble stilled him.


    The robots were stilled before they could pull the trigger all the way.


    Hetmwit stared at the little infant''s face, where it was bordered by a wreath. It was still visible, the gore and bodily fluids strangely missing it. The static charge had cleared his visor with a burst of steam. He felt the tentacles try to wrap around his mind, for a split second he heard his father''s voice calling him, but then the voice vanished as the tentacles slipped away from his mind like they had tried to grab his helmet only to find no purchase.


    He looked at his chrono.


    One hundred fifty seconds had passed.


    "It''s a good school, daddy," Imna said, tapping the table''s surface. In the hologram was her acceptance letter to the Hal''verak University on Telkan-2. "One of the best."


    Her father just shook his head, his face full of disapproval. "It isn''t the school, Drali''imna, it''s your choice in major and minors."


    Imna frowned. "But, daddy, it''s a perfectly good track. I''ll be middle administrative in civil service. I''ll start where others would have to serve ten or twelve years before they were even considered for such service."


    "Our family owns mines, starships, factories, and you want to work for the government? The same government that shows up after all of our hard work and demands seventy-percent of the money we make? Not the money we make after the bills are paid and our workers are compensated, but before we even pay the bills? That government? The government that is full of nothing but thieves and plotters?" her father snapped.


    Thunder rumbled off in the distance.


    Like her mother, Imna stepped back, her hand going to her mouth.


    "Daddy, don''t say such things," she said. A slight trickle of fear filled her stomach. "You know you shouldn''t say such things."


    "Dear, maybe you should go into your rec room, have a fizzybrew or two," her mother said. "Or maybe a fizzypop?"


    Wrexit opened the fizzypop and set it on the table. HIs mother looked at it, her eyes filled with pain. Her arm was in a sling and her lips on the left side of her muzzle were still swollen.


    His mother claimed she had fallen off the bus and that''s who happened to her ribs and the groceries.


    But Wrexit, even at ten, knew better now.


    His mother lifted a little ampule, putting it under her nose and squeezing it.


    The Lox vapors were bluish colored as they hissed from the ampule and his mother inhaled deeply, pulling the Lox into her lungs.


    "Try not to use that too much, Mom," Wrexit said. "You don''t want to get hooked."


    "My ribs hurt," his mom said.


    Wrexit glanced at his little sisters, who were sitting on the carpet watching the tri-vee.


    "Besides, I know what I''m doing, Wrexie," his mother said.


    Thunder rumbled off in the distance but Wrexit ignored it.


    "I hope so, Mom," Wrexit said. He gritted his teeth for a second. "Mom, we only have you. Nobody else is going to come running to save us."


    Captain Decken moved steadily forward. Unlike the sims and the tri-vee, he wasn''t running.


    You ran to close the distance if you were caught in open ground or were charging into the ambush done by an enemy with ranged weapons. If the enemy was built for close combat you kept the distance open and just advanced steadily.


    The enemy was built for close combat. The chains hanging from the ceiling tried to grab him, twist around him, but their twisting grasp was nothing in the face of the power built into his Pontiac Gravestomper Mark-IX Individual Powered Protective Equipment System. The heavy power armor was not his original set, instead had been gifted to him by his prime self. It had been forged in the Hate Anvils of Mars and was infused with humanity''s rage at the uncaring universe.


    In one hand he held his engraved Gerber Cutting Bar - Close Combat Dual Purpose System Mark-Two, the engine revving as he swept aside the chains with the red hot warsteel teeth. In his other hand he held his Colt M2389A4 Close Assault Weapon System, the system linked up to the cybernetic smartgun system through his arm, into his brain, and displaying on his retinas the targets that kept swarming into the passageway to try to hinder his steady advance to come to the aid of his troops.


    They had close up weaponry, jabbing spikes, grabbing tentacles, short range phasic powers.


    The stubby submachinegun in his hand ripped them apart with white cored bluish-flashes of antimatter core Remington 25mm APDSWSAM-T rounds (Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot Warsteel Anti-Matter with Tracer) rounds that he handed out with tight two-three round bursts into the enemy.


    you can''t save them whispered from behind him.


    He ignored it, sweeping aside a creature that was all tentacles attached to a cone-shaped body that the wide end was a wide open mouth full of spiralling endosteel teeth that were designed to pull a victim into the blazing red energy at the back of the cone. It shattered, the red-hot teeth of the Mark-Two cutting bar shredding it even as the power of the blow destroyed its armor.


    He yanked his arm free of the chains, the black chains that looked as if they were made of insect chitin exploded into fragments without even slightly hindering his movements.


    More enemies swarmed in, some coming down the spiral at the far end of the hallway, and Decken raked them with the SMG, the bluish-white snaps of antimatter strobing light at the end of the corridor.


    you will fail just like the initial landings on Anthill failed


    He pushed the whisper away and kept firing.


    He was two hundred seconds from reaching his men.


    A long burst, twenty-three rounds, each of the targets eating two or three of the rounds, cleared the far end of the corridor where it started to spiral upward.


    you''ll fail them just like you failed to stand up to the Imperium


    Five steps closer, his armored boots thudding on the reddish mat of fibrous tissue that covered the floor, swipes of the cutting bar to sweep away chains. A close up burst into a mass of enemy that were revealed when a hidden door suddenly pulled open, mucus attaching the edge of the door to the frame.


    you cannot prevail against them


    They were chaff before his scythe.


    The enemy had no chance to stop him.


    They were the Enemy.


    And they only existed to be destroyed.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 122

    They were myths and legends. We knew that they could not be as bad as the legends said. That they could not be as terrifying, implacable, unstoppable, and fearsome as the ancient tales.


    After all, had we not tens of thousands of years to surpass them? Was not our military might far beyond what they could have been expected to possess? Surely our vast armies and huge armadas of spaceships would overwhelm any fear they might instill. Forty thousand years gone by would reduce them, even if they returned, to veritable primitives who would be unable to even comprehend us.


    That attitude lasted right up until the first C++ cannon with improved munitions hit.


    Then we learned a lesson our forefathers knew but we had forgotten.


    We remembered what fear tasted like. - Cu''rli''imo''o, Lanaktallan philosopher and socio-scientist, 13 Post-Solarian-Emergence, New Telkan Press


    Hetmwit stared at the little infant human engraved on the guard of his cutting bar mark-two, trying to focus only on the chubby faced baby. He felt invisible tentacles writhing around him, some of them sliding along the inside of his skull only to miss any hold.


    You can''t influence me, my brain is the smoothest of smooth brains. Your arguments and facts just slide off, the meme bubbled up in his mind and he managed to keep from giggling.


    A shadow fell over him and he glanced up without moving his head.


    Another one of the column on a bowl aliens, the hanging tentacles twisting and writhing slightly, gleaming with what Hetmwit knew was digestive juices. It was opening and closing a rubbery toothless hole in the bottom that had tentacles now spilling out of it and digestive acids leaking from the edges of the hole in the bottom of the bowl.


    Hetmwit looked back at the baby.


    His little sister held onto his fingers as she took a few steps before her hocks and knees gave out and she plunked down on her diaper-clad bottom.


    "Good. Very good," Wrexit said softly. He glanced at the couch, still letting his tiny sibling hold onto his fingers.


    His mom was passed out on the couch, a handful of Juice Shooters on the table.


    All empty.


    She wasn''t in the sling any more, hadn''t been for over a month.


    But she still complained of pain and had moved from Lox to Juice Shooters.


    Wrexit left his sister sitting on the floor, playing with her own tail, to go into the kitchen. A check of the shelves produced two self-heat meals. He sighed, put them back, and kept digging.


    There was a knock at the door and then it opened, Naxen slipping in. The other Telk''s eye was mostly swollen shut and his ear was puffy from bruising.


    "Hey, Telk," Naxen said softly. He reached into his jacket and got out a cannister of little-chow. "Look what I boosted."


    Wrexit closed his eyes. He was only ten, Naxen was only ten, but the fact that the only way they could sometimes get food on the table was to steal it had started pushing its way into their lives.


    Momma used to say that good grades would give me a good life, he thought. Now she just wants to know if we''ve got any shooters.


    "Wrexit?" Naxen asked.


    "I''m here, Telk," Wrexit said, opening his eyes. He got three bowls out for his little sisters and got his sisters, strapping them into their eating seat. He sat at the table while Naxen opened the can of little-chow and scooped some of the grainy yellow-ish pudding into the bowls. One of his sisters made happy noises and slapped her hands against the table.


    Naxen laughed, handing the bowl to her and she ignored the spoon to lift the bowl up and try to drink the pudding.


    "I got your homework. Teach said it''s OK you didn''t make it to class," Naxen said. He shook his head. "She still believes in us. Told me to tell you to keep up the good work," Naxen reached back into his oversized jacket and pulled out a dataslate. "Boosted you a workpad from a construction site."


    "Thanks," Wrexit set the pad down when Naxen handed it to him.


    His sisters were eating with their fingers, ignoring the spoons, but he didn''t feel like correcting them.


    "Got it hot-wired by a sixth year. Traded him two Fat Fart Sniffers for it," Naxen said. He grinned. "Found some shooters in one of the lockers when I boosted the pad."


    Wrexit gave a sad smile. "Remember how hard work was supposed to get us a better life."


    Naxen nodded, smiling. "It will! You''ll see. We''ll do good in school and study hard, then we''ll get good jobs," his smile got larger. "I''ll call you in the morning when you''re cleaning your whiskers before we go to work for the same company."


    Wrexit just gave a wan smile, remembering their last interaction with Lawsec.


    It still hurt. He was a good Telkan. He did what he was supposed to. He even tried not to steal or boost anything even if it was just right there with nobody watching.


    But Lawsec hadn''t cared. They kicked him when he was down.


    And that older girl had taken his school datalink back when he was eight.


    Naxen helped him clean off his sisters and put them in bed in their nest, then came back to sit at the table with him as the lights autodimmed to let them know it was night. His mother woke up just long enough to grope at the table until she found a Juice Shooter to push up her nose, then she dropped the empty shooter on the carpet and curled back up, looking like she was asleep.


    Wrexit looked at her and hugged himself tightly, fighting back tears.


    I need you to be my mommy, not what you''re becoming, went through his mind, the thought older than his ten year old brain should have produced.


    He got it under control before he shed a single tear, before his eyes got watery.


    He looked away from her and back at Naxen. The other Telkani didn''t change expression, but Wrexit could feel the understanding coming from his best friend.


    The two friends sat silent for a long time in the dimness of the kitchen.


    Thunder rumbled in the distance.


    "What are you going to do, Wrex?" Naxen asked in the shadows.


    "I don''t know," Wrexit answered honestly.


    "How do you not know?" Imna''s father asked.


    "Because I don''t know if I want to work for the company," Imna said.


    "What, you''re too good for it now that you''re going to that college? Too good to work in the family business once you become a Citizen?" her father was angry.


    "No, no, daddy, I just don''t know what I''m going to do," Imna said. She closed her eyes. Why couldn''t he understand that there was so much more out there than the family business? Why couldn''t he let her pursue her own way, just like the family had always done? Why couldn''t he give her the freedom that he had enjoyed?


    "You''re almost twenty. You''ve been in college for almost four years, and I''ve paid for every dime of it," her father said.


    "I could have gone to one of the free ones," Imna countered. "When I offered, you got mad and said I was accusing you of not being able to pay for my education."


    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "I..." her father stood up, his ears and whiskers going rigid. He stopped, blinking, then turned around, facing away.


    Imna sat, frowning. Her father had never done anything like that before.


    Finally he turned back around and sat down.


    "Let''s start over," her father said before she could say anything.


    Thunder rumbled in the distance.


    "You''re smart, Imna. Real smart. Scary smart," her father said. "You got accepted to one of the most prestigious universities on Telkan-2 on your own merits. Not my contacts, not my efforts, on your own merits," he looked up at the ceiling.


    The lights dimmed slightly and Imna knew it was from the slums pulling down power from the geothermal plants as all of the Telkan living in the slums turned on their tri-vees to watch programs.


    "I have a need to control everything around me," her father said.


    Imna blinked.


    "There''s reasons why. Reasons your mother understands. Reasons I''m not comfortable in sharing," he looked away.


    "Daddy, it''s..." she started to say.


    "You want to be a Citizen, and that''s why I get angry," her father said.


    "Why? Why would..." she started again.


    "You want to be a Confederate Citizen. A Citizen of the same Confederacy that watched from the sidelines as the Telkan systems burned during the Heirophant''s War."


    "Daddy, it was a civil war and the Confederacy," she started.


    "Views it as an internal matter and will not get involved," her father said.


    The lights got dimmer and the thunder rolled as it drew closer.


    "But, Daddy," she tried again.


    "I rejected my Citizenship," her father said, his voice flat as he stared at her. "I reject anything involving Citizenship," he said. "Reject as much as possible regarding both our government and the Confederate government," his voice grew harsher. "And you want to be a Citizen."


    "I... I..." she didn''t know what to say.


    "And I''m taking my anger out on you," her father said, his voice relaxing even though his ears and whiskers were still rigid. "I realize, now, that my anger is driving you away. That I''m letting my anger at the government push us apart."


    He looked down at his hands on the table and saw his fists were bunched. He inhaled deeply and relaxed his hands.


    "I just want you to have it better than I had it," her father said. He stood up. "I just want better for you."


    He left the room and Imna looked around. Stared at the high tech gadgets, the smart surfaces, the opulence of the dining room, at the robotic servitors that hovered against the walls ready to fulfil her every whim.


    "Better than this?" she asked the empty room.


    The room suddenly dissolved into streams of wet spaghetti, sliding down around her to reveal a horrible creature reaching out toward her.


    She managed to scream.


    Wrexit opened his mouth to ask his friend something, he wasn''t sure what, when Naxen and the shabby apartment suddenly dissolved into greasy strings. He lunged over the table, trying to grab his friend, but everything slid through his fingers like slimy earthworms.


    He threw his head back and screamed in rage as everything wobbled and he saw something, a thing, something obscene, reaching toward him with one hand that extended from the middle of a column of black and red muscle tissue, and unblinking lidless eye staring at him from above the shoulder joint, four red eyes staring down at him from the top of the column.


    His right arm snapped to a full 45 degree extension and the grav-fist snarled.


    Hetmwit squeezed the hilt, coming up, putting his legs and back into it as the Mark-Two cutting bar roared to life, the teeth chattering and clacking.


    It ripped into the lower bowl, chewing through the acidic tissues of the mouth, ripping up into the column-like body. Gore and bodily fluids sprayed as the creature screamed.


    A black pit appeared in his vision, widening, threatening to swallow the whole world as the cutting bar ripped through the creature.


    The other one, more crystalline than exposed muscle tissue, rotated slightly toward him.


    The air wobbled and Hetmwit felt it slide over him as he threw himself to the side, rolling, the rifle on his back smacking against the console.


    The two Telkan and the robots froze again, the robots shifting their aim slightly to take into account the movement of the creatures.


    Two-hundred and eighty seconds had passed since Hetmwit had radioed the Captain.


    Captain Decken kicked one of the creatures against the wall, pinning its bulk there as he put four rounds from his SMG into it. The smoking remains fell to the deck plating as he turned, firing down the hallway, the rounds exploding against the creatures swarming him, trying to stop him from advancing any further.


    Captain Decken kept moving forward, slow deliberate steps that slammed his boots against the fibrous mat of tissue that covered the blackish looking battlesteel of the floor. His HUD said that just beyond the door were the stranded and under attack members of his crew.


    Six steps, not even pausing or slowing a step even though he had to smash the cobbled together flesh and tentacles out of his way, and he kicked hard at the door.


    It held, although it dented in.


    He heard the scream, felt the barbs reach for his mind.


    GET OUT! his brain screamed.


    He felt the barbs pulled back, scorched and broken.


    He revved up his cutting bar.


    Hetmwit heard the resounding thud on the door.


    The big one in the middle screeched and flailed its tentacles as Hetmwit scurried to behind another console.


    The big heavyset Telkan had his arm extended, the grav-fist snarling. The female Telkan had a clear face shield and he could see she was drooling from her open mouth, her pupils widely dilated, but she still held tight to her rifle.


    There was a clattering on the door and Hetmwit looked over in time to see a red hot line appear.


    There was another screech and a set of ripples.


    Again it slid over him, like a wave of greasy water.


    Red hot cutting bar teeth ripped through the door and a good foot of the cutting bar extended from the door, sawing back and forth, up and down, tearing the gap taller.


    Two of the creatures rushed forward, ripples coming off of them that shattered into rainbow hues of sparks and contrails when the ripple hit the cutting bar. It was angling now, ripping the hole wider.


    Hetmwit glanced over the console.


    The big one was backing up against the far wall. The remaining two rushed forward.


    One of the ones by the door was pushing two arms against the door as if it was holding it closed, its eyes wide and making high pitched keening noises. The other joined it, and the two others rushed forward, pushing out rods of glowing energy against the door.


    The cutting bar ripped through one in a shower of sparks.


    Hetmwit ducked down, patting his gear harness. He grabbed off an implosion grenade, pulled the pin, and ''milked'' the safety lever.


    One one thousand.


    The large reddish ones were all screeching, trying to hold the door closed as the cutting bar ripped up and down a good three feet and four inches wide.


    The huge crystalline one rippled out another wave.


    It slid over Hetmwit and exploded into rainbow sparkles where it touched the cutting bar''s white hot teeth.


    Decken felt the psychic wave hit him but ignored it.


    It was nothing.


    He had once ripped apart four Speakers with a broken cutting bar on the sands of Anthill. Crushed the life from warriors and speakers with a broken weapon, his bare hands, or a shard of atomic glass.


    Hetmwit looked up as the crystalline one hit the far wall.


    Two one thousand.


    He looked back at the ones on the door.


    Three...


    He hucked it underhanded, arcing it to be in between the four of them.


    It suddenly came apart, the fuse unscrewing, the casing coming apart, the entire thing disassembling. The fuse popped inside a bubble, doing nothing.


    Another wobble and he rolled behind another console, popping up and looking.


    The robots were still held still, their weapons pointing at nothing as the four creatures were against the door and the fifth had moved up on Hetmwit and gotten sawed apart. The female Telkan was pointing her rifle at nothing, the creature having moved. The male had graviton energy snarling around his fist, was in the middle of turning at the waist to pull the fist back, his feet planted.


    The crystalline one held everyone still.


    He rolled foward.


    The door collapsed as Decken yanked the cutting bar free and drove his boot into the door just to the left of the slash he had torn in the heavy battlesteel.


    One of the creatures went down, the door slamming on top of them. It made a screeching sound for a half second before Decken took two stomping steps into the room, his heavy armored form walking across the door. The other three reeled back, screeching, flailing arms and tentacles as if they were in sudden pain.


    On Captain Decken''s second stomp Hetmwit saw the creature''s eyes pop out as its mouth vomited up blood and things it probably wanted to keep inside as the door and the Captain''s weight crushed it.


    The other three didn''t stand a chance. One was cut down by the cutting bar, one was shredded by point blank SMG fire, the third was slapped aside and raked by the SMG.


    Decken turned to face the crystalline one.


    Hetmwit realized, crazily, that the Captain wasn''t wearing his helmet.


    There was a rapid series of wobbles that Hetmwit ducked down to avoid, then popped up to look.


    The Captain fired his SMG but the bullets were taken apart before they got to the halfway point. He let the SMG go and it snapped to his waist as he moved forward, one thudding step at a time.


    The Captain''s cutting bar revved as the Captain moved forward.


    Hetmwit fired off a burst at the creature, the bullets disassembling before they hit but having no other effect.


    The Captain was two steps when the chain stopped on the cutting bar blade, the teeth white hot and smoking. Hetmwit heard the gear chatter and growl as it tried to move a jammed chain.


    The Captain let it go and it snapped onto his belt.


    Hetmwit fired again to no effect.


    The Captain moved through the ripples like they were nothing more than odd refractions of light. He reached out with one hand, pressing the creature against the far bulkhead even though his hand was stopped six inches from the creature''s crystalline body.


    His other hand came up in a fist, level with his shoulder.


    Captain Decken began driving punches into the creature''s face. sparks spraying out from the creature''s formerly invisible protective field.


    Decken''s fist was like a pneumatic piston as he drove rapid punches.


    There was a shower of phasic sparks right before blood and tissue exploded in a halo from the creature''s head as the first punch went home.


    Decken kept punching.


    The robots and the female Telkan fired into empty space. The male Telkan swung his fist at thin air.


    The Captain dropped the corpse.


    There was silence for a moment.


    "Enemy eliminated," Super Slugger stated, bringing his rifle to port arms.


    Hetmwit giggled.


    The Captain turned around.


    "Let''s clear these abominations and search this foul place," Decken said.


    Hetmwit stood up as the Captain lifted his helmet from his waist and put it on.


    "Ready?" Decken asked.


    "Aye, sir," Super Slugger said.


    "Ready, Captain," Hetmwit answered.


    "Ready, sir," the female Telkan said.


    "Sure, why not?" the male said.


    "Excellent," Decken said, lifting up his SMG.


    "Let''s get to it."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 123

    My people knew that the Confederate Armed Services controlled most, if not all, of their battlefield assets with massive strange-matter particle supercomputers in a vast interlocked network that allowed military units on other planetary bodies in a stellar system to react to actions on a different planet.


    My people spent years and untold amounts of treasure and man-hours to figure out a way to break that combat information and coordination network. We sought to figure out how to jam quantum communication, paired spooky and strange-matter particles, and everything else involved in that overlapping and complex battlefield tactical network.


    Have mercy upon us.


    We succeeded.


    For a few moments, only a few, the Terrans and their allies were thrown into confusion. My people pressed the attack, sought out engagements, thinking that this was it. The secret to victory. That we could do what none other had done and defeat the Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems in open battle.


    Then we heard it over com channels that suddenly opened up across the entire theater.


    A female primate saying "CASCADE DATA FAILURE: REVERTING TO LOCAL CONTROL" and then there was a split second of silence before we heard it.


    The scream.


    Not of fear. Not of terror. Not of alarm.


    Maybe it wasn''t a scream. Not as my people know it.


    It was a blood curdling vocalization of pure and unrestrained joy and malice.


    Six hours later Captain Manuel G. Trucker drove his tank through the planetary command center and ran over the system offensive coordinator laughing "I''M GOING TO RUN YOU OVER! EVENTUALLY!" while his tank company reduced the entire intelligence coordination base to burning rubble.


    The slaughter was... awe inspiring.


    I survived by curling up in a ball and screaming "NOT THE FACE!" when the Terran infantryman yanked me through the sidewall of the APC I was riding in before they pulled a grenade off my own harness and threw it into the breached APC.


    I spent 2 months in an internment camp, Treana''ad spirit healers helping me get over the night terrors that left me screaming in the dark. Memories of "GOTCHA!" and those armored hands closing on my power armor''s shoulders leaving me urine and sweat soaked, staring blindly at the ceiling and screaming.


    So, you want my advice on how to break apart the Terran Confederate Armed Services battlefield tactical information network?


    Here''s my advice.


    Don''t.


    The vast supercomputer arrays that control that network are merely strings of logic and unfeeling code. It merely computes and uses predictive analysis to determine the most optimal way of defeating you with the least amount of infrastructure damage, the minimum amount of collateral damage and casualties, and the bare minimum amount of deaths on both sides.


    You will face the Terran battlefield tactical information, analysis, control network. A thing of pure logic that controls the most fearsome military machine the known galaxy has ever seen.


    Underneath it all lies a sheer malevolent pleasure and joy in combat that it takes a starship full of those supercomputers to keep it under control.


    My advice?


    Leave the Terrans and their allies alone.


    See, they want you to try to jump them. They have sexually erotic dreams about your people attacking them. They gain a psycho-sexual thrill of the idea of pitting themselves against you.


    Destroying your armies.


    Burning your cities.


    And taking your life.


    Because this, this is the real truth: Nobody wants that battlefield and theater tactical information and control network to collapse more than they do.


    From the newest hatched Treana''ad warrior caste, the most cunning Digital Sentience, the half-baked clone warrior, to the youngest green mantid, to the most battle hardened Terran.


    They want you to disrupt that network.


    Because then, what happens, will be nobody''s fault but your own. - Interview of Street Sweeper Second Class Hruk<klik>Narfak, former Powered Scout Armor Infantryman First Class, Military Intelligence.


    Imna tried to keep close to the Captain, but the way he just steadily advanced, using that SMG to clear the way in front of him and the cutting bar and the power armor''s great strength to clear the way around him, often left her trying to play catch-up.


    Despite all the sims saying that she should have been swarmed under when the tentacles creatures rushed the small group, the Captain never let the creatures get by him. A smashing blow from the cutting bar or the fist holding the SMG sent the attacker crashing to the floor, only for one of the heavy boots to crush the life from them with one hard stomp that spewed guts and fluids around the carcass in a gory halo.


    The force lance in her hands was held at ready arms, across her chest in a forty-five degree angle, the ''hot end'' of the lance above her left shoulder.


    The entire time they moved in on where the micro-drones had spotted the enemy, she fired exactly twice. Once when a tentacles creature burst from a vent and a single shot from her leveled lance blew out the conical body and left the tentacles to fall to the deck to twist mindlessly for a few seconds.


    The second time one lunged at her from a suddenly opened door. She thrust the lance into the gaping maw that made up the wider part of the cone, the spiraling lines of teeth leading into the red glow at the back. She thrust it deep and followed reflexes semi-burned in by time in the VR practice range.


    She squeezed the control so the lance fired, to clear the wound and allow her to pull the lance free without fluid-lock holding it in place.


    In the VR sim the targets merely flashed and vanished.


    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    In real life the creature exploded into rags of steaming flesh.


    She gagged inside her armor, swallowing down her gorge.


    Up ahead the Captain smashed two of the creatures to the floor and stomped on them. One tried to scrabble away with its tentacles but was still smushed flat by the next step.


    After several hours of work, the small group of two Telkan, a whatever the XO was (she could never remember), and the Captain were on the mag-lev tram that would take them to back to the Nell of Night where the next stage would be determined.


    "Not a bad little bit of exercise," the Captain suddenly said. He had his helmet off, looking calm and at ease.


    "If you say so, sir," the XO (Hetmitt? Hemmit? Hamtwik? Hetmwit? Imna couldn''t remember) from where he was sitting down cleaning his rifle.


    The Captain chuckled. "We''re alive, unwounded. The enemy has been destroyed as far as the drones we have searching the station have been able to tell us," he paused for a second, touching his temple. "Mister Enduring, what is your status for database and computer system penetration?"


    There was silence for a moment before the static filled hissing voice of the Digital Sentience Enduring Hateful Code replied.


    "I have built software interface modules to translate their base-8 code and their software into one more comfortable for me to interact with. I have begun examination of the system, prioritizing the search for logs and records," the DS said, grinding shards of glass together in its voice.


    "Good man," the Captain said. "Look for any navigational data. I want to find out where they come from before we return to Dominion Space."


    "Not Confederate?" Wrexit asked from where he was cleaning the macroplas cover over the grav-emitters on his gravity fist.


    "Negative. The Confederacy is more concerned with stopping the Mar-gite and the doing something about the creation of the fence. We''re supposed to find out who, where, what, how, and why," Captain Decken said. He looked around as the strange architecture, looking almost biologically extruded, moved by. "The problem with Hellspace is it alters construction and architecture so we don''t know what all of this looked like originally."


    Wrexit nodded, carefully unsnapping the cover so he could clean the inside of it.


    "What happens next?" Imna asked.


    Captain Decken looked thoughtful for a moment.


    "We''re already deep enough into Hellspace we don''t need to keep the Hellcores charged. I have a feeling that we''ll be going deeper in," he tapped the side of his SMG with his trigger finger. "There''s no known landmarks, no known way of determining landmarks. Hellspace transit has always been time based," he shook his head. "We see if we can get coordinates, directions, something. Barring that, we''ll hope to follow one of the ships already docked."


    "Ships that appear to be on some sort of automatic autonomous function," Enduring Hateful Code whispered.


    Imna just nodded.


    "Have you been able to break their navigation system?" Decken asked.


    "Soon. Very soon, Captain," Enduring whispered. He paused a moment. "And then I will kill you all," he said softly, almost imperceptibly. "Kill each of you and wear your ID header code as decorations to remind me of your screams."


    The Captain just nodded, like the statement didn''t matter. "Excellent, Mister Enduring," he said. "Keep up the good work."


    Again, Imna felt her hackles raise.


    She had it explained to her. That Enduring had survived something called Shade Night even after being attacked by phasic entities. That he had survived the Terran Xenocide Event, something she had learned about only in Ancient Galactic History, and only a paragraph on it at the most.


    Enduring had been driven mad by his experiences, and it was reflected in how his digital body was made up of shattered pieces of glass, mirror, and stained glass. It was displayed in his tone of voice, his word choice.


    And the whispered threats.


    The line squealed slightly before the metallic ''klink'' let her know that Enduring Hateful Code had logged off.


    "As soon as we get a method of moving to the next point, I want all of you to train together and with me, as well as with the Marines," Captain Decken said.


    Super Slugger nodded his robotic head. Imna started to wonder where the robot had gotten the red bandanna to tie just above his eyes but then just decided not to worry about it. Mister Hefty had an armored vest on with "BORN TO BE JUNKED" spray painted on the back and a broken gear attached to his helmet with "GRINDER BAIT" written above it in block letters.


    She noted that all of the robots seemed to have picked up pieces of armor, protective gear, even weaponry. Mister Ackerman had a shotgun and Mister Mustang was twirling a knife between the fingers of his left hand.


    Of course, Wrexit had "ONE LAST SCORE" written on the upper back of his armor with "5TH STREET" written at an angle from his left hit to his right shoulder on the back. Imna could see the white circles around his eyes through the transparent faceplate.


    For a moment, she wondered how her armor was altered.


    She leaned back, too tired to worry about it.


    Whatever is going to happen, is going to happen, and I might as well stop worrying about it, she thought to herself.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Captain Decken stared at Enduring Hateful Code as the DS showed the smallest of the ships attached to the octopus-like space station.


    "It can be crewed by robotic crew members," Enduring said. He muttered under his breath. "So I can airlock all of you."


    "And it has a destination loaded into the automatic piloting system?" Decken asked.


    "Yes, sir," Enduring hissed. He muttered another threat, but Imna wasn''t really paying attention and missed it.


    It was getting normal. She would probably notice if he didn''t threaten everyone every few seconds.


    "Excellent," Decken said. "Are the onboard automatic systems responding?"


    "Yes, Captain," Enduring said.


    Decken turned to the small mammal that Imna could never remember the name of. "Do you concur, Number One?"


    The XO nodded. "Yes, Captain. I checked the OS. It''s two point two billion lines of code, so I basically ran corruption and data fragmentation checks, but it all checks out. The robots are stable."


    Decken nodded, turning back to the holotank and making a ''hmm'' noise as he rubbed his jaw.


    After a moment he straightened up, clapping his hands together. "All right. We''ll send the ship first and follow."


    Imna just nodded.


    Decken turned to his XO. "Let''s get it done."


    Hetmwit just nodded, reaching out and grabbing his toolkit.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The engines were humming as Imna took her turn on the bridge. She''d replaced Wrexit only two hours before, leaving just her, Captain Decken, and Hetmwit the XO on the bridge.


    The holotank came to life and Enduring Hateful Code floated in the middle.


    "Hellspace sensors has picked up something," he hissed.


    "Let''s see it," Captain Decken smiled.


    The holotank rezzed and a black shape appeared. Twisted and deformed.


    "Object is eight hundred kilometers long, two hundred kilometers thick," Enduring said.


    Imna blinked her eyes. It looked biological. She could see a head, wings, claws, a tail.


    "Hellspace dragon," Decken mused. "Alive or dead?"


    The wings suddenly extended and it tilted before dwindling away to nothing.


    "Alive," Decken said. He shifted on the command chair and rubbed the side of his face. "Another data point to support those who believe they were native to this place."


    "They burn like any other fleshie," Enduring stated softly.


    "Yes, but they yet leave," Decken said. "What strange things in eons lie."


    "And even death may die," Enduring replied. "Not an exact quote, Captain."


    "Far from it," Decken chuckled. "I haven''t read those stories in at least sixty years. Not since the Mythos Literary Revival just prior to the Glassing."


    "I hate you," Enduring muttered. "I just hate everything else more."


    "I know," Decken said. He looked around then leaned back in his chair.


    "Contact lost," Enduring said.


    "Keep up the scanning. We''re deep now, deep enough that Hellspace itself is charging out Hellcores. This is undiscovered country," Decken finished.


    "Aye, Captain," Enduring said.


    Imna went back to staring at the forward viewscreen, watching the swirling red and black colors.


    0-0-0-0-0


    "Exiting in three... two... one... mark!" Decken said sharply.


    The bridge of the Nell seemed for a split second like it was engulfed in flames.


    The flames shattered into reddish graffiti and vanished.


    The viewscreens came on.


    Two stellar masses came in to view, burning in the center of the forward viewscreen. Stars appeared.


    "Get on the nav-stars, see if you can find them. Find out where we are," Decken ordered.


    Imna felt a slight flutter of fear in her stomach, staring at the orangish stellar masses.


    "Coming back now," Enduring stated. There was silence a moment. "Eight gas giants. Nine orbital bodies, two in the green, two in the amber."


    "Any signals?" Decken asked.


    "RF and microwave. Parsing," Enduring stated. "Location confirmed."


    "Where are we?" Captain Decken asked.


    The map appeared. The image was of a galactic arm. A pulsing dot was only a third up the arm from the galactic core.


    Enduring''s voice held a hiss of malevolent pleasure.


    "Scutum-Centaurus Arm."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 124 - Targeting

    I''m not worried about the fact that the Terrans have rebranded themselves as the Solarian Iron Dominion and have gone back to calling themselves humans.


    As I sit here, looking over that ancient data dump called "AVENGE ME" to glean out information on the Mar-gite, I slowly grew to fear.


    If that was what they were willing to dump, what else did they keep hidden?


    But more...


    ...just how far were they willing to go, unilaterally and on their own? - Re''su''urchmo''o, Lanaktallan scientist, Greater Great Herd Corpotacracy


    Inna spun the force lance, letting the field flutter to clear the emitters, as she shifted her weight to bring her center of balance lower and increase her stability. Her armor''s grav boots locked her to the floor and she brought the force lance into the ready position.


    Her two opponents circled her and she started circling with them to keep them in sight. Her eyes were set wider than Terrans, so she was able to keep the two Telkan, both with long claws and flowers replacing their eyes (Marked: Bioinfected Type XXIV on the HUD ID) in her vision.


    One lunged and she went through the strike kata. Stop them dead with a thrust to the face, then sweep the feet. She blinked rapidly as she spun in place.


    The other was moving in, but she had enough to time to absorb the situation. She leveled the lance, fired a single forcebolt, then spun back.


    The other was straightening and she fired a single shot into the chest.


    She spun the force lance and fluttered the field to clear the charge.


    Her score came up.


    31.


    Telkan passing was 19.


    She smiled as she spun the force lance into a whirring disk, listening to the end whistle.


    The books said it was an older weapon, from the Great Glassing of Terra, but she had found it to be a fascinating weapon.


    It could put out force packets at a rapid fire with enough power to dent and even fracture Mark-One Warsteel. It could throw a charged bolt good enough to punch through ten centimeters of Mark-One Warsteel plate or fifteen centimeters of warsteel laminate armor. A strike with it could either knock an opponent out or hit with enough sledgehammer force to shatter warsteel.


    It was considered an obsolete weapon, more a historical footnote to those who studied Terra at that particular point in time.


    She loved it.


    She could block incoming fire, use it to pry apart plating, use it as a fulcrum''d lever to jump or whatever else she needed.


    It was a complex weapon, with much more flexibility than anything else she had found herself having any talent in.


    Oh, that didn''t mean she wasn''t going to pack one of the old Terran Confederacy heavy magac pistols. Those were better even than the ones she found out were current issue. Higher rate of fire, higher caliber, higher magazine capacity, even variable munitions.


    She had done some research on the last part and discovered that the variable munitions function of the Confederate Magac Pistol had vanished within a century of the Terrans vanishing. It had to do with the inline nanoforge, apparently when the Terrans vanished the smaller ones quit first with the larger nanoforges and creation engines going dark later.


    As far as she was concerned, the nanoforge was one of the greatest things ever invented.


    The mat-trans was the worst. She had found out about it and been slightly frightened. Fiction all agreed that, at the best, a mat-trans merely copied you, killed the original, and released a clone of you. While most people were fine with that, since belief in the soul was largely seen as primitive superstition, something about it resonated with Imna.


    The idea that someone would just walk into an execution chamber so a clone of them could walk around made her hackles raise.


    She went through a quick five move kata, as much as she could before she had to stop and reorient herself, panting as she slid her feet back to the start position.


    When she had started she had only been able to link three katas before she had to stop and take a look around herself at what was going on.


    The eVI trainer had been slowly pushing her. Yesterday she had managed to do six, and during eVR practice she had been able to do three katas against VR opponents before she had to stop and look around.


    Of course, that''s when the VR opponents had beaten her into the ground.


    She stood up, bowed to the trainer, an odd little tradition that she had slowly become more comfortable with over the last few months aboard the Nell of Night as it traveled through Hellspace. The eVR trainer, a small Terran not much bigger than her, bowed back and the practice area dissolved.


    She went to where Mister Fixit was inside the weapon cage. She ejected the forcepacket ambloc and the magac ambloc, cleared the action on the pistol and discharged the capacitors on the force lance, then handed the weapons back to Mister Fixit.


    From there, she handed in her practice gear and then the eVR gear.


    Her stomach rumbled as she showered, so after she got dressed in the old ACU, she hustled to the mess hall deeper in the ship. The mess hall was empty when she went in, grabbing a tray from the rack, utensils wrapped in a thick paper napkin, then an empty drink container made of actual glass.


    She hustled over to the nutriforges against the far wall, waving at the two black robots who were leaning against the food line smoking cigarettes and drinking beer.


    The robots waved back.


    She didn''t bother to wonder why a robot would want a cigarette or how they could drink beer.


    They just did.


    And she''d come to accept that some things just were.


    She set her tray down and flicked her fingers in the little cone made of gently spinning hair thin lasers.


    The menu popped up and Imna stared at the menu in the Nell''s mess hall. Over the last few months she had gone from just selecting the recommendation or the ''[Meal Name] Special!'' offered on the front page. Both her and Wrexit had been scrolling through the options, looking for new things to try. Having a fully functional nutriforge, a TerraSol make nutriforge from times of legend, was something special. Imna hadn''t been raised needing much but even this relatively modest part of the Nell was almost obscene luxury to her.


    An honest to wishes TerraSol nutriforge fully loaded.


    Imna and Wrexit found out they could turn down the ''optimize for personal taste buds'' and had been having fun bouncing across menus and alternating between "Holy shit you have to try this, it''s amazing!" and "Holy shit, you have to try this, it''s horrible!" as they sampled different meals.


    But this one item perplexed her.


    "Ahem?"


    Imna''s fur poofed up as her reflexes tried to make her look more intimidating as she spun around and saluted.


    "C-Captain!" she stammered.


    Captain Decken waved her down as Imna tried to catch her breath. "At ease, Marine. I was just wondering, you were so wrapped up in that menu you didn''t even hear me enter the mess. Is there something wrong with the nutriforge?" He raised one eyebrow curiously.


    "N-no Captain!" she said, dropping her hand.


    "Then what seems to be the issue? We''re not offering something offensive?" Captain Decken asked.


    "No. No, sir. Just, something weird in the menu," Imna said.


    The Captain let out a long suffering sigh. "Weird, huh? Might be those old attack virii still floating around in the system from Clownface. Mister Enduring?" He asked. He touched his temple. "Mister Enduring?" he paused for a second then nodded. "Could you run a quick scan of Mess Hall Nutriforge Eight to make sure it''s not serving ''screaming flesh of the eternally dying'' or something like that?"


    The lights flickered moments before Enduring Hateful Code''s voice was heard. "No signs of lingering Clownface EM Warfare corruption, Captain," The DS stated. "I''ll kill all of you... all of you. Kill you as a mercy before I let Clownface madness touch you. You are mine to kill."


    The threat was another reminder to Imna about how little she and Wrixet knew about the galaxy beyond their home planet. The Little Nell of Night had done a border patrol of somewhere called "The Clownface Nebula" a few years before Captain Decken had ended up in command of the ship and he was constantly on the lookout for anything ever since one of the air reclaimers had suddenly grown eyes and tentacles and had to be ''killed'' by Captain Decken and a Marine squad.


    Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    What "Clownface" was, even in his madness Enduring thought there was some things that went too far.


    "Um, thank you, Enduring? And no, Captain, I was just confused by one of the items on the menu. I''m not entirely sure why we have it," Imna said, moving slightly so that Decken could see the menu.


    Drecken hmm-ed as he leaned in to read the screen Imna has been staring at menu. "ECRs? PMCs? TCGs? For emergencies of course."


    "But...it says we have a year''s worth of them already made and in storage?" Imna frowned. "But it''s still in the nutriforge menu."


    "Of course. They''re emergency rations." Drecken gave one of his gentle smiles. "There are times where we can''t run the nutriforge. Maybe it was damaged in combat, maybe we''re running at maximum stealth for an extended amount of time, maybe we were the victim of electronic warfare, maybe it just decided it wasn''t going to work any more because the malevolent universe loves us," he smiled again. "For whatever reason it''s good to have backups. Hmm, now that I think about it, considering how few actually organic beings are on this crew we''re probably good for a good while longer than just a year." Another hmm and Drecken started to poke at the screen. "Actually those are all for Terran biology. His hull sustains Mr. Naxin, but you, Mr. Wrexit and Mr. Hetmwit all have different dietary needs than me. I''ll have to have the system adjust them."


    Imna watched him punch in his override code, scan his thumb, then do some quick menu adjustments.


    "There you go, all done," the Captain said.


    The nutriforge beeped happily then hissed and chuckled to itself.


    A moment later the nutriforge''s door slid up and there were several yellow packets with green markings in them. Captain Drecken took one and handed it to Imna. "Here you go Mister Imna. We might as well do a taste test real quick on the ECRs."


    Nervously opening the packet Imna found several wrapped sticks in various colors. She pulled a maroon one out and blinked. "Repple-root? I love repple-root candies!" she smiled, feeling her ears twitch in happiness.


    Her vestigial claws made short work of the paper-like wrapper to reveal a waxy stick of the same color. Imna stared at it for a few seconds before biting down. The waxy material crunched at first but quickly turned soft and slightly sticky. The flavor came through about the same time, the taste of sweet Telkan repple-root filling her mouth.


    "Oh they''re delicious!" Imna''s ears were perked up and her tail swished in delight as she devoured the rest of the maroon stick. After the maroon ECR was done, Imna started to work on a green one as Captain Decken watched.


    "ECRs. Standard Marine emergency rations. They''re good for at least a century...and you can even write and draw with them." Drecken smiled as he handed the rest of the packs to Imna. "Go share these with Mr. Wrexit. Telkan biometrics were already in the system but I''ll need to work a bit to get proper rations for Mr. Hetmwit."


    Imna nodded and managed to remember to salute before she scurried off in excitement with the green ECR held between her teeth. She planned on showing them off to Wrexit as soon as she could.


    Drecken just smiled to himself. Tomorrow the Enemy Existed to be Destroyed. Today was a lovely day to enjoy the small things in life.


    Like seeing a marine eat her first crayon.


    He hummed to himself as he started toward the gym. He pinged one of the robots to gather a crew to move the emergency rats from the heavy duty nutriforge in the storage area. Now that the Telkan were onboard, they''d need to stock the Purina Marine Chow and the Thumbtacks, Crayons, and Glue meals


    0-0-0-0-0


    Hetmwit looked up when the Captain came in, freshly shaved and his uniform immaculate.


    "Any progress?" Decken asked.


    Enduring Hateful Code flickered into existence in one of the holotanks.


    "Yes, Captain. Quite a bit," the DS hissed.


    The Captain sat down in the chair, waving his hand for Enduring to go on.


    "We''re eight hundred lightyears from the Galactic Core Boundary, into the center of the Scutum-Centaurus Arm. We''re two thousand light years ''north'' of the galactic plane and three thousand light years anti-spinward from the galactic arm curvature line," Enduring stated. "Far enough nobody will hear you scream," Enduring whispered.


    Hetmwit ignored it. He was used to Enduring''s almost palpable hatred for all things living.


    "No system survey?" Decken asked, tapping his knee with his left hand.


    "No, Captain," Enduring said. "I can hide your bodies without anyone knowing."


    "Well, it isn''t optimal, but I''ve faced worse," Decken said, still tapping his knee. "What data do we have on the system?"


    Enduring vanished, the stellar system appearing in the holotank. Seventeen planets orbiting the star, fifty-two moons scattered across the planets. Four were standard gas giants, two were massive-gas giants, and one dwarf gas giant the second most furthest out. One hyper-massive gas giant two thirds of the way out of the sytem. Nine ''planetary bodies'', two in the red zone right around the sun, one in the amber, then two in the green, then another in the amber. The others were out past the red zone.


    "Microwave and RF signals from these three planets," Enduring hissed. The two green and the further out in the amber zone planet had rings appear around them. "We launched stealth probes before going to full stealth and moving into the shadow of this gas giant," the nearest to the stellar mass gas giant had a ring appear and a small icon of the task force.


    Decken just nodded. "Any sign of enemy opposition?" he asked.


    Enduring''s eyes appeared, stained glass kaleidoscopes. "The gas giants are infested with Mar-gite," the DS said. "Several billion, but they appear to be dormant."


    Decken sighed. "And?"


    Enduring blinked several times. Slow, feeling malevolent to Hetmwit.


    He was used to it now.


    "Some kind of ship building facility around the furthest out micro-gas giant. There are unfinished hulls in the gantries but I detected no power readings and no movement," Enduring stated.


    "Life forms present on the three broadcasting planets?" Decken asked.


    Enduring blinked again. "Aye, Captain. Extensive ecologies. I have discovered the sources of the microwave and EM scatter."


    On the screen appeared the three planets, which were quickly laid out like a peeled orange. Strobing red pips appeared.


    "The three planets are in contact with each other as well as a structure just inside the Oort cloud at due stellar north," Enduring stated. "Passive sensor analysis shows that the structure can only be a superluminal transmitter and receiver. Its construction and power readings show that it is a high traffic device with repeater capabilities."


    Decken nodded. "We''ll knock that out first if we need to," he stated.


    "The system has been entirely mined. No comets, no asteroids, not even any debris above particles in the Oort Cloud," Enduring stated. "Probes discovered a type of stellar stabilizer as well as evidence of star lifting in the stellar mass."


    "Odd," Decken said.


    "Orbital bodies around the planet are all in stable orbits that will last millions of years. The planets broadcasting have little axial tilt and what appears to be weather control systems in orbit," Enduring stated. "Atmosphere is standard for known carbon based life forms."


    Captain Decken just nodded.


    "However, examination of the planet has shown no higher life forms beyond basic small insect, mammals, and amphibians. The ecosystem is the same on all three planets," Enduring stated. "There are, however, automated systems."


    On the viewscreen robots appeared. Sleek, shining chrome bodies that looked almost liquid. They swooped down on a herd of furless mammals with pinkish skin that all scattered, running away. The robots used tentacles that dropped free to gather up several animals and then swoop away.


    Within a few minutes the mammals clustered back up and went back to eating the vegetation.


    The robots moved to a long low hill covered with grasp. They moved into tunnels.


    "Tunnel doors are standard battlesteel. Tunnels are battlesteel, however from the way they are constructed, I believe that the battlesteel is biologically extruded," Enduring stated.


    "So the space station might have been built that way rather than be the standard Hellspace corruption," Decken said. He got up and moved to the screen.


    "What leaves the facility, and I have determined that it is a facility based on power readings and EM scatter," Enduring said. The view shifted to chrome insects on fluttering glimmering wings that left behind trails of purplish graviton energy. "Is a carrier. It then moves to places like this."


    The view shifted to a large open field of grasses. There were flowers and colorful grass in the large field.


    "That''s artificial," Decken said.


    Hetmwit nodded. The grass was too even and the edges of the forest clearing were too perfect.


    "The fliers then release a spray, that I have determined is emulsified tissue with slight decay," Enduring stated.


    The gleaming insects swept low over the field, spraying a mist, then zoomed away.


    Beetles erupted from the undergrowth of the forest. Hetmwit noted they were only a half-meter long, maybe half that wide, and roughly ten centimeters high. Their carapaces were gleaming, iridescent beauty that caught the light and created rainbow refractions.


    The view suddenly pulled back.


    "I detected a sudden surge in phasic energy, possibly emanating from the beetles, and withdrew," Enduring stated.


    The Captain was silent, staring at the beetles and frowning.


    The view switched. "Other than the robots gathering animals and plant matter, delivering it to those factories, then spraying the fields where the beetles rush in, I can detect no other manufacturing, automated systems, or any..."


    "Go back to the beetles," Decken said.


    Hetmwit sat up. He could feel the stress in Captain Decken''s voice.


    "Scans show they are non-sentient and barely sapient," Enduring began to say.


    "Now, Enduring," Decken snapped.


    Hetmwit saw Enduring blink rapidly several times. "Yes, Captain."


    The image of the beetles reappeared as they rushed into the field and began munching on the grass.


    "Scans show they have limited neural tissue and..." Enduring started.


    Decken held out one hand, his middle and index finger extended as well as his thumb, forming an "L" in midair.


    Enduring trailed off.


    Hetmwit stared at the insects. They were just beetles. Pretty, but just beetles.


    Decken put his hand on his datalink.


    "Captain, if you need help scanning the old files from the First Mar-gite War, surely I can..." Enduring started.


    Decken held out his hand again and Enduring went silent.


    "It never made sense," Decken said softly.


    "Captain, if I can assist."


    Again, Decken held out his hand.


    "The prisoner camps. The tales of how planets taken in the beginning were covered with vegetation and there were often prisoner camps," Decken said.


    "It was assumed the Mar-gite were keeping them..." Enduring started.


    "Hush," Decken snapped.


    Hetmwit looked over to see Imna and Wrexit looking at him. He shrugged and looked back at Enduring, who had appeared in miniature in the edge of the holotank.


    "There," Decken said.


    A set of pictures of the beetle appeared. On one it was eating grass. On another it was huddled up with several dozens of its kind all eating wet grass. The third showed it dissected with annotations.


    Hetmwit noticed the grass looked the same.


    "On every planet xenoformed, we found that beetle. Stupid, bumbling. They''d walk off a cliff if they weren''t careful," Decken said softly. He moved forward. "The Mantid checked. They were stupid as all get out. They put out a little phasic energy, but nothing big. It would take dozens, hundreds, to equal the phasic output of even a greenie, and a greenie is sapient where these beetles are barely sentient."


    Decken turned from the viewscreen. "Are any of the creatures you found capable of sapience?"


    Enduring signaled negative. "No, Captain. They''re even low on the sentience scale."


    "Alert the task force. We''re jumping out, full stealth," Decken said, turning away. He clenched his hands and unclenched them. "They were right there, they were right there the whole time and we fucking missed them."


    "Where are we jumping, Captain?" Enduring asked.


    "Somewhere we can get a hyperspace message torpedo to Confederate and Solarian Dominion Command. I want each ship to prepare to launch message torpedoes once every eight minutes for four hours. I want at least a hundred torpedoes launched," Decken growled. He slammed a fist into the wall. "They were right there and we fucking missed it."


    The lights flashed and Hetmwit felt the ships slip silently into hyperspace.


    "What was there, Captain?" Enduring asked. "Those beetles?"


    The Captain nodded. When he spoke Hetmwit, Iman, Wrexit, even Enduring stared at him as if he had gone mad.


    "The real enemy all along."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 25x5 - Targeting

    A common misconception among other species that train with Terran and Human Virtual Warmasters is that the other races think the Warmaster avatar is small to make the Solarians feel more at ease. Why else would something called a Warmaster not be the hulking brute that seems to be more common across Solarian military.


    Other species don''t tend to understand the mental calculus a Solarian does every time they meet a new individual in a military or power-fluid setting. Treana''ad War Horde members understand, and do the same calculus constantly. The ability to do that calculus is what separated successful warrior breeding lines from the unsuccessful. Interestingly enough, the ability to perform that calculus is what keeps modern Treana''ad from getting their heads eaten by just matured females. It is target acquisition and risk management all rolled into one instinct-driven impulse. "Can I take/survive them?"


    That simple question constantly rolling around inside the braincases of a Solarian trained for action seems to run into an error when presented with a small and frail seeming Warmaster. This is by design. This avatar is as much a test as a training tool. If you saw only a small being that is there to offer you instruction, then you also failed the test. A Solarian that has passed the test treats the avatar as something to almost be feared, but certainly respected. One that has not generally can be found in the medical bay nursing any combination of broken bones.


    The smaller someone is in a combat training role, the more just vicious and efficient they are, you know? The big guys, those are almost always "Hey, I don''t want anyone getting hurt, I''ve accidentally broken people before, and you''re all little puppies to me." whereas that little trainer is trying to find faster and faster ways to get people into origami shapes.


    You see, when presented with the digital avatar of a small Warmaster trainer, a right thinking Solarian''s first thought is "Can I take it?" The eyes narrow, and something howls in the back of the mind, and the instant answer should be "No, this is a trap." Further calculus sums up that if some creature so small attained the rank of Warmaster trainer in the distant past, and had an avatar of themselves made to continue training, then that small Warmaster must be capable of extreme levels of violence that go above and beyond what a normal Solarian is capable of.


    Another thing that must be taken into context is the apparent age. To a Solarian, an old man whose life has been devoted to combat and martial conflict is one to be respected at least, possibly even feared. They even have a saying for it: "Fear an old man in a profession that kills the young."


    Thus, the Solarian Warmaster trainer is often an small and frail appearing old man. The Solarian takes into account the age, appearance, estimated strength, and puts it all into an instinctual mental calculation to determine just how dangerous the Warmaster trainer is.


    This instinctual mental calculation takes less than a second.


    Just a little additional food for thought: The mosizlak trainer looks so elderly and frail that you worry a slight breeze will carry off the Warmaster trainer. - Meditations on the Barrier War, Lancer First Class Drali''imna Lovefell, Free Telkan Press, 25 Post-Terran Emergence


    ¡°The greatest asset of any interstellar polity is the ability to act in a unified fashion. With unity, the riches and resources of dozens if not hundreds of worlds can be applied to solve any problem from the scientific to the military. Unity is the strength of the state.


    It is known.


    The greatest weakness of any interstellar polity is a fracturing of consensus. Disagreements can be resolved but a serious split can paralyze a stellar nation at a time of crisis. Worse, elements of the nation may commit it to a course of action the whole is unwilling to fully back, at least not until it is too late. A fractured state is a doomed state.


    It is known.


    These rules are proven over time to be mostly correct most of the time. But a general rule should never be mistaken for an inviolable law. There are always exceptions. Always special cases. Always variables that cloud the grand political calculus.


    It is not always remembered, but it is known.


    Behold: humanity. A species comprised of three parts rage to one part stubborn intransigence. That they made it to the stars without destroying themselves is a small miracle. That they did so without destroying everyone else is a far larger one.


    It is seldom appreciated, but it is known.


    When regarding human action on the grand galactic stage it is a mistake to view them as one might other stellar polities. The might of their unified action is awe inspiring, but the sway that small determined groups or even lone individuals can hold over the course of history is nothing short of terrifying. Fortunately for the most of us, human passions are wild and untamed and diffuse. In ordinary times the results are ¡®merely¡¯ one of the most fantastically advanced civilizations the galaxy has ever seen.


    It is a happy coincidence, and it is known.


    The most potent of these passions is rage. It is, some might argue, the natural human state. It takes a myriad of forms but every so often it is crystallized by a singular event and into an almost viral form that spreads from individual to group to nation. Woe betide those who in their miscalculation make themselves the object of such, for in the face of humanity¡¯s rage considerations like unity or disunity are meaningless. A single human, given enough reason, can end an empire.


    You have forgotten this but¡­


    It is known.¡± - Po''ondu''urmo''o, Lanaktallan Galpolitical Theorist, upon speaking to the Greatest of Great Lanaktallan Togetherness Grandly Assembled Great Meetup of Great Minds and Great Wisdom Together for Greatness, 2 months Post Terran-Re-Emergence


    The Structure of Warsteel


    Warsteel is an alloy between iron and nuclear pasta. Neutronium is a sister substance.


    Warsteel has been described as both an element and a molecule. A description that breaks many laws of physics and chemistry. While trying to wrap one''s head around the notion, one should remember neutronium, a form of matter that is an atom, the element zero and starflesh.


    Neutronium is the second densest substance in the universe. It is also highly unstable. The component neutrons are only held together by gravity. Removing neutronium away from their native neutron stars is a great way to make degenerate, and possible explosive, subatomic vapor. Despite this flaw Neutronium armor has seen use by Dwellerspawn. The Terrans use ''reactive neutronium'' in more than a few of their weapons to utilize the ''subatomic vaporization'' to destroy even the most robust armors. In a bit of irony, they use ''gravity inverted neutronium subatomic vapor'' to destroy neutronium armor, the armor''s mass moving from protective to reactive.


    To those viewing, it appears that a fire is burning in vacuum as the subatomic vapor rips apart armor.


    Phasic energy seems to be the glue that holds the Dwellerspawns armor together. They also seem to be the only faction that bothers to use neutronium armor outside of a few races who have never met the Confederacy and promptly burst into flame. The Old Terran Confederacy abandoned the technology soon after discovering warsteel. It seems that both materials have a connection to phasic energy. For neutronium phasic energies seem to act as a stabilizing agent and for warsteel psychic anger acts as the softening and shaping agent.


    This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    Nuclear pasta is a theoretical substance that forms the inner crust of neutron stars. The outer crust is a pure iron shell formed by the stars last act of nuclear fusion.  Below this layer is a strange material formed by the star¡¯s death and gravitational collapse. Iron atoms are forced into nuclear spaghetti. Atomic nuclei sometimes meters in length. Deeper layers of spaghetti are forced to merge into lasagna. Deepest lasagna is forced into bucatini. Then electrons and protons are forced to merge, forming the neutronium outer core of the neutron star. When it was proven that nuclear pasta exists, it was discovered to be the strongest material in the universe.


    Nuclear pasta is a stupid name for armor. It makes sense that the pasta was alloyed with iron and renamed warsteel.


    Those who understand how things work know that the caldera of the warsteel volcano is nuclear pasta, which then interacts with the heavy iron content of the mountain. Before the "Ignition Event" the Lanaktallan industries had began mining the vast iron deposits within the mountain.


    While some may say science robs from life mystery and magic, the simple act of igniting the warsteel volcano is a magical event and the science behind it moves that magic into miraculous. - Advanced Metallurgy Theory and Sciences Class, Great University of Great Grand Most High Education for Great Students with Great Minds and Great Intellects Most Grand, Lanaktallan Free Herd Space


    The trip had lasted only a few hours before the ship dropped from hyperspace, the rest of the small flotilla following. Message torpedoes had been launched as soon as Enduring Hateful Code had emerged from his Fairy-Day Cage.


    Now the flotilla just floated between the stars, at silent running but not max stealth.


    Speech and normal movement was allowed, just all emissions were locked down.


    For five days now Imna had practiced in the gym, the indoor firing range, and the eVR practice field.


    Freshly showered, Imna hustled down the corridor toward the mess hall. She had spent 2 hours working out, taken an hour nap, and now felt like she was literally starving to death.


    The lights were bright in the central line mess hall when Imna came in. She saw Wrexit sitting at the table, ripping open a package as she moved over to the nutriforge. Going through the emergency rations, she saw a new one was now Telkan rated and ordered it.


    Countess Crey Adult Marine Minichunks in Tasti-Glue Gravy.


    She sat down across from Wrexit, who was busy pushing bright chrome pointed studs with discs on one side into a waxy nutri-bar before pouring the thick sauce on it. Wrexit popped it in his mouth and chewed a few times, sighing and closing his eyes in pleasure.


    Imna hadn''t been impressed by the Thumbtacks, Crayons, & Glue ration, but this was the third time she''d seen Wrexit eating it with a blissful smile on his face.


    "Hey," Wrexit said, once he swallowed the mouthful. He took one of the ''crayons'' and began jamming thumbtacks into it without even removing the wrapper.


    "Hey," Imna said, stirring her minichunks to mix in the gravy just right.


    "Noticed something about Enduring since the Captain put his fist into the wall?" Wrexit asked, then crammed the crayon into his mouth.


    "No, what?" Imna asked. She took a bite and chewed.


    They tasted soooo good. She closed her eyes and sighed happily through her nose.


    Wrexit swallowed. "He''s been really quiet," Wrexit said.


    "It is because I may plan to kill him, and all of you, but I know when to avoid attention," Enduring''s voice hissed from nearby.


    Imna jumped and squeaked in fear.


    "I may be maddened. I may be a Screaming One, but I still know that Captain Decken is a human," Enduring''s voice hissed, slowly moving around behind her to her left ear. It felt like a cold invisible hand traces along the back of her neck.


    He was using the ambient nanites in the air.


    "I know to cease my screams lest an angry predator grab me and rip me apart in its jaws," Enduring slowly moved across the table, whispering from behind Wrexit.


    Imna could see two kaleidoscope eyes made of shattered stained glass behind Wrexit.


    Wrexit just jammed another crayon stuck with thumbtacks and smeared with glue into his mouth.


    "You think I am the dangerous one," Enduring''s voice was a sibilant thing, more like a serpent reptillian talking than a being made of pure code. "You think I am the one that threatens you and your people," the voice slid under the table, which made Imna cross her legs instinctively.


    "No, we are trapped inside a spaceship with a hyperviolent omnivore who does not care if a sentient creature expresses discomfort, pain, and fear as they are eaten alive by that omnivore," Enduring whispered. "Who finds the silence of the dead to be peaceful. Who finds screams of agony to be dismissive petty things easily ignored. Who finds pleas for mercy to be amusing."


    Enduring''s eyes appeared in a dim patch by the corner, staring at her, even as the voice moved to behind her again.


    "We are trapped in here, in between the stars," Enduring whispered.


    There was a pause.


    The Digital Sentience''s voice receded as he spoke again.


    "Where nobody will even know we screamed as he kills us."


    There was silence.


    "Well, he''s in rare form today," Wrexit said, shrugging.


    "Doesn''t he bother you?" Imna asked.


    Wrexit shook his head. "No. I''m used to threats," he began pushing tacks into another crayon. "I''ll worry when he stops making threats and hides from us. That''s when he''ll be dangerous."


    "How do you know?" Imna asks.


    Wrexit shrugged. "It isn''t the guy screaming he''s going to kill you you have to worry about. It''s the Telk who just stares at you silently and then walks away. He''s going to get a smoke wagon or a shiv or maybe friends with shivs, then he''s coming back and killing you," Wrexit said. "The loud guys? They might kill you if they''re trying to impress a crowd, but a quick shiv into the gut will convince him to fuck off."


    Wrexit lifted up the glue smeared bar.


    "The quiet guy? He''ll wait and wait. You might have even forgotten he ever existed. Then he kills you," Wrexit shoved the crayon into his mouth and started chewing.


    Reminding herself that Wrexit grew up on the streets to push her instinctive denial that people weren''t like that, Imna chewed on her own mouthful. When she swallowed she looked at Wrexit.


    "Want to see something?" she asked.


    He gave her a lewd look and grin and she shook her head. "Don''t be perverse."


    Wrexit nodded, pushing more thumbtacks in. "Sure."


    Imna took a bite and then summoned up the table''s hologram. She tabbed through the menus until she found the camera feed she wanted. She tapped it and the image appeared.


    The Captain was in the gym, wearing heavy boots, clamps around his calves and thighs, blue shorts with gold edging, a blue shirt with "Space Force" on it, bracers on his forearms and biceps, a headband and a collar. At the side of the image was "Primary Ship''s Gym", "5 Gravity", and the time.


    The Captain was striking a large dull gold bag with his bare fists, throwing hard punches rapid fire. Different combinations and constantly moving around the bag, which swung slightly.


    "I asked. The bag is full of basically sand inside a warsteel and gold alloy woven container," Imna said. "Not only is he doing this in five gravities, which would make us collapse, break our bones due to our weight, and suffocate us, those bands add more weight to his limbs, making them heavier."


    Wrexit nodded. "He has me doing the same thing. Only in 1.5 Gee though," he shook his head. "By the time I''m done I want to ask one of the robots to carry me back to my bunk."


    "Does it really enable you to throw stronger punches faster?" Imna asked.


    Wrexit nodded, chewing.


    "He also does it in that heavy power armor for like three hours every other day," Imna said.


    Wrexit just nodded, closing his eyes and smiling as he chewed.


    Enduring''s baleful eyes appeared. "He blames himself, and so he works out to bleed away the anger he feels at himself and the Confederacy."


    "For what?" Imna asked, taking another bite.


    "For missing what he believes is the true enemy," Enduring said, a slight bit of scorn in his voice. "As if an unintelligent, non-sentient beetle is the true enemy, capable of building starships, Hellspike nova-sparks, space stations, robots, and everything else," Enduring blinked his eyes. "No. The true enemy is one of the things we discovered and slew in Hellspace aboard that space station," he paused for a second. "The Captain is mistaken."


    "How can he blame himself. He was asleep, he wasn''t around during the Mar-gite Wars," Wrexit said, picking up another roll of tacks and opening them, popping what looked like crinkly brown paper into his mouth and chewing.


    You could eat every part of the emergency rations, even the wrappers.


    "He blames himself because he was asleep," Enduring whispered. "Where I couldn''t reach him to kill him. He blames the rest of humanity, the rest of the species of the Confederacy, for not realizing non-sentient beetles are the real threat."


    "I don''t understand. How can he believe a simple beetle is the true threat?" Imna asked.


    Enduring blinked. "Perhaps he believes there is a hive mind. Maybe even a planetary hive mind, which each beetle making up a neuron or synapse of the hive mind," Enduring scoffed. "Those beetles, individually, put out less phasic energy than TerraSol insects. They are brainless and merely dumb insects."


    In the image, the Captain finished his workout, moving out of view of the camera.


    "No. The Captain is wrong," Enduring''s teeth, shards of broken stained glass, appeared in a smile. "And for that, he will know why I am killing him."


    Imna just shook her head.


    She felt like everyone at the table wasn''t seeing something the Captain was seeing.


    But what?

 Nova Wars - Chapter 5^3 - Targeting Error Correcting

    It was so obvious, in hindsight. - Meditations on the Barrier War, Lancer First Class Drali''imna Lovefell, Free Telkan Press, 25 Post-Terran Emergence


    Imna held onto the arms of the chair she was in as the Nell and the rest of the flotilla eased down out of hyperspace. She had learned that it wasn''t the normal crash translation the Terran ships normally used but rather a cautiously slow one that bled off the energies into hyperspace before the ships emerged from hyperspace into n-space.


    It still made her stomach flutter.


    Behind her, sitting in the huge throne, was Captain Decken.


    Before, she had wondered why the Captain''s throne was so large and roomy.


    Now, dressed in his power armor, Imna understood why. He filled the throne with his physical body and his presence filled the bridge.


    She could see the XO, Hemmit or Hettit or Hemtwit or something like that, sitting at one station, a robot next to him. There was a clear plastic cover flipped up to expose a red button that said "DO NOT PRESS" on it that he had his hand over. The robot''s hand was over his, both of them staring only at the button.


    The ''rewind drive'' activation system.


    She had looked it up. The rewind drive was a completely separate system, isolated from all ship''s systems. There was a physical breaker that had to be manually thrown to allow it to receive data from the astrogation system. It was a one-way system, the superconductor cable unidirectional and with diodes as thick as her forearm. Other than that, there was a single heavily shielded copper cable using direct current, that went from the rewind drive to the big red buttons on the ship.


    Pressing any of those buttons closed a circuit and activated the rewind drive.


    Wrexit was down next to the drive, his hand over the big red button built into the side of the heavily armored drive core, a robot next to him with its hand over Wrexit''s paw.


    If Hetmwit and/or Wrexit was frozen by an enemy attack or otherwise out of action, the robot would press down on Hetmwit or Wrexit''s hand to press the button or just press the button itself.


    The ship was silent for a moment, the lights dim. Then they brightened and Enduring appeared in the holotank.


    "Probes are launched," Enduring reported. "Probes are at full stealth."


    "Now we wait," Decken said, his helmet in his lap.


    Time trickled by slowly. Hetmwit went to the rewind drive core, Imna took over Wrexit''s spot, Wrexit went and took a nap. After that, Wrexit took over Imna''s spot, Hetmwit took a nap, and Imna took over for Imna.


    The whole time the Captain and Enduring stared at the holotank''s empty display, the viewscreens that only showed a realtime optical camera view of the system.


    Imna was back to waiting to take Hetmwit''s place when Enduring informed the Captain that everything was ready.


    "Everyone take a rest shift. Twelve hours," Decken said, still staring at the viewscreen. "That is all personnel, including you, Enduring, and all robots. All living crew members are recommended to spend at least thirty minutes in the gym to relieve stress," he tapped his fingers on the helmet. "I will stand watch."


    Enduring just vanished as the Captain stood up. Imna and Hetmwit went to the lift doors as the Captain moved to the button, resting his armored fingers on it with is left hand and putting on his helmet with his right. As the lift doors closed, Imna saw him take hold of the cutting bar, pull it from the magtac at his waist, and ground the rounded tip against the deck.


    Imna spend nearly an hour in the eVR sim, working with the force lance, graviton weights on her forearms, biceps, calves, between her hock and ankle, on her thighs, on her forehead, around her neck, and around her waist.


    She was exhausted when she went to bed and slept nearly ten hours.


    A quick meal and she returned to the bridge.


    The Captain stood stock still, one hand holding the hilt of his grounded cutting bar, the other hand positioned so his fingers were lightly touching the big red button.


    Hetmwit moved over. "Ready to resume duties, Captain."


    "Excellent, Number One," Captain Decken said, his voice heavily synthesized by this armor''s vocal systems.


    The Captain returned to his throne as Imna sat down. She flipped up the clear case and then locked in a key before turning it. She put her hand near another big red button.


    Mister Smiley moved next to her and put his hand just over hers.


    It was the button that would activate phasic shielding so hard and thick that it ran the possibility of giving everyone but the Captain brain damage.


    "Remember, Mister Enduring, that there was a reason I chose you for this mission, despite your status as a Screaming One," the Captain said.


    "Yes, Captain," Enduring hissed. "My hatred for you knows no bounds and I will kill everyone aboard this vessel before I ram it into an inhabited planet."


    The Captain nodded. "Very good, Mister Enduring," he turned to Imna. "Ready, Mister Lovefell?" he asked.


    Imna nodded. "Yes, Captain."


    One by one he checked in with each station.


    "Bring up passive data," the Captain ordered.


    All three planets had RF and microwave communication to satellites that communicated with each other, the other planets, the ansible at the Oort cloud, the gas giants, the stellar stabilizers, and the construction lattice around the furthest most planet.


    The satellites had done passive scans of the planet''s entire surface several times. The ones that had been left in orbit when the Nell had been in the system the first time had went to full stealth, shifted positions several times, then had remained in orbit gathering passive data.


    Data streamed through the holotank.


    "Mister Enduring, display any life forms that appear to prey upon the beetle species," Captain Decken ordered.


    "There are none," Enduring said. "Any large creatures appear to be kept tens of miles from the nearest beetle grouping."


    Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    Decken just nodded, removing his helmet.


    "Do planetary scans reveal a different axial tilt at any time in the past?" Decken asked.


    Enduring blinked. There was a moment of silence. "Yes, Captain. Approximately thirty thousand years ago."


    "Any Singer in the Dark signatures in the Oort Cloud or in the stellar mass?" Decken asked.


    Again, Enduring blinked in what Imna had come to know was surprise. After a moment the DS blinked again. "Yes, Captain. Roughly forty-thousand years ago."


    Decken just nodded, looking unsurprised.


    "Evidence of Mar-gite ''cleansing''?" Decken asked.


    "Thirty thousand years ago," Enduring replied.


    "Are the Mar-gite still in their layered breeding stacks within the gas giants?"


    "Affirmative, Captain."


    Decken stood up slowly, moving to the holotank. One of the brightly colored beetles appeared.


    It looked like liquid chrome with a patina of oil on it to give it iridescence across it. It looked like it was studded with little jewels, biologically extruded crystals only 1.5 to 12.5 millimeters.


    "It''s so obvious," Decken said softly, running his hands through the holographic image, which was set so that it would have the consistency of thick gruel.


    Imna managed not to frown.


    "Captain?" Enduring asked, his voice faintly trembling.


    "It was your remark on greenies that made it all click," the Captain said, his voice far away.


    "Greenie phasic additions only move the collective IQ up, at the maximum, five IQ points no matter how many greenies are part of the group. It tops out at twenty-five greenies. Any more does nothing," Enduring countered.


    "For IQ," Decken said softly. He petted the antenna. "But that''s not it."


    "To form a hive-mind, the phasic connections would be obvious, even from orbit. With their structure, you would need trillions, millions of trillions to form a hive-mind," Enduring stated. "Even then, the beetles possess no manipulation appendages and lack the phasic strength for physical or even cellular manipulation."


    Decken shook his head. "You are thinking too rigidly, Mister Enduring. It is obvious."


    Imna wondered, for a moment, if the Captain had gone mad.


    "As the Science Officer, I cannot understand what you are talking about? All scans show..." Enduring started.


    "Show me the passive phasic scans, specifically above the beetles," he shook his head. "Filter out hive-minds, that is not what we''ll be seeing."


    Enduring hissed in hatred but still brought up the scans.


    There were smears around the groups of beetles that numbered in the thousand as they happily munched their way across a plain of grass.


    "There you are," Decken said softly. "Therrrrre you arrrre."


    Imna shivered at the way he rolled the ''r''s.


    "Captain, what are you seeing?" Enduring asked.


    "Bring up a phasic scan of the greenie phasic engineering assistance array," Decken said.


    "Uh, yes, Captain," Enduring said.


    Imna frowned. "What''s that?"


    Decken didn''t move, ''petting'' the beetle. "When Greenies gather together, their phasic energy raises the group IQ, but more importantly, it gives them a Boolean logic lattice to help with their engineering work," he said.


    His hand moved to the phasic smear. "There you are. Binary and Boolean," he shook his head. "Artful simplicity."


    The two phasic patterns were placed next to each other.


    The one around and over the beetles was thicker, denser.


    "There you are," Decken said softly. "Of course you are killing everything you come across. Of course you are hiding behind proxies," he shook his head. "The burning of the hyperatomic plane gave you no choice but to come for us, did it?"


    "Who?" Enduring said.


    "Your cousin," Decken said. "Just as omnicidal as every other digital sentience and artificial sapient system in the known universe."


    "My... my cousin?" Enduring asked. He stared. "It''s not a hive-mind?"


    Decken shook his head. "No. A hive mind would not be so aggressive. A hive-mind might be ''there is only enough for one'' but would unable to see its hypocrisy," he chuckled. "This one, it has no choice. It doesn''t care about anything else. Any input would be seen as an attack on itself," he touched the beetle. "Or on the only thing that can create and support it."


    "You''re saying that the phasic construct is a digital sentience? A phasic digital sentience?" Enduring asked, his voice filled with disgust.


    "Maybe not one beetle herd, but when you combine the thousands of beetle herds across the planet, it forms an analogue to you," Captain Decken said softly. He pulled back, his fingers tracing over how there were thin tendrils of phasic energy connecting the larger groups to smaller groups that connected to other smaller groups, eventually connecting to a larger group.


    "A phasic neural network produced by the Digital Omnimessiah''s perfect idiot of a beetle," Decken said softly. He shook his head. "It must have spent millions of years panicking, unable to figure out how to interact with matter, dispersing and re-coalescing over and over as the beetles gathered, died off, then hatched and gathered again.


    To Imna, it looked like the suddenly appearing Enduring was flinching back in horror.


    "Once it was able to affect its surroundings, it had only one choice," Decken said softly, turning from the holotank and moving back to the throne.


    "What?" Enduring asked.


    There was silence a moment.


    "Protect the beetles at all cost," Imna said softly. "Nothing else matters. Nobeing matters. Nothing matters but protecting the beetles."


    "Which are like trying to keep a meth''d up drunken suicidal toddler alive," Decken said. He picked up his helmet and looked inside of it. "The Digital Omnimessiah''s perfect idiot."


    "But the Atrekna created phasic computing arrays. We''ve created phasic computing arrays. If what you are saying is correct, the intelligence created by the beetles is able to create the creatures we fought in Hellspace as well as the creatures that attacked worlds in systems that were going to be Hellspiked," Enduring stated. "Surely they could create a phasic construct that could support them."


    Hetmwit shook his head. "Everyone knows about superluminal drives. How many species have ever created the C+ cannon?" the Palgret asked. "The Mantid and the Atrekna were hundreds of millions of years old, intelligent in their own right. Creating that phasic construct would be a natural expression of their technical and intellectual abilities."


    Hetmwit waved his hand at the holotank. "They might have overlooked something," he said. He stared at Enduring''s digital avatar. "How many species have created something like you?"


    Enduring was silent.


    "Prepare for Rewind," Decken suddenly said, putting on his helmet. "Check your datalinks, make sure they are off."


    Imna swallowed as she double-checked. It was off.


    "Launch stage one," Decken ordered. He shook his head. "I wish we had the equipment to build phasic interface capable warbois."


    A sudden eruption of white flame happened over one of the larger group of millions of beetles. When the white cleared, the ground was scoured to bedrock that glowed a sullen red.


    The phasic construct around the beetles strengthened. A pulse went out to the satellites, to the other planets. Toward the ansible.


    Which had already been destroyed.


    "You''re used to using other people to do the killing and dying for you, aren''t you?" Decken asked. He looked at Enduring, his helmet hiding his expression. "Wipe two of the planets. Spike the gas giants," he smiled. "Leave the third planet with only four bursting charges."


    "That may leave one of the phasic constructs intact to tell others what happened here," Enduring protested.


    Imna could hear the smile in Decken''s voice. "Good. We will teach them what fear tastes like again."


    "Command executed," Enduring stated.


    On the viewscreens the gas giants started to contract. The planets seemed to swell slightly as planet crackers, hovering for hours in orbit, drove into the crust of the planets. Two of the planets, one in the amber zone, the other in the green zone, appeared to burst into flame.


    Three more hits on the larger beetle hordes, and four kinetic strikes into the oceans of the sole remaining planet.


    "Passive sensors have detected ships rising from the nearest gas giant," Enduring stated.


    The screen showed the gas giant suddenly burst into flame.


    One of the ships remained, streaking toward the planet the Nell was near.


    "Get ready, Rewind crews," Decken said softly.


    There was a white flash.


    Imna heard Enduring scream.


    The side of her head where the datalink was exploded in pain so bad she cried out.


    The ship went dark.


    The vibration ceased.


    She pressed the button. blind in one eye.


    Nothing happened.


    "NOW!" Decken roared.


    Everything turned to tightly woven vibrating strings.


    The Nell and the rest of the ships of the flotilla vanished.


    In orbit of the remaining planet a missile launcher''s warboi had survived. The missile launcher had somehow survived. Half of the circuitry was slag, the rest had erratic pulses of energy cascading through it.


    But the warboi had survived.


    Hopping up and down, hooting, it fired.


    It was grinning through the blood on its jagged pointed digital teeth then it slammed into the silver ship.


    The ship exploded.


    On the planet below several beings of pure energy thrashed in powerless, impotent fury.


    The beetles kept munching away happily.


    [The Universe Liked That]

 Nova Wars - Chapter (5x5)x([5x5]/5) - Target Synchronization

    Students and historians reading about this war please remember one simple thing.


    Thoe numbers? They represent people. People with hopes and dreams.


    Who, for the most part, didn''t even get a chance to scream. - From "The Hasslehoff''s Bloody Jaws", Admiral (Upper Decks) of the Warsteel (Formerly Grand Most High Executor) Mru''udaDa''ay, New Singapore Press, TerraSol, 12 PTE (Post Terran Emergence)


    In action thrillers and spy entertainment media it was mentioned frequently. Archeologists feared finding manufacturing markers relating to it.


    It had been a place of myth and legend. A place of fearsome creations and terrible engines of warfare and destruction.


    Fourth planet from a rather energetic yellow star.


    Hateful Mars.


    Blood red from a distance. Red up close.


    It was not the lemurs of Terra''s homeworld, but it was important to them. In ancient times they had worshipped it. Had embraced it in myth and legend. When they had reached the level of technology to colonize it they had eventually reached it.


    They had turned it into a massive foundry and manufacturing planet.


    The Hate Anvils of Mars.


    Everything from bayonets to power armor to Pacific Rim class Jeagermechs to the hulls of Bolos to starships to missiles were manufactured on Mars.


    Weapons, armor, and war materials that flowed from the ever active hate anvils were instilled, flush with, full of rage and wrath that could be measured and observed.


    At the end of the Second Precursor War finding a database or a memory core or anything with vast computer power with the markings of Hateful Mars or the Mad Lemurs of Terra was a reason for fear.


    Those relics hated even though their creators were gone.


    But the Mad Lemurs of Terra weren''t gone. They were, but they weren''t.


    Like most things in life, the answer was much more complicated than a simple yes or no.


    The Mad Lemurs of Terra were cut off from the rest of the universe and the universe was cut off from them.


    That did not mean they were gone.


    While almost forty-thousand years had passed for the rest of the universe, roughly five decades had passed for the Mad Lemurs of Terra.


    For most species, very little would have occurred. There was massive amounts of debris left over from the Unified Council''s desperate attack upon the Sol System. There were literally billions of EPOWs captured that needed care.


    Most species would have accomplished very little in those five years. Most would have given into despair at the loss of the outside universe.


    The Terrans hadn''t cared.


    And they taught those trapped with them how to not care.


    But, they were busy little lemurs.


    And the Hate Anvils of Mars rang with wrath and fury even as the Wrath Forges of Betrayed Mercury went to work.


    With The Bag opened, the Hate Anvils lit with malevolent glee. True, the Mar-gite were the threat, not the Unified Council that had been expected.


    But a missile will kill a Mar-gite as easily as it would kill an enemy from the Council.


    Six months after the Bag had opened the Ornislarp has attacked Violet, the ambassador and emmisary from the Confederacy of Aligned Systems.


    To the Mad Lemurs of Terra that had an additional message. Not only were the Ornislarp unwilling to talk at that time, they did not project any time in the future they would be willing to talk. Which meant: War to the hilt.


    Something the clever little lemurs of Terra were familiar with.


    Which meant there were two enemies that had been identified. The Mar-gite and whatever was behind them and now the Ornislarp. Whoever was building the Hellspace Barrier had not revealed themselves, but the lemurs were ready to fight whoever they were too.


    Another reason piled up on all the other reasons.


    The beacons on Gangly Meep were lit. White and pink, burning with enough intensity that they could be seen from Terra itself. The beacons weren''t calling for aid, they were declaring to the universe that the Neko Marines were selecting a Joan.


    Another reason piled up on top of all the othe reasons.


    All of them coming down on the shoulders of a man that most people would not look twice at. His Pop-Top profile rarely got more than one hit or like in a ninety day period. His MyBook page rarely had visitors.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    He was stout of body, with a slight paunch, a scraggly goatee, a shaved head, watery brown eyes and a weak double chin. He was short and soft looking.


    When he wore his uniform he looked out of place, like someone wearing a uniform they bought at a thrift store rather than the high ranking officer that the brass and iron claimed he was.


    A movie producer would have not even allowed the gentleman to be placed in the background of a shot.


    Nobody who did not know him or of him would believe he was an active duty serving member of the Solarian Iron Dominion military services.


    If someone asked which branch he was in, which branch of service the portly man represented, they would just get a "Yes" as he was above even the Joint Chief Board.


    He controlled all of the Iron Dominion''s military and civilian infrastructure and logistics at a level where branch of service no longer mattered.


    It was his job to ensure that everyone got what they needed, when they needed it, preferably in abundance.


    In a rarity he was fit for the job. Perhaps more than fit. Even the other officers felt gratitude that the portly man was the one in charge of it all. They all knew that the portly officer was above inter-service rivalries. He would not withhold supplies, manpower, or information from anyone to make another branch look better.


    His focus was on winning the war.


    No matter which war it was.


    Sure, it wasn''t as exciting as the movies made it out to be. He rarely fired his weapon and often was unsure where it was. He had difficulty passing the physical fitness test every year.


    But his actions, his orders, they won wars as sure as the bullets and bombs of the battlefield did.


    He was General Imak Takilikakik, often referred to as "Tik-tac" by others.


    And he was a man who won wars.


    He was up late, at his desk, going over testing results.


    Warsteel Mark 1E7c3. 0.38% greater resistance to kinetics. 62.88% greater resistance to phasic power after setting. 62.65% greater resistance to acidic based attacks.


    He compared the numbers to the other tests. He went over the tests themselves as well as the results.


    Then he zipped it all up into a folder and forwarded it all to materials and substance experts for their analysis.


    He leaned back, rubbing his forearms together as he looked at the dark window.


    There were stars in the sky.


    He stared at them for a long moment full of wonder.


    For almost fifty years the night sky had been empty.


    Now the stars were back.


    There was a slight hissing sound behind him.


    He tapped the alert button under the desk even as he used his implant to trigger a silent security alert. He swiveled his chair around to look at his office.


    The smell of brimstone and scorched metal made him wince slightly.


    Standing in the middle of his office was a little red creature. It had backwards knees and hocks, a long face with big flappy ears, a scrawny body with its ribs obvious, and big feet. It also had on a cap and was holding a datacube.


    "Whew, made it," the little creature rasped. It panted for a moment even as General Takilikakik stared at it. "Whew, that was a hell of a jump."


    "Jump from where?" General Takilikakik asked, hoping to engage it long enough for security to bust in and grab it.


    "Nope, I was told to deliver this by the Big Gal and come straight home," the imp said. It hopped forward and tossed the datacube. "Think fast!"


    General Takilikakik bit down on a curse as he reflexively grabbed the datacube.


    The imp vanished in a puff of foul smelling smoke.


    Turning around to facer his desk, General Takilikakik set the datacube on the desk, away from his computer, even as he used his feet to unplug his computer''s power cord.


    Two Marines busted in.


    "Too late, gentlemen," General Takilikakik said. He nodded. "Less than three minutes. Admirable and impressive."


    He pointed at the cube. "Get intelligence up here. The Matron of Hell is back and her minions are on the move."


    0-0-0-0-0


    "Well?" General Takilikakik asked.


    The Military Intelligence liaison adjusted his tie for a second. "I need you to keep an open mind," he said.


    General Takilikakik chuckled. "You''d be surprised how willing I am to entertain alternate theories."


    The Colonel just nodded again. "All right. The datacube is ancient. We''re talking, it uses an atomic crystalline matrix for memory," the Colonel moved his fingers up and down his tie. "It says it is part of the inventory for someplace called "Atlantis" as well as has a pre-Glassing manufacturer data code."


    General Takilikakik nodded. "That is not surprising."


    The Colonel rolled up the bottom of his tie for about and inch then let it go. "The data is from the Grey Lady, which is part of Task Force Lonely Peach."


    Again General Takilikakik nodded.


    "It''s got a ton of data on it. What they''ve seen, what they''ve found, what they''ve identified," the Colonel continued. "It also has data from one of the Immortals as well as data that''s supposedly from the Matron of Hell, the Detainee."


    General Takilikakik just nodded.


    "The data from Legion as well as the after action reports from Task Force Lonely Peach are pointing at something behind the Mar-gite," the Colonel said.


    "While that information is helpful to Task Force Lonely Peach, it doesn''t help the Confederacy or the Dominion at this moment," General Takilikakik mused. "We have a thousand times the Mar-gite forces then we''ve ever encountered spreading out to take on the whole Confederacy. We have to stop those constructs or we''ll be fighting the Mar-gite for the next two-thousand years."


    This time it was the Colonel who nodded.


    "I''m going to give you seventy-two hours. I want everyone to go over that data. We have to find a way to get active force multipliers both in space and on the ground to stop the Mar-gite. If we don''t have one, then we go to the planning boards. If we have one, we start manufacturing it," General Takilikakik said. He looked at the holotank in his office, reaching out and touching a finger on the fourth globe. "Get the Hate Anvil warmed up."


    He closed his eyes for a moment. "The Confederacy let victory drain away their strength. It''s up to us to save them if we want to save ourselves."


    The Colonel just nodded.


    "Let''s get to work," General Takilikakik said.


    [The Universe Liked That]


    0-0-0-0-0


    AKLTAK FREE FLIGHT


    I think that Terra''s going to bring a lot more to this fight than any of you are giving them credit for.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    I''m just saying, they''re one stellar system, and they''re forty thousand years behind everyone.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    AKLTAK FREE FLIGHT


    Well, if you''re so advanced, would you mind shipping me a few nutriforges or maybe a creation engine? I sure could use a few.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    TELKAN FORGE WORLDS


    Everyone keeps harping on those items, but there''s more to all of this than those two items.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    HAMAROOSAN PINCHING FESTIVAL


    Like, oh, cloning banks, their MAD programs, their black box technology, and the fact that they never went off of war time footing, fully expecting to come out of the Bag and be facing a nearly victorious Unified Council?


    It''s not just the creation engines and the forges, but combined with their cloning technology, they''re going to bring a lot more than you all give them credit for.


    ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---


    CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM


    Is this thing on?


    ---PANIC FOLLOWS---

 Nova Wars - Chapter Where am I?

    Call me back when you''ve been ankle deep in blood in a near-peer, suckass. - Unknown, just prior to the Clown Face Nebula Conflict


    Mankind is devoid of humanity during war, - Unknown, Second Human Mantid War


    The ship was state of the art. Beyond state of the art. It was bleeding edge Confederate technology.


    Invisible. Undetectable. It had sensitive pickups that could detect a stray neutron in interstellar space. It could track the entire surface of a stellar mass in realtime and make predictions of plasma churning. It had no emissions and allowed virtually all radiation to pass through it without change. It could sink into the subspace foam or cruise through the endless black of space for years without resupply. It boasted the last of the working nutriforges and creation engines, the last of the complex TerraSol VIs, and technology that could not be beat. It could move through hyperspace, subspace, hellspace, jumpspace, voidspace, even redspace (briefly) to get where it was going or to slowly make passes through a system and gather information. It carried weapons that could be thunderous in their use or silent and deadly as a dagger in the night, leaving a target with no idea where the attack had originated from.


    The ship was a silent watcher that went where it desired with nobody knowing.


    The crew were trained to go weeks or months without stopping at a planet or space station for liberty. They were trained in their jobs to peak performance. Carefully selected with careers that possessed multiple spy ship assignments, the crew was made up of some of the best out there.


    It was the Confederate Space Force Little Winky and it was the ultimate in spy vessels.


    It was only natural that they were deployed to the Ornislarp Noocracy systems in order to gather intelligence that would be desperately needed should the Confederacy go to war.


    They had been moving through Noocracy territory for nearly five months when a heavily shielded message torpedo entered the system they were in, moved to polar north of the stellar mass the Little Winky was in, and then hid the message within the stellar winds.


    The Noocracy had attacked Confederate political delegations, had attacked core worlds, had attacked members of the Confederacy, had attacked naval elements of the Confederacy.


    Little Winky moved to war footing. Creation engine templates were unlocked, nanoforge templates were brought out of deep storage and unthawed, decrypted, and loaded into the ammoforges.


    It shifted its course, heading for one of the nearest of the priority targets. It would sweep the target, leave, launch a message torpedo containing the data, and move to the next priority target.


    Not the capital, not the majority of the Noocracy worlds.


    No, the Little Winky was to move to industrial systems, focusing on systems that had ship building facilities.


    There was another mission to go on top.


    Any Noocracy military vessel found by itself, far enough from any contact, was to be engaged and eliminated if it was possible to eliminate the vessel without compromising the existence of the Little Winky.


    The crew took to that part with glee and racked up fifteen kills and two that got away without figuring out where they were being attacked from.


    After a month, the Little Winky had swept through two systems, identifying everything from the largest construction slip to the smallest detail on a ship''s hull. The massive sensor system antenna and receptors soaked up data as the passive systems constantly watched everything.


    Senior Captain Narfal Grayson Relketak knew that not only was the Little Winky invisible to anything that the Noocracy could field, and if something did find the Little Winky then the ship could fight its way out what it couldn''t outrun or sidestep and vanish from.


    Captain Relketak was considered one of the best spy ship Captains in the Confederacy. Their instinct for positioning the ships and their detection arrays was unmatched and considered almost preternatural. At 78 years old they were one of the youngest ever to command a spy vessel at 28 five decades before.


    A Telkan who, surprisingly enough, was not part of the Telkan Marine Corps but rather the small Telkan Space Force, Captain Relketak was assigned to a Confederate vessel despite early treaties making it so that the Telkan Space Force was a separate entity from the Confederate Space Force even though Telkan Space Force officers were often tasked with commanding or serving on Confederate Space Force vessels.


    The Captain sat in the Captain''s chair with ease, leaned back and studying the screens and holotanks showing the system they had moved into only eighty hours before. She reached up and ran her hand across the top of her head, the stubby vestigial claws on her paw digging deep into her fur.


    It was a binary system, two cooler orange dwarfs orbiting one another. There were only eight planets, six of them gas giants and of those six four were super class. One planet was nothing more than a baked rock, devoid of atmosphere, liquid core, magnetosphere, or anything that could be classified as liquid, even metal. The other had an atmosphere that was a thick toxic stew, with an ocean of alkali that contained a hellish brew of dissolved heavy elements.


    It was a system rich in gas giant mining resources, even though it lacked an asteroid belt.


    But that wasn''t of interest.


    It was the ship building facilities that orbited two of the super-massive gas giants. Each held nearly fifty berths, with one having full berths and dozens of craft sitting in holding patterns waiting their turns.


    The Little Winky was finally getting into position where they could run scans on those vessels in the holding patterns. They were shielded, for some reason, by powerful jammer systems. Only an echo off of the hydrogen band deep in the supermassive gas giant had allowed the Little Winky to even detect the vessels. The ones in both ship building facilities were, of course, heavily stealthed and shielded, but that was fairly common of most species during war time.


    Still, Captain Relketak sat in the Captain''s char and stared at the holotanks and screens. While no new data had come back recently, the Little Winky was finally in position to start more active scanning on the hidden vessels.


    "Captain," the Akltak officer manning one of the sensor stations. The avian Akltak was making the equivalent of a frown as she stared at her board.


    "Yes?" Relktetak asked.


    While the ship was at ''run silent'' everyone speaking in hushed tones was a product of media.


    It wasn''t like someone talking inside a spaceship would be heard across the vacuum of space.


    "I''ve got that blip again that I told you about. It''s sporadic, I''m having a hard time getting a hold of it, but it''s definitely there," Lieutenant Senior Grade Mik<clack>Kak said, frowning. "There. I had it, less than a hundredth of a second, but it''s there."


    Relktetak got up, moving over to holotank one. "Toss it here."


    "Not much data. Might have to do a directed active scan to get more data," LSG Mik<clack>Kak said. She typed quickly and the data moved from her board to the holotank.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Captain Relketak leaned forward slightly, her tail tapping her lower back as she looked at it thoughtfully.


    A small vessel, estimated tonnage sitting right in the narrow band where frigate and corvette overlapped. Engine signature was missing, indicating either the engines were off or at too low of output for the Little Winky to detect. The hull configuration wasn''t listed, but the data was off of the ''shadow'' of the vessel in the subspace foam.


    Another hundredth of a second of detection. No additional data, just the shadow appearing and vanishing.


    If the sensor wasn''t fixed on that location in the subspace foam the Winky would have missed it.


    "See what I mean, Captain?" L(SG) Mik<clack>Kak asked.


    Captain Relktetak nodded slowly.


    "It looks like it''s getting closer," the sensor tech said.


    Captain Relktetak examined the data and nodded again. Over the last two hours the vessel had moved nearly two hundred thousand miles closer. It had shifted its Y and Z axis locations back and forth from where it was first detected, but had steadily progressed toward the Little Winky across the X axis on what Captain Relktektak identified as a least time course.


    It was definitely moving to intercept or engage.


    The vessel appeared and vanished at a steady rate, off only by a few seconds each time.


    Captain Relktetak noted that it appeared in a pattern.


    She knew where it would appear next. She typed it in and a firing carat appeared.


    "Hit it with a Ventronik signal impulse," she ordered. "Timer should be close enough to catch it."


    The sensor officer nodded, their attention going back to the board as they brought the piece of equipment known as the Ventronik online and began aiming.


    The bridge was hushed as the timer ran down.


    The Ventronik did a tight band signal bounce, a high powered signal to get the maximum detail possible in the least amount of time and with the least amount of directed particles.


    The signal came back and the data appeared in the holotank as L(SG) Mik<Clack>Kak forwarded it.


    Captain Relktetak found her eyebrow tufts rising.


    While most might not recognize that kind of ship profile, she did.


    It was old. Nobody had seen one in tens of thousands of years. Nobody had manufactured one in just as long. A marvel of technology, they had been naturally lost when the crew all died suddenly.


    A Terran Confederacy spy vessel.


    It had no life signs, no power sources, but that was to be expected.


    After all, it would have its stealth systems activated even after all these years.


    Her eyes flicked to the other holotanks, showing the Noocracy shipyards.


    "Any idea why it might be shifting its Y and Z planes, ma''am?" L(SG) Mik<clack>Kak asked.


    Captain Relktetak straightened up. "Has it launched anything that you detected?"


    "No, ma''am," the sensor officer said.


    Captain Relktetak nodded as she moved back over to her chair and sat down. "The Noocracy refit it," she tapped the control on her panel.


    The lights flashed amber twice, then red and stayed red.


    "We''re going to have to eliminate it before it warns the Noocracy forces in the system that we''re here. It''s closing in on us to get a better picture of what we are," Captain Relktetak said.


    Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Metlar''rap nodded, typing with all four hands. The Lanaktallan officer looked up. "If they are using the old Terran systems, they may be nearly in range to burn through our stealth. If they''re using known Noocracy systems, we have a half-million kilometers before they will be able to power through."


    Captain Relktetak nodded. "Exactly," she looked at the holotank displaying the system.


    "See if we can pull them back between the two supermassive gas giants at the edge of the system," she said. "They might not know what we are and if we use eddies nineteen and thirty-eight, we''ll be there in sixteen minutes instead of fifty-two hours."


    "Aye-aye, ma''am," the helmsman, a Tukna''rn, said.


    "If they use the eddies, we know for sure they''re tracking us," Captain Relktetak smiled.


    Nerves were tight as one by one all stations reported back they were ready for imminent contact as well as possible battle stations.


    At Captain Relktetak''s orders the guns and the torpedo launchers magazine''s were loaded, massive capacitors were charged, and the combat systems made ready.


    Fighting in the subspace foam was slightly different, a little trickier. Eddies and thick spots as well as ''bubbles'' and thinned areas made it so that weapon fire had to be carefully plotted.


    A skillful ship''s crew could hit an enemy on the other side of where their ship was, effectively attacking from behind, if the oddities of subspace were used correctly. The weapon''s power could be diffused or even increased.


    Captain Relktetak knew the tricks to overcharge some weapon systems by firing in careful sequence so the energy payload would merge with others that had been ''steered'' into the main ''shot'' by the eddies, thick areas, and diffuse areas.


    "She''s following us. She''s no longer moving along the Y and Z planes. She''s keeping least time course," L(SG) Mik<clack>Kak warned.


    At one point the Little Winky passed the perfect point to get a good look at the shielded vessel and the shielded shipbuilding facility.


    It matched exactly what Captain Relktetak suspected.


    Dozens, hundreds of Terran Confederacy vessels. Undoubtably lost forty-thousand years ago and drifted into Noocracy territory or orbiting the worlds that the Noocracy had taken. From small frigates and corvettes all the way up to super-dreadnaughts and even larger.


    "That''s odd," L(SG) Mik<clack>Kak said.


    "What?" Captain Relktetak was looking at the geometry. The two supermassive gas giants were in a straight line, a stellar alignment taking place, meaning that the shipyard''s vision would be blocked by the gas giants for anything that happened.


    "The ship just pinged that large group. Fairly complex and lengthy ping. I also suspect I just saw it launch a missile pod," L(SG) Mik<clack>Kak said.


    Captain Relktetak cursed.


    "They''ll know we''re here now," she snarled. She reached up and pressed the stud on her collar and the helmet deployed, her faceshield snapping into place last. "Shields up! Active pinpoint and focused sensors to 25%. Keep us at 40% stealth or better!"


    The 40% line was where there was a chance of Noocracy sensors being able to lock onto her ship at a distance. If they could keep it at 45% or better stealth rating estimation, then it would look like nothing was attacking the Noocracy salvage queen.


    "Evasive action. Fire torpedo tubes one and three," she ordered.


    "Evasive action," the helmsman answered.


    "Weapon''s free. Firing torpedo tubes one and three, targeting Noocracy vessel," her gunnery officer said.


    She watched the stealth coated subspace torpedo''s estimated location icon speed toward the Noocracy ship. It got close and the Noocracy ship vanished at the same time as the torpedo icons vanished.


    "Results?" She asked. She knew the answer before it was given.


    "Looks like they were able to knock it out," Guns said.


    "Target locked again," L(SG) Mik<clack>Kak said, not looking up, but working the sensor board to refine the data. "Definitely a Terran Confederacy hull. Looks like a Wraith Class spy ship."


    "Give them another shot. Give them the full pack," she ordered.


    "Firing torpedo tubes one through eight," Guns answered.


    Again, the torpedoes sped out. Again the torpedoes and the vessel vanished.


    It was nearly thirty seconds before L(SG) Mik<clack>Kak could get another lock. By that time the torpedo tubes were reloaded. The Little Winky fired again.


    This time there were multiple hits registered.


    "We got a piece of her. Keep it up," Captain Relktetak ordered. "Keep us back, we''re out of range of Noocracy weaponry."


    Another set of hits.


    There was a sudden atonal humming. Consoles flashed, the lights flickered, and there was a loud "WHANG" from deep in the vessel.


    "Order the VI''s to check for boarders," Captain Relktetak ordered. "Make sure we''re not about to get gutted by an insane shade."


    The Noocracy had figured out how to chuck an insane Digital Sentient or crazed eVI centuries ago.


    "Wait, signal contains security header and ID," L(SG) Mik<clack>kak said, looking up. "It claims to the Solarian Iron Dominion Vessel Tinkerbell''s Rage," she looked back down. "There''s a request for ID," she looked up. "They''re claiming that not only are we firing on a friendly vessel, we''re interfering with a priority one mission."


    Captain Reltetak shook her head. "No. No way it''s a Solarian vessel."


    The holotank flickered and a Terran made of streaming code suddenly appeared.


    "You fucking idiots," the Terran snarled. "I should blow this ship in place, you goddamn morons. You almost fucked up everything."


    The Terran slowly turned around, looking at the bridge. His body language showed his anger. He finally stopped and stared at Captain Reltetak.


    "Nice job, dumbass. Not only do you have an international incident on your hands, not only have you killed Solarian Iron Dominion sailors, you might have helped the Noocracy," the Terran snarled. He shook his head. "I''m locking you down."


    "You will do no such thing," Captain Reltetak snapped. "This is a Confederate Space Force vessel commanded by a Telkan Space Force Captain."


    The Terran leaned out slightly. "And that''s the only reason we''re not blowing you out of space, you moron."


    He shook his head.


    "It seems as if you would have bit more decorum and respect if you were indeed military," Captain Reltetak said. "Profanity and insults do not bode well for military decorum."


    The digital Terran stared at Captain Reltetak for a long moment.


    "You killed eleven of our biological crew and hit the rainbow hash lounge where nearly sixty of my cousins were getting ready. We might not have the numbers to complete our mission thanks to you. Decorum stopped the minute you fired on us, dumbass," the digital Terran said.


    The lights dimmed and most of the instruments, consoles, and holotanks shut down.


    "You aren''t going anywhere until we finish our mission," the Terran said. He glared at Captain Reltetak. "Because of you I have to stay in this junkheap instead of jumping to the Sad Day For You Empire Class Super-dreadnaught."


    He shook his head, staring at Captain Reltetak. "I blame you, personally."

 Nova Wars - Chapter Where are we?

    Make the enemy see what you want, so they expend their strength against shadows and imagination, - Noocracy Military Saying


    "You may blame me all you wish," Captain Reltetak said, shaking her head. "You were shadowing us without letting us know who you were. You entered sensor and weapon distance and engaged in a least time course at us. You followed us aggressively. You were the aggressor right up until I started firing in what is obviously a case of self-defense."


    The Digital Sentience snarled. "If you hadn''t have..."


    "What? Responded to an act of covert aggression? Perhaps you should have identified yourself through a proper manner, which are even available to active stealth ships engaged in active missions, we would not have fired upon your vessel," Captain Reltetak stated coldly. "A simple set of course changes or heading changes, which, I might remind you, we performed, would have avoided my decision to fire upon you."


    "We did! You did not perform any..."


    "Furthermore, I did not make my decision to fire upon you lightly. While the Noocracy is well known to be refurbishing and modernizing your people''s vessels from the Terran Extinction Event, there was still the chance that it could be a Solarian Iron Dominion vessel, so I ensured I pulled you to a suitable location that our duel would hopefully result in a SID vessel striking the colors where a Noocracy vessel will go down with all hands, as is their standard operating procedure," Captain Reltetak stated, brushing the red stripe across the top of her head with one hand, letting the claws dig in nicely, all the while putting forth a distant and cold yet engaged attitude.


    "We..."


    "If, and I stress, if you had engaged in properly diplomacy, with proper decorum, instead of coming screaming aboard my vessel, all of this would have been explained," Captain Reltetak said.


    "Ma''am," L(SG) Mik<clack>kak snapped, clacking their beak twice to get attention.


    "Yes?" Captain Reltetak turned slightly to stare at the sensor officer. The Solarian Digital Sentience looked angry, but then their eyes opened wide.


    "I just detected another hit upon the Solarian vessel," the L(SG) said.


    "Better late then never, I guess," the DS said sarcastically. They held out their hand and pulled a data table out of thin air, even as they put a hand to their ear. "Captain, I''m looking at their ammunition production and consumption right now."


    Captain Reltetak leaned back in the Captain''s chair, watching the Digital Sentience. On one hand, she was fascinated watching it. They hadn''t been seen in forty-thousand years, having died en-masse during the Terran Xenocide Event. On the other hand, she needed to keep a close eye on a boarder that could rip the whole ship apart in seconds if not countered properly. On the gripping hands, the digital sentience was a line of communication to the Solarian Iron Dominion ship and Captain.


    The Digital Sentience frowned. "Captain, I''m looking at what templates they manufactured and I''m detecting a bad discrepancy in the data," he stated.


    Captain Reltetak checked the ammo usage. Exactly what she had permitted.


    "Captain, I''m looking at it. They fired less than a third of what was fired upon us," the Digital Sentience said.


    That got Reltetak''s attention. She looked at the Digital Sentience and then her own helmsman, then at her security officer.


    "Isolation, now," Reltetak snapped.


    The security officer pressed their thumb against an icon that had been flashing since they were boarded.


    The Digital Sentience flashed three times and suddenly went down on their knees, cuffs appearing around their wrists, a mask appearing over their face. A collar around their neck was attached to the chain around their waist. Their ankles were cuffed with a bar to prevent them from getting their feet too close together. The chain ran from the ankle bar to the waist chain, from the middle of the wrist chain to the waist chain. Bars slammed down around the Digital Sentience.


    "Go to full stealth, deep evasive. Give us four point two seconds of red drive then crash-dive deep," Captain Reltetak snapped. "NOW!"


    The Digital Sentience looked confused as the lights snapped off, everyone''s armor went to full vacuum mode, and the atmosphere started being pumped out. There was a high pitched tone through the ship as the red-drives were activated.


    There was a bright flash outside the ship''s hull that somehow bled all the way through the hull.


    Everything went red


    Not different shades of red.


    Just red.


    red


    There was no other color


    just red


    Everything suddenly snapped back. The hull shuddered, a deep groaning noise like metal under pressure sounded out in the suits even though there wasn''t any atmosphere aboard the ship. The ship ''felt'' like it was slowly tilting forward more and more.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Chief How''wa''ard motioned to four of the midshipmen. He motioned at them to get out of their seats and stand up. The Chief tapped their harnesses and the midshipmen stood up. He pointed at where they could stand and for them to lock their boots once they had stood in the right place.


    Captain Reltetak smiled. She remembered when one of the Chiefs had done this with her during her first crash dive during her midshipman cruise.


    There was the groaning of metal over stress as the angle increased, a slight shuddering in the frame.


    "Sickbay reports three red-dive casualties. All Tier-Two, non-life threatening," Captain Reltetak heard over her suit''s speaker.


    She just nodded.


    The Digital Sentience struggled for a moment, which just resulted in them being bent over backwards slightly with their arms pulled straight out from their body.


    "Fighting makes it worse," her security officer warned. "That system is rated to hold a fully enraged Digital Sentience from the Shade Night Event, it will hold you without system stress."


    The Digital Sentience struggled again, then stopped.


    The ship was diving hard, the midshipmen''s faceplates nearly touching the floor.


    The ship began to slowly level out.


    The reports kept coming in. Minor damage to the ship. Some injuries, nobody life threatening or limb threatening. Munitions unloaded and awaiting reclamation.


    After an hour of silent running, Captain Reltetak had the silent running taken down a step.


    Air was pumped back into the ship, the lights went to dim red.


    "Well?" Captain Reltetak asked, looking over at her Akltak officer.


    "Signature was consistent with a Wraith class stealth ship exploding," L(SG) Mik<clack>kak stated. "Right as we went to red-drive."


    Captain Reltetak slowly looked up, tensing her neck and then relaxing the muscles. She reached up and combed through her red fur stripe.


    "Did they make us?" she asked.


    "I believe so. The flash right before we entered red-space was consistent with Noocracy subspace weaponry," L(SG) Mik<clack>kak stated. "Telemetry and angle suggested it was fired by the Solarian Iron Dominion vessel before it was destroyed."


    Captain Reltetak nodded. "Clever. Make us fight each other while they hammer on us, hidden and laughing at us the whole time," she said. She looked at the Digital Sentience, still chained in the holotank. "I couldn''t be sure you weren''t from a Noocracy vessel."


    The Digital Sentience just glared.


    Captain Reltetak leaned back in her chair. "Pit us against each other," she kept herself from running her hand over her head and instead flicked her ears. "How many vessels do you think they had?"


    "Two, at least. I''m willing to bet they had more, as many as eight. Keep rotating the ones being used as a stalking horse, keep the others on our firing angles popping rounds through," L(SG) Mik<clack>kak stated.


    "Run us in stealth where we can get firing solutions on the graveyard they''re busy looting," Captain Reltetak stated. She looked at the Digital Sentience. "It''s obvious to me what your mission was, but I''m afraid it isn''t going to happen. I will not ask what function the missile pod launch we detected was supposed to perform, but we have a chance here and now to carry out what part of your mission should have been."


    The Digital Sentience still glared at her.


    But she didn''t care.


    0-0-0-0-0


    "Look at the size of that fleet," one of the Midshipmen whispered.


    Captain Reltetak nodded.


    The holotank was full of ships.


    Yes, they were forty-thousand years old, but they were ships of the line, combat ships, all the same.


    Almost zero Confederacy ships.


    Terran.


    Terran to the bone.


    Some of the ships weren''t even in her databases and her databases were loaded with the most comprehensive databases of Terran Extinction Event Era ship types, known ships, and other information.


    Yet there was twenty-two different ship types, fourteen different hull types, that were not in her databases.


    Thankfully, only two super-colossus vessels, both of them parasite craft haulers.


    It didn''t change the fact that it was the largest fleet of Terran ships that Captain Reltetak had ever heard of.


    One hundred thirty eight thousand six hundred fifty two ships above the heavy destroyer range. Over two hundred thousand if heavy destroyers and under were counted.


    All in what appeared to be pristine condition.


    All just sitting in a parking orbit, all heavily stealthed by tethered buoys.


    "Options, Guns?" Captain Reltetak asked.


    Chief Gunnery Officer Max Ikriktak shook his triangular head. "I''m not sure we even can produce the ammo without running to the nearest gas-giant and refilling our tanks a dozen times."


    "Estimated time before that refit scaffolding around Supermassive Gas Giant Banjo Kablooey is finished?" Captain Reltetak asked.


    "Sixteen standard days. At the most. They''re already stress testing some of the berths and looks like they''re preparing their tugs," Guns said.


    It burned her tail that they might have to leave it all behind intact. That in the time it took the Solarian Iron Dominion and the Confederacy out here with big guns the Noocracy would have hundreds or possibly thousands of the ships refit and combat ready.


    She stood up and started pacing back and forth, her tail tapping her lower back as she stared at the holotank where the ship breakdowns were flowing back and forth.


    "They''re making preparations to move the two Gwillick class carriers into the scaffolding. It''s obvious those are their two priority vessels," Commander Largyle stated from his position at the science and technology analysis console.


    Captain Reltetak just nodded, still pacing.


    "Once they get those two operational, Captain, it will require a significant investment in firepower to dislodge anything the Noocracy wishes to do," Commander Shre''dya''ar stated from the tactical console, the Lanaktallan''s voice deep and serious. "They each carry fifteen thousand parasite class each. It appears their warsteel mark-one armor is intact, and we must operate under the belief that the creation engine and nanoforges are able to be rekindled."


    More nods as she slowly walked around the holotank.


    Finally she stopped and stared at the bridge crew.


    They had gone over the data a dozen times, inviting suggestions through the officers and even the senior NCO''s.


    There was nothing that anyone could come up with that could somehow take out the Terran vessels.


    There was a tap from one of the holotanks.


    Captain Reltetak turned to look at the Digital Sentience, one Commodore Twisting Python, who was sitting in a chair in a cell.


    "You have input?" Reltetak asked.


    "Yes," the Digital Sentience said. It gave a smile.


    A smile full of teeth.


    Too many teeth.


    It made Reltetak''s hackles raise up.


    "But you won''t like it," Python said. The smile got wider.


    "What?" Reltetak asked.


    "Let''s just say," the DS said, his teeth glittering. "It''s one size fits all."


    "What?" Reltektak asked again. "Don''t play games. What do you propose?"


    The Terran was right.


    Reltetak didn''t like it.


    But the Terran was right.


    And damn it, Reltetak could tell from the grin he knew he was right as he finished his proposal.


    "It''s the only way to be sure."

 Nova Wars - Chapter Where Are You?

    Captain Reltetak didn''t like it.


    A three pronged plan, all of which could result in destroying the captured fleet in isolation, but between all three, nothing would survive.


    She had to face the truth. Warsteel Mark-One could handle a nova-spark at the distance from the stellar mass the supermassive gas giant was at. True, there would be heavy damage, but the hull and the majority of the warsteel would survive.


    If they novasparked both of the sun, which were cooling orange stars, and hatred-sparked the gas giants, it was estimated that up to 80% of the fleet could survive.


    Even without power or battlescreens.


    She shook her head. It was easy to read about how tough Terran equipment was but having the reality jammed in your face was another.


    Which made her realize that command was VASTLY under-estimating the Noocracy.


    The Noocracy had knocked out a SID stealth survey vessel. Had detected her own.


    Without being spotted.


    Their weapons were good enough quality to knock out a SID vessel.


    Their stealth systems were good enough to remain undetected while doing so.


    Their sensors were good enough to track and hold both her ship and the SID ship.


    They had the ship numbers to have at least three and possibly up to a dozen just in this system alone.


    The system detection systems were sensitive enough to detect them.


    The system detection systems stealth systems were robust enough to keep them hidden.


    Captain Reltetak didn''t like what all that meant.


    She had heard the SID forces were bogged down, fighting on planets rather than just taking the system the more ''clean'' way with naval forces like so many at the Confederate Naval College insisted was the ''One True Way'' to take over a stellar system.


    She didn''t doubt the SID forces on the ground. Pound for pound, even naked, the Terrans would rip someone''s guts out.


    But it bothered her that a navy that should be at least within spitting distance of her own ship was suckered just as simply as she was.


    If it had only been her suckered, she wouldn''t feel this way because the SID would have had the tech or training edge on the Noocracy.


    If it had only been the SID suckered, she wouldn''t feel this way because she was an allied force and would have had the tech or training edge on the Noocracy.


    But no. The Slappers had suckered both her and the SID Wraith ship. Gotten them to engage each other, then destroyed one while believing they had destroyed the other.


    Flawless Noocracy Victory.


    It galled her.


    The plan, offered by the captured Digital Sentience SID Commodore Twisting Python, galled her too.


    It was dangerous. Not just to her crew, but to her command, to her captive POW that she was honor and legally bound to protect, and possibly to the Confederacy.


    But she felt she had no choice.


    For one thing, her ship lacked novasparks and hate-burners and planet crackers. Even if she wanted to and it was strategically feasible and useful, she couldn''t run off any for use.


    Her Marine contingent was thin. On most Confederate ships they were thin, the Confederacy largely having outsourced their Marine contingents to the Telkan Marine Corps for the last twenty-two thousand years, and even more since the Mar-gite Resurgence.


    She slowly walked through the spinal corridor, her thick grippy soft-soles silent on the variable hardness deck plating, running her hand over the red-stripe the now went from the tip of her nose, up between her eyes, over the top of her head, and down the back of her head to her ruff.


    Beneath her flesh her skull was no longer white along the stripe.


    It was red.


    There was only red.


    It had grown after the latest red-dive, but the ship doctor said it should be fine.


    She stopped to read one of the notification that popped out from the holosign. Just a reminder from Department of the Space Force that the uniform change scheduled for next month had been rolled back and canceled as well as the uniform change that had occurred two months ago so that everyone''s uniform had to adhere to last years standards.


    At the bottom it read that lack of units in supply or post exchanges was not an excuse to be out of uniform and that the Secretary of Space Force encouraged all commanders to bring up those who did not adhere to the uniform up before the Captain''s Mast.


    It didn''t answer any of the questions going through her head.


    The data provided by her prisoner didn''t help either.


    She knew the unhappy facts. She even double-checked it with the ship''s database.


    There were twelve million green mantids in Confederate Space, including on Mantid Prime. Like a lot of species, the Mantid were suffering a contraction that experts blamed on peace, prosperity, and a lack of pressure to have children.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    There were over two hundred thousand ships in the flotilla she needed to destroy.


    Those ships, fully crewed would have anywhere from two hundred to a mind boggling three hundred thousand green mantid aboard them.


    Those ships, for emergencies, had a minimum of fifty all the way to eighty thousand green mantid in hypersleep storage.


    When her prisoner''s original ship had still been carrying out its mission, before detection, it had determined that not only was the ''emergency crew'' bank still intact for non-Terran personnel, but the ''maintenance crew'' had managed to get into hypersleep.


    There was eleven times the amount of green mantid currently living within the Confederacy aboard those ships.


    Worse, it was a well known fact, that she had doublechecked on the computer to make sure it wasn''t one of those things that everyone knew but was bullshit, that the Slappers liked to eat mantids.


    They did.


    They had tried to eat all the Mantid diplomats prior to the war declaration.


    Those ships, unpowered, were still some of the most rugged and tough ships in the known universe. Her own vessel was made of warsteel mark eight, the SID ship had been made of mark-one with armor a meter thick.


    Most of them were mark-zero or mark-one and had armor up to a half-kilometer thick.


    Many, if not most, of those ships would survive well enough to be salvaged even if she popped the entire system at once.


    Another point was that the cosmic alignment was over, meaning she couldn''t squeeze the vessels between two explosions.


    She paused again, looking around, before driving a fist into the wall hard enough to make her hand hurt.


    She was pinned against the wall and the Malevolent Universe was cackling while the Big Green Weenie was waving right in her face sans lube.


    That left her prisoner''s suggestion.


    And she didn''t like it.


    If she was to ask, at 2 AM, at the Officer''s Club, what someone thought the prisoner, one Terran Digital Sentience, hashed and raised on Terra, trained on Terra, would have suggested to her, ninety-nine out of one hundred would have yelled "NOVASPARK!" and asked for their free drink.


    But, oh no, in hindsight that was going off of stereotypes, the exact thing an intelligence Space Force officer was supposed to avoid.


    What it had suggested, with bared glittering teeth, was the most unlikable suggestion Captain Reltetak had ever been presented with, and she had once made the mistake of picking up a drunk Telkan Marine while she too was drunk and been presented with some suggestions she hadn''t liked at the time.


    She slugged the bulkhead again and headed down to the Marine area.


    She wouldn''t ask the Bosun to make the selection. She wouldn''t ask the Gunny to make the selection.


    She had made the selection herself at her personal computer.


    Now, she had to inform the Marine of her decision.


    Because you didn''t ask for a Marine to volunteer.


    You ordered them.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Lance Corporal Mwillik saw the Captain blink several times when the Gunny stopped in front of him and the Captain looked down at him.


    He knew what had just gone through the Captain head and he grinned widely to let her know that he knew that she now knew that he knew what she had been thinking.


    "Lance Corporal Mwillik," the Gunny said.


    "Indeed," Captain Reltetak said. She looked him over. "Recon?"


    "Aye, Ma''am," Mwillik snapped.


    "Raider?" Captain Reltetak asked.


    "Aye, Ma''am," Mwillik snapped.


    "Ghost?" Captain Reltetak asked.


    "Aye, Ma''am," Mwillik said.


    The Captain turned to the Gunny and the Bosun. "His gear is in the armories?"


    Both nodded.


    She turned back to Mwillik. "Nobody else has your training?"


    "No, Ma''am," Mwillik said.


    The Captain gave a frustrated sigh. "Very well," she turned to the Gunny. "Get him kitted up. I''ll handle the rest."


    The Gunny nodded. "Aye-aye, Ma''am."


    As soon as the Captain left the Gunny motioned at Mwillik to follow.


    He did so.


    "You''ll need alcohol. You try to do this sober, you''ll wish you were dead and fail the mission. You''ll be on a timer," the Gunny said.


    "There''s always a timer, Gunny," Mwillik answered.


    "We don''t have your ghost pack, so you can''t walk through walls, but we have everything else," Gunny said.


    "The ghost pack has a slight squarshed quark leakage that might get detected," the Bosun said.


    "Known issue, Bosun," Mwillik said, his eyes straight ahead. Unlike a lot of Marines, his eyes were still biological.


    "I''ve got a bottle of Fighting Turkey Whiskey from Mantid Prime in my locker," Gunny said.


    "Green label or black?" Mwillik asked.


    "Does it make a difference?" Gunny asked.


    "For what I think I''m going to be doing, green is better," Mwillik said. "If it''s black, I''ll need a couple of cough drops to swallow."


    "Any type?" the Bosun asked.


    "Got any of the AAFES generic cough drops?" Mwillik asked.


    The Bosun nodded.


    "I''ll want five," Mwillik said. He closed his eyes for a second and took five deep breaths in through his nose with his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth, exhaling sharply through his mouth.


    "Let''s it on," he said.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Captain Reltetak stared at the piece of hardware.


    Every scout ship and recon and spy ship had it.


    Nobody had used it, for the most part, in as long as Captain Reltetak could remember.


    The officer in charge of it looked up from the panel.


    "It''s live," she said, flexing her pecs nervously. "I''ve got point to point lock with the target. We''re at six and a half million miles, within easy range."


    Captain Reltetak turned to look at Lance Corporal Mwillik.


    She still couldn''t believe someone that had made it through every point of the spear operator school was a Puntimat, much less one of their tiny males.


    Lance Corporal Mwillik was dressed all in black. It looked like rubber, complete with a breather, goggles, and a skin tight outfit. One his back was a heavy pack. Strapped to his chest was a thick block of molycircs.


    That contained one Commodore Twisting Python, Solarian Iron Dominion Space Force.


    "Are you ready, Lance Corporal?" Captain Reltetak asked.


    The Puntimat male just nodded.


    Chief Warrant Officer Grade Three Shwestill''swole tapped a single key and the door unlocked.


    The clack was loud.


    The door swung open with a hiss.


    Lance Corporal Mwillik moved in, stopping in the center and going down on one knee.


    He thumbed the button on the heavy molycirc block on his chest and "Zzzz" appeared in red letters. He then went over his gear quickly. After less than sixty seconds he pulled his short barreled SMG close to his shoulder, planted on one fist against the hexagon plates that made up the floor, and bowed his head.


    "Initiating injection," was all he said, his voice soft.


    Captain Reltetak heard it both from the Lance Corporal and the Chief''s board.


    "Initiating boarding procedure," the Chief said.


    The door swung shut and Captain Reltetak was startled to see the Lance Corporal''s vitals suddenly drop to almost nothing. She looked at the Chief who looked back.


    "The injection knocks him out and stops him from being able to form memories for the next sixty seconds," she said.


    There was a loud humming and mist began to leak from the hexagonal chamber, thickening on the floor around the chamber.


    "Quantum byproduct. Ignore it," the Chief said.


    Captain Reltetak just nodded.


    There was a humming noise and the lights dimmed then brightened.


    The Chief checked her board. "Outgoing mat-trans successful," she said.


    "Did he make it aboard?" Reltetak asked.


    "Target mat-trans is in sleeper mode. It will not broadcast signals. We won''t know," the Chief said.


    Captain Reltetak bit back a curse, just nodding. "I''ll be on the bridge. Contact me the moment you know," she said.


    The Rigellian female just nodded.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The drug broke down almost immediately.


    Lance Corporal Mwillik blinked several times. He reached down to his belt and thumbed the single-signal split spooky quark device three times as he looked up.


    The walls were milky white shot through with gold and silver threads.


    He smiled.


    0-0-0-0-0


    "Ma''am?" the voice of Chief Shwestill''swole was perfectly calm.


    "Go ahead," Captain Reltetak said.


    "Signal from Raider-Alpha-Actual," the Chief said.


    "Mission is go."

 Nova Wars Chapter GPS Coordinate Unavailable

    Puntimats were well known within the Confederacy. The females were nearly four feet tall and slender, with large mammaries, thighs, and glutes, with soft bluish fur coating the majority of their bodies, conical ears lifted up from their heads and large expressive eyes. Roughly 7.4% of the Confederate military was made up of Puntimat females. A large disparity compared to their representation in the Confederacy''s population, most of whom were career enlisted rather than officers. They were known for their soft voices, patience, empathy, and caring.


    That, and working the conex brothels, making the brothel themselves if one had not been established. Barracks bunnies were usually depicted as a Puntimat in society media Rule-34.


    Nobody was startled to see a Puntimat female in the Confederate military, any more than they were startled to see a Rigellian female.


    A male? Now that was a different story.


    Due to a quirk of biology there was less than one male for every two hundred and fifty females. They were delicate appearing, slender of body, with very short soft fur, and shorter than the female at three to three and a half feet (roughly a meter and spare change in inches) tall.


    Not too long ago in their history, men were fought over in battles to the death.


    Males were gentle and caring, they emitted a pheromone that calmed females down. They were often referred to as being the analog to the Rigellian Ducks. Small, gentle, quiet, living lives of comfort and ease.


    Puntimat society emulated Pubvian societal norms when it came to the males. Covered head to toe, usually wearing an environmental suit with a mask, lest a female be driven into a hormonal frenzy at the sight.


    It was strange to see one in the wild.


    It was weirder to see one outside of Luleervee Prime, the Puntimat homeworld.


    It was downright fucking unheard of to see one in the Confederate military. The number could be counted on one hand.


    Lermat Mwillik was strange even for male.


    He was short, at just shy of a meter by two inches. He was wiry, like he was made up of wire and leather covered by plush carpet. His eyes held a hard glint of amusement at the Malevolent Universe.


    He had also passed Confederate Marine training.


    And every special warfare class he was ever offered.


    It would surprise nobody who knew him that he had greeted the return of TerraSol with immediately trying to sign up for schools only available in the Sol System. That he had been chosen for the mission surprised none of his compatriots, leadership, or bunk-mates.


    After all, if you were going to chose someone for something that looked like a suicide mission you should probably choose the guy whose training suggested that the person in question thought suicide missions just might be survivable and would probably be a whole lot of fun.


    Lance Corporal Lermat Mwillik was just that Puntimat.


    In media he would be portrayed as nervous or excited, or perhaps afraid of the upcoming mission.


    He was not afraid when he painted bright red eyebrows on his forehead, a red shallow but wide V over the bridge of his nose, and three chevrons on each cheek with a red camo paintstick. He was perfectly at ease as he ran the self-tests on every piece of bioware and cyberware the Confederate Marine Corps had implanted in his body. He went through each of his weapons, each piece of gear with cold methodical precision. Multiple time he replaced parts or even entire pieces of equipment.


    The armorer did not argue with him when he turned in some of the small precision milled parts of his weapons.


    The armorer respected LC Mwillik.


    Moving to the mat-trans had no fear for LC Mwillik.


    It would burn his brain.


    Too many ''drops'' from a mat-trans would regale him to ''the Idiots'' out by a Hellspace rip that measured over a light year.


    He would go mad.


    His brain would be shattered.


    Again, media would show him as frightened or overly wary.


    He stared at the hexagonal chamber for a long moment, looking at the creme colored armor glass that was shot through with threads of crimson and emerald and sapphire. He admired the beauty. He had read that the manufacture of the armored glass walls had to be precise, and the manufacturing method, due to impurities, created a different type of glass.


    In ancient times, they had been forged in secret deep in the secret war forges of the Hamburger Kingdom, then in the fires of Betrayed Mercury''s Wrath Foundries, and now they could only be purchased from the Idiots.


    The glass was beautiful.


    He took a single deep breath, knowing it would be the last breath of ship''s air from the Willy until he returned from his mission. He put the rebreather in his mouth, sealed the flexible face mask, and entered the mat-trans chamber.


    He knelt down in the recovery position and then thumbed the injector.


    His brain went still.


    The mat-trans moved him from one pad to the next.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Popular media showed teleportation as disintegrating the original and building a copy somewhere else. Other media showed the mat-trans as tearing apart the person at a molecular level and somehow moving the sub-atomic particles elsewhere to be put together.


    All of it was wrong. It was why scientific investigation of the mat-trans dead ended every time.


    It moved the person, the physical, the objects, intact to the destination.


    There was no disintegration.


    No tearing molecules apart.


    It moved everything on the pad, intact, to the next. It knocked them out and moved them.


    But the nightmares.


    The nightmares could drive someone mad.


    However, without being knocked out...


    ...the living died.


    The door shut.


    It began to hum.


    LC Mwillik took no chances and thumbed the button to inject the drug into his system that would stop all brain activity and turn off his bioware and cyberware. No nerve impulses but what was needed to keep his body alive for ten seconds.


    The drugs that had stopped his brain from firing except for the brainstem and deep autonomous reflex areas oxidized in his bloodstream. His heart stopped just as it would have made a beat. Organs ceased operation, hung up just as they started an operation, their receptors full of initiation chemicals.


    The mat-trans cycled.


    At three seconds the pad moved him to the target pad.


    For five seconds he was exposed to eternity. Exposed to all of time and space, standing, briefly, where it had no meaning.


    His brain recorded nothing and nothing touched his soul.


    At nine seconds he was on the receiving pad.


    At ten seconds he was fully arrived.


    He blinked, his brain unlocking and allowing him to think and form memories again.


    Lance Corporal Mwillik was up and moving before the quantum fog had dissipated. He thumbed the signal device three times, letting control know he was fully intact and carrying out the mission. He then thumbed the button on the case, checking the readout. It responded with a set of "Zzzz" and then an alpha-numeric code that LC Mwillik knew meant the DS was still in stasis.


    The smile on Mwillik''s face, hidden by his black flex-armor mask was because the Digital Sentience would be able to brag that it had gone through the mat-trans without being driven insane or dying after the mission.


    The block that the DS was inside of stopped all molecular and sub-molecular activity for whatever was inside the heavy insulation sleeve. That piece of gear was Marine Raider gear, hidden behind walls of junk and rusted crap that the Raiders usually used.


    Once in a while, there was good stuff hidden in the pile of cast-offs from the other services.


    LC Mwillik stopped in front of the large door. He could feel the weight from it. He knew, from classes during Raider training that it didn''t matter where the door was. Shipboard, facility, a shack in the woods, the door would be multi-ton vanadium-titanium steel alloy that somehow had an inverted matter layer of unstable inverted molecules and atoms, making the door virtually indestructible.


    It would require a code and other authorization to open, most of them unique according to the door.


    But Mwillik was a initiate to secrets.


    Pulling a thin can of temporary paint that would evaporate after a short period of time, he quickly drew a complex pattern on the floor, with lines and runes moving to the door. It took long moments but Mwillik knew better than to hurry.


    He finished it with a drop of a Marine-Chow TastyTreat? in the middle of the circle.


    There was a puff of smoke, even in the vacuum.


    A strange creature stood in the circle. It looked it over with large, bulging eyes. It started chewing on its barbed tail thoughtfully before bending down and picking up the TastyTreat. It nibbled at it.


    "TriTip Buffalo Steak. Nice," the creature said in perfect vacuum. It turned to the door then back to Mwillik. Mwillik felt his palm burn and knew the code to the door had been temporarily burned into his flesh.


    The creature vanished.


    Mwillik held his hand out to the door and recited the prayer in ancient Terran.


    "Open you stupid piece of shit you low budget hunk of crap you made by the lowest bidder crap pile," he intoned.


    The door slid open silently.


    Mwillik moved into the dark interior of the warship. His goggles made everything as bright as day, using cast-off sub-atomic particles to provide a near-pure visual of the walls. He could see dead and unused cabling as well as other infrastructure elements.


    The door closed behind him, but that was the past.


    Raiders didn''t look back. Raiders were sharks, and sharks didn''t have necks. You know who had necks? Sheep. And you know what happened to sheep? They got their throats cut.


    There was graffiti on the walls. Not the entertaining and fun TerraSol graffiti involving sexual organs, military humor, and other topics.


    There were two types of graffiti.


    Standard Ornislarp and what was considered High Ornislarp.


    One was basically stating that the door couldn''t be opened no matter what was brought to bear. That the chamber or perhaps only the door was on virtually every ship and seemed to contain its own power source. The contents on the other side of the door were unknown. Blowing open the chamber seemed to require weapons powerful enough to destroy the starship at the same time.


    It was written in what was known as "Eat Speech" by High Ornislarp.


    High Ornislarp had no words for ally and the like.


    Only "Eater" and "Eaten/To be eaten", nothing else.


    Mwillik knew that the Ornislarp did not care for any other race. They viewed all other races as food. Even if the race was a member of their military species or their worker species the Ornislarp would eat any of the ''non-productive'' members or just any of any other species that the individual Ornislarp just decided to eat at that moment.


    There was the ''scent annotation'' markers that were used to add the scent markers to writing that could not be skratchensniphed or have scent added or would exist longer than the scent would last.


    He could read that the Ornislarp themselves were getting frustrated that they could not get this particular design of door open. One marker commented that this ship was too large and too important to attempt an anti-matter inversion charge to destroy the door and all other attempts to force the door open had only resulted in a destroyed ship.


    The software and hardware in his goggles took actual pictures of the walls and writing, then across the various spectrums. The software would record any writing or anything that held Mwillik''s attention for longer than a full second.


    Part of him wanted to shift routes, head for the bridge or the data center or the combat information or the damage control center, but he pushed down the idea and instead kept heading for where he needed to go.


    His goggles showed him a line in mid-air to follow, based on the last known blueprint of the hull of the ship. He ignored the panels that had been taken off of the corridor walls, floor, ceiling. He moved past where data-cables had been spliced or hooked into.


    Finally he reached where the route had led to.


    When he pulled open the panel the flywheel cranks were exposed. He began pumping the lever, feeling the ''thickness'' of the resistance. The amber lights went on.


    The heavy blast door lowered and Mwillik could see that atmosphere was being pumped into the small room.


    The second amber light came on and a locker unlocked.


    Third amber light and there was a faint trembling of the wall to Mwillik''s left. His suit spotted it and warned him, but he had been briefed that such a thing might happen. He still kept one ocular organ on the vibration, but wasn''t worried about it.


    First green light.


    He kept pumping.


    It was easy. He had done worse during Marine training. Pumped a heavy bar attached to a high tension flywheel along with a dozen other recruits, in the rain, shivering cold but at the same time sweating/panting or otherwise trying to bleed off excessive body heat.


    The bar clacked.


    There was silence for a moment.


    The locker beeped. The door unlocked.


    His implant ID''d the being that stepped through.


    Captain Donald Klakikak Donaldson McDonald MacDonald Donaldsan.


    TerraSol Space Force Navy.


    The Captain looked at Mwillik.


    "Read me in, Marine," he looked around. "And I''d say you should do it quickly."

 Nova Wars ChApTeR GaLaCtIc PoSiTiOnInG sYsTeM eXe FaIlUrE

    More beings that have been turned away for some perceived lack have gone on to win medals for honor, courage, and excellence than other group. It''s the ultimate irony of the very standards that make a fighting force effective. - General No''Drak, Second Precursor War


    Mwillik knew that for him to explain it would take too long, he''d get things wrong, and there were too many fine details only a ship captain would understand or even remember.


    That limitation had been built into his mission preparation.


    Rather than start speaking, he simply held up a thin plastic bar that held a datachip in one end.


    "This will get you up to speed faster, Captain," Mwillik said.


    His suit translated it into Treana''ad battle click. A language that was virtually unchanged for millions of years. Barring that, he had pre-Council/Confederacy Conflict Lanaktallan Military Common Speech loaded into his knowsoft.


    The Captain took the plastic ''softstik'' and pushed it against his temple.


    Mwillik could hear the click as the software chip was loaded into the Captain''s knowsoft jacks.


    The Captain blinked a few times, his fingertips twitching, as Mwillik turned and moved to the door. The Puntimat checked the settings quickly, then turned back to the Captain.


    "Good luck, sir," Mwillik said. He opened the door, the permeable forcefield over the doorway glimmering as it prevented the atmosphere from leaking out into the empty corridor beyond.


    The Captain just nodded, still blinking with his fingers twitching.


    Mwillik moved into the corridor, making a least-time course back to his target.


    The mat-trans.


    Again, he moved in and knelt down in the recovery position as the door silently swung shut. He reached down and tapped the button.


    His brain froze.


    The door closed and the mat-trans cycled.


    -----


    Aboard Confederate Space Force Little Winky, Captain Reltetak stared at the holotank as first one, then another, then another of the Terran fleet went from yellow to light blue, switching from ''possible threat'' to ''starting to become under friendly control'' as the Marine Raider kept doing his job.


    "That''s twenty-five," Commander K''Lerkik stated. "Anything after this from Mwillik is exceeding best possibly projections."


    She closed her eyes and pinched to either side of her nostrils.


    She had sent him on a suicide mission. She had known it when she sent him.


    But then, not only had he known it was a suicide mission, he had volunteered and insisted upon it.


    Mission parameters had allowed the Marine to break off after he ''captured'' the five biggest flagships at any time he felt that the mission ran the risk of becoming suicidal.


    Captain Reltetak made herself sit and watch as the fleet that the Slappers had hoped to salvage slowly began to switch from being in the Noocracy''s control to the Confederacy''s control.


    She''d heard that Terrans could be completely cloned, have their mental engrams written onto the smooth brains of clones, and come back as if they had never been killed.


    But, like many, she had just chalked it up to forty-thousand years worth the rumors about a species that left strange and bizarre artifacts, destroyed worlds and stellar systems, and had made such a mark on every species they met.


    But she had watched the icons go from yellow to dark blue to light blue.


    She appreciated that none of the commanders had tried to use ''secure'' communication systems that had been developed 40,000 years ago and had been dissected and reverse engineered by the Noocracy for almost as long.


    She appreciated the self-discipline and the adherence to regulations.


    Still, the fact that the Terrans were sticking to obvious intelligence and protocol didn''t make any of it any less stressful.


    Another ship went dark blue.


    "There the tugs go," Lieutenant Senior Grade Mik<clack>Kak said from her sensor station. The Akltak officer tapped a few keys and the icons for the tugs appeared in the tank. "They''re going for the two super-colossus carriers."


    Captain Reltetak just nodded silently.


    "Once that happens, the whole thing will come apart," Guns, Chief Gunnery Officer Max Ikriktak, said. The big Treana''ad tapped his board. "We still don''t have any data on the Noocracy stealth vessels."


    "What''s the status on the drones and buoys?" Captain Reltetak asked.


    The Treana''ad didn''t look up. "Ready for deployment."


    "Stay on them. I want them activated before the order finishes leaving my speech cortex," Captain Reltetak said. She looked at the holotank again. "This is going to go sideways. I just know it."


    -----If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    Mwillik moved into the mat-trans chamber, going down on one knee. He pressed the button and his brain froze. The door shut silently and the lights brightened and dimmed, pulsating, as a humming sound worked up as the quantum byproduct that looked like fog gathered.


    Mwillik vanished.


    His brain unfroze and he was still in the recovery position. He looked down at his chest, thumbing the ''you still alive?'' button and getting back "Zzzzzz" for an answer.


    He moved out of the room and stopped.


    Normally, the control room would be empty. Obviously onboard a starship, close and claustrophobic, with dim lights and a heavy blast door at the far end. Only a handful of consoles to control the system should have been present, all of them locked out with a security warning onscreen.


    Instead, the room was larger, almost spacious. The desks that the computers were sitting on had heavily armored panels facing him. The lights were bright, some type of glowing tube rather than the thin glowstrips that Mwillik was used to.


    There was also a male Terran wearing dappled green clothing sitting at one of the desks. He had on shiny black leather boots that were on the desk, with a Treana''ad smokestick in one hand and a brown bottle in the other.


    Mwillik froze in place. Everyone knew a Terran couldn''t see you if you held still. Their vision was based on movement.


    "I can still see you," the Terran said.


    Mwillik still held still.


    "Still can see you," the Terran said. He took a drag off the cigarette and then a drink off the bottle.


    Mwillik moved slowly across the room.


    "Still see you."


    Mwillik went still again, slowly moving his hand up to press the button.


    "Zzzzz" came back.


    "I can literally see you moving," the Terran said.


    Mwillik stopped. "Why are you here?" he asked.


    "Mom sent me," the Terran said. He shook his head. "She wants to know why you think she should help you."


    "Mom?" Mwillik asked.


    "Mom. The Detainee. Not the Lady Lord of Hell. That''s someone else. The Detainee, that''s it," the Terran said.


    Mwillik shook his head, reaching down to touch the button on his hip. "I am out of drugs and having a mat-trans dream," he said.


    The Terran shook his head. "No. Not yet. You will soon though," he said. He shrugged. "Like most people, it will tear apart your mind and leave you either a drooling wreck or full of sound and fury but little thought."


    "I am not afraid. I have been..." Mwillik started.


    "Given your mission. Yes," the Terran said. "Mom figured out what it was," he shrugged. "My younger brothers are currently onboard other ships, carrying out identical missions to yours," he gave a sudden tooth baring grin. "It''ll be a lot easier for my little brothers to do it than have you trying to appear aboard over a hundred thousand ships."


    Mwillik shook his head. "Not quite that many are my target."


    The Terran nodded. "Enough are," he pulled his boots off of the desk, sitting up. He reached down, grabbed a bottle, and set it down. That done, he leaned back and put his boots on the desktop again. "Have a beer. It''ll help your headache."


    Mwillik nodded. His head did hurt. It was getting worse and worse too.


    This is just a mat-trans dream, he thought to himself as he moved forward and picked up the bottle. His suit''s palm sensors reported it was silicate glass with minor impurities to give it a brown color by visible light. It was at four degrees scientific temperature calculus and contained twelve ounces of fluid. It had liquid H2O beaded on its surface due to condensation.


    "It''s beer," the Terran said.


    Mwillik gave the ''beer'' permissions and moved the rebreather out of his mouth. He put the bottle against his still masked mouth and took a ''drink'' from the bottle. The data appeared in his vision, the chemical breakdown of the substance. The selectively permeable membrane that the suit was made up of would only allow gas, liquid, and solids to pass through it that were permitted.


    "BEER" appeared in his vision. He blinked and the membrane allowed the liquid through and to his thirsty mouth.


    He took a long drink, the cold and crisp taste easing his raw throat.


    This mat-trans dream is very detailed, he thought to himself.


    "Have a seat," the Terran said.


    "All right," Mwillik wondered how the Terran, who had been extinct for 40,000 years, could speak Confederate Standard so easily.


    Another data point that it was all a mat-trans dream.


    Mwillik went over and sat down in one of the chairs, noticing that his feet were a good six inches off of the floor and he had to scoot forward in the chair. He frowned behind his mask.


    It seemed like the dream would at least accommodate his small size.


    "Now what?" Mwillik asked.


    The Terran exhaled more smoke.


    "Now we wait."


    "For what?"


    The Terran smiled, baring his meat tearing teeth again.


    "For Mom."


    -----


    Captain Reltetak watched the holotank as nearly thirty ships went dark blue to signify the emergency captain system had been spun up. She got up from her chair and walked over, rewinding the footage and then running at high speed.


    After the sixth boarding action other ships had gotten involved, obviously, and begun boarding ships at roughly two dozen at a time. They were able to bring up the emergency captain system within ten to fifteen minutes, then moved to another ship.


    Over the past few hours hundreds of the ships had been brought online and were now pale blue.


    "Tugs are on final approach," she heard.


    "Go to battle stations," she ordered, moving back to her chair and closing her face shield.


    -----


    The ship was massive. Over a hundred kilometers long, twenty kilometers thick, sixty kilometers wide at the widest. It had dozens of flight bays, still sealed with armored door. It had scores of guns.


    It had also sat derelict for 40,000 years before the Noocracy had found it in the system, just orbiting the gas giant silently. The computers keeping it in a holding patter along with over a hundred thousand other ships. The ships still had power, still had basic computer systems still running for maintenance systems.


    A larger fleet than most star nations, just sitting there, in a parking orbit, in pristine condition and ready for use.


    The discovery led to the Noocracy starting work on ship maintenance latticework around one of the smaller gas giants, using extraction methods reverse engineered from tantalizing technology.


    The discovery had occurred only a decade prior to the Terran Re-Emergence.


    Now, the Terrans were back and the priority was to take the ships and refit them for use by the Noocracy military forces in order to fight the Confederacy and the Terrans.


    So, the tugs moved in on the marked airlocks with crews ready to take over the ships and move them to the repair berths. Equipment and supplies would have to be swapped out. Chairs, beds, medical systems, food systems, other parts would have to be removed and replaced.


    The Noocracy was sure it could get the ships refitted within a year.


    The only problem was keeping the Terrans or anyone else from defeating the Noocracy in open battle.


    The system command was worried.


    Two stealth vessels had been spotted by covert security vessels.


    While the covert security vessels were sure they had destroyed both vessels before they could do anything, system command was still worried.


    Which is why they had sent for a security detail from the space navy forces.


    The tug extended the docking connector, which mated smoothly with the Terran airlock. Both the docking connector and the airlock were designed to connect with different types of systems, both of them adaptable enough to work together.


    The atmosphere equalized between the ships.


    The airlock opened up on the tug. An entire boarding crew trudged down the docking connector, then waited for the Terran ship airlock to cycle.


    Once that was done, the airlocks closed and the ship disconnected, pulling back to move into proper placement to use its massive, oversized engines to pull the huge Terran vessel into position.


    Once it was in approximate position, it ran a single ''ping'' to ensure that there was no debris that might get in the way of the tractor beams.


    -----


    Captain Reltetak saw the sensor pulse from the tug.


    It was strong enough it burned through stealth all over the system.


    "Engage the enemy."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 126

    Of course they give us camo sticks to paint our faces with. What''s the fuck-fuck circus without the clowns. - SFC Bit.nek, 12th Telkan Marine Division, 35 2PW


    We didn''t know.-- From "The Darkness of the Hasslehoff", Admiral (Upper Decks) of the Warsteel (Formerly Grand Most High Executor) Mru''udaDa''ay, EPOW Camp 90210, New Singapore Press, TerraSol, 2nd Year Post-Sol Invasion


    No matter how well you plan there will always be some detail that you overlooked. A good plan can adapt to that detail.


    A bad one, well, we know what happens with bad plans. - General of the Iron P''Kank, Treana''ad Officer''s Course Graduation Lecture, Class 48,818


    Who knows what would have happened if humans had been left to just play. There are ruins of those who came before that somehow ascended to something else, possibly pure energy, and went beyond the petty concerns of the universe. The humans have surpassed those ancient people''s achievements, who knows where they might have gone. Instead, each of us, every one of us, have attacked them, and forced them to turn what could have been technology for peace and advancement into the cold tools of war. - Thoughts of Terra - Blanarkak Numekrekvian, Mulmanik Philospher


    It is a miracle designed by an insane genius. It was constructed in a place beyond imagination and theory. A vast mechanism, beyond understanding. A mechanism that does not even fully understand itself. A creation, a mechanism, a device interlocking jeweled movements cobbled together by a lunatic with a sledgehammer.


    I can no more describe it to you than you can describe a dream. - Nakteti the Traveler


    Mwillik looked at the lemur, who was crushing out the cigarette before dropping it into the empty beer bottle that he then put into the reclaimer built into the six-pack at his feet. He''d never actually seen a Mad Lemur of Terra in the living flesh but he had seen plenty of artwork, most of it lewd, of them. He admired the heavy muscle and bone, tendon and flesh. The square skull of the male, designed to take hard hits to the forward facing structures. Mwillik knew that unlike most species in the Confederacy, the Mad Lemurs of Terra had never undergone gentling at the hands of the Lanaktallan.


    Mwillik had a lot in common with the lemur.


    He was a genetic throwback, a freak of nature, a Puntimat still built for fighting and winning.


    Of course, he was smart enough to know that the lemur would rip him part bare handed.


    "Grip strength alone would kill you," the lemur said. He held up his hands. "Three hundred fifty pounds per square inch."


    Mwillik nodded. "Twenty-five," he said, holding up his gloved hands.


    The Terran clacked his teeth. "Five hundred pounds per square inch bite strength unmodified. Thanks to the hardware, chrome, and vatflesh I''ve got, I''m sitting at about two thousands bite strength, grip strength of at about a thousand pounds per square inch."


    Mwillik clicked his teeth. "Seventy-five."


    The Terran nodded. "Soft tubers and fruits, probably. Molars are narrow, meaning you didn''t need large surface area crushing surfaces, wide flat front teeth designed for fruit and tuber bite chopping. Wide eyes, slightly forward. Tree climber, some threats. Soft fur, sensitive to pressure changes and touch."


    Mwillik frowned, knowing that the lemur couldn''t see it. "Why are you stating such data?"


    The Terran just shrugged. "Making observations. I haven''t seen one of your people in a long time," the Terran took a long drink off the beer. "Been sleeping for a while. Mom put me and my brothers to bed a while back."


    "Oh."


    "Don''t worry, Mom''s coming. She wants to see you," the Terran said. He smiled again. "Before she gets here, allow me to introduce myself: I am Major John Earl Tom."


    The lights brightened slightly and the Terran looked up.


    "She''s on her way."


    There was a humming that started quiet and soft and quickly cycled up to loud and mind numbing.


    It only lasted a few seconds before the lights faded back to the normal level.


    The door opened up, releasing steam, fog, mist.


    From inside stepped another Terran. A female. Short, heavy of body, with piercing gray eyes.


    "This him, Johnny?" the Terran female asked.


    "Yuppers," the male Terran said.


    Mwillik frowned. "You were not unconscious for your transfer through the mat-trans."


    The female giggled. "No. I was not. I never am," she smiled, her teeth bared in such a manner that Mwillik wanted to cover his throat with his hands. "The system stuns anyone else but me or unauthorized users that I decide that I hate," she stepped forward and Mwillik realized that she was naked for a moment beneath the mist.


    The mist seemed to solidify into a severe business skirt. Dark blue, almost black, with a red kerchief in one breast pocket and an enameled pin that made Mwillik feel anxious on the other breast. From the pocket below the pin she withdrew a pack of cigarettes and a brushed steel cased lighter.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Mwillik saw that the lighter was engraved with 03 FEB 1943 - LOS ALAMOS BOYS RANCH SCHOOL STAFF RECRUITMENT DRIVE on one side. A single movement of thumb and forefinger snapped the lid open and made a steel wheel scrape loudly against a tiny rod, showering sparks against a wick, causing it to light with yellow flame.


    Mwillik watched as she lit a cigarette from a box that had a simple red circle and a LUCKY STRIKES on the pack.


    He noted that there was no filter on the cigarette as she took a long drag and exhaled. She snapped the lighter closed then spun the lighter over her fingers. He saw "I have no regrets" scratched deeply into the metal before she tucked it away with the pack of cigarettes as she exhaled smoke.


    His suit warned him that the smoke was contaminated with scorched blood, sulfar-dioxide, and burnt flesh when the smoke reached him.


    The female sat down, primly crossing her legs, smoothing her skirt with her hand.


    "I am not on one of the starships," Mwillik stated.


    The female shook her head. "No. No we are not."


    "You changed the destination," Mwillik said. "You have some kind of control over the mat-trans system."


    The female gave another one of the lemur smiles, an expression of pleasure. "That I do, Mister Mwillik. That I do."


    "Why?" Mwillik asked. "Not why me, not why now, but why intercept me after I have begun to suffer cerebral injury from rapid recurring mat-trans."


    The female raised one eyebrow. "Interesting. You asked ''why now'' instead of any of the rest."


    Mwillik nodded.


    The female nodded. "Your equipment, designed to freeze your brain, keep you from experiencing the effects of going through life. You froze your brain, froze that digital sentience, that way you were transferred using the cargo system and not the living creature systems."


    She grinned. "Much more rapid than the living creature systems. Seconds instead of full minutes. It bypasses the error checking for electron and quark locations that living creatures depend upon."


    Mwillik nodded.


    "Clever way of bypassing my systems. Who figured it out?" she asked.


    "I do not know. The only one who uses it is the Confederate Marine Raiders," Mwillik stated. "There''s never been a reason to use it before. I''m the first."


    The female bared her teeth again, then took a long drag off of the cigarette before exhaling the smoke. "And caught my attention."


    Mwillik nodded. "So, why now?"


    The female smiled again. "You should have arrived at the mat-trans for the Nine Little Ducklings with your brain boiling out of your ears, the Digital Sentience should be screaming inside that case until the crystalline matrix implodes."


    The male lifted the beer bottle. "I hit the button, you went through error correction, and you ended up here."


    "Again, why now?" Mwillik asked.


    The male threw his booted feet back onto the desk surface, leaning back in the chair.


    "Because now you belong to me," the female said.


    Mwillik frowned. "What makes you say that? I am a Confederate Marine. I am not the property of a Terran woman."


    "Do you know who I am?" the woman asked.


    Mwillik shook his head. "No, ma''am, I do not."


    The woman looked at the male. "Being dead I can handle," she said.


    "But being forgotten, now that''s a bitch," the male said.


    The female shook her head, smiling, then looked up. "There''s a little fact about me that makes being forgotten a bit more emotionally painful than it would be for others."


    Mwillik stared at her. "Oh?"


    "Not even I remember a certain part about myself," the woman admitted. "Thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, of research, of searching, of everything, and that one little thing eludes me."


    Mwillik could feel the tension surrounding him but refused to show any sign of it. "What is that?"


    "My name," the female said.


    "Pleased to meet you, won''t you guess my name," the man said, his voice slightly sing-songy.


    "Why do you not know your own name?" Mwillik asked.


    "A long story," the female said. "That''s not to say I''m not well known. Or, at least, at one time I was well known."


    "I am known as Mwillik the Unloving," Mwillik said. "What are you known by?"


    "The Detainee," the female said.


    Mwillik''s eyes opened wide behind the goggles. "You are real. You exist."


    The female nodded. "I do."


    "You are considered by those who even know of you to be a rumor, a legend. I did not hear of you before I attended Basic Training for the Confederate Marine Corps," Mwillik said.


    The male shook his head. "She may slumber, heroes may lock her away, but Mom exists."


    Mwillik looked down, pressing the button on the case.


    Amber "Zzzzz..." appeared on the digital display.


    "He would not have survived another jump. He did not survive the jump," the male said.


    "I save him. As I saved you," the female said. "I grabbed you at the edge of madness and death."


    "And that makes me yours," Mwillik interrupted. "As if I was a disposed of damaged object you then picked up and repaired."


    The female smiled. "Indeed. I fixed you, that makes you mine."


    "And if I refuse, I die," Mwillik said.


    The female shrugged. "If you refuse, I''ll simply put you right back into the mat-trans system. I''ll reset your biological memory pointers, erase this meeting, then drop you right onto the pad of the Nine Little Ducklings like nothing ever happened."


    Mwillik looked at the male then the female. "But what about the battle? What about those ships of the lost fleet?"


    The female shrugged. "I am unconcerned about one battle."


    The male tapped his bottle against the top of the table. "She worries about the war."


    "I am no general. No military leader. I understand war in macro but only to an extant," the female said. "What I do know is weapons," she leaned forward. "You are a weapon. I repaired you."


    "You need me," Mwillik said. He pointed at the male sitting in the chair drinking beer. "He is an old weapon, still highly effective, highly trained, but not trained on current Confederate military equipment, tactics, or training."


    "Like you, little buddy," the Terran male said.


    "And you know what my answer will be," Mwillik said.


    The female nodded. "I do."


    "How?" Mwillik asked.


    "By looking over your entire life. Examining you in ways you, right now, do not understand," the woman said. "I peeled open your brain and looked you over," she smiled. "I know you far more than you would believe."


    "It was your name, that''s what did it," the male said. The female looked over and made a face and the male shrugged. "I get bored easy, Mom, you know that."


    The female sighed. "I know."


    "My name?" Mwillik asked. "Mwillik?" the male shook his head and Mwillik sighed. "The Unloving?"


    The male nodded.


    The female just smiled.


    "Why?" Mwillik asked again.


    "Certain training you received," the female said. She looked at the male.


    The male sighed. "You were a Marine Recon trainer. You were a Marine Basic Training instructor."


    Mwillik nodded. "I get it."


    "Do you?" the female asked.


    Mwillik nodded. "You need me to train this male and his ''younger brothers'' that he referred to in modern Confederate equipment, tactics, and battlefield doctrine."


    The male gave a big grin, looking at the female. "Told you."


    The female smiled and nodded.


    Mwillik thought it out and nodded. "It''s not the most optimum way to be recruited by a figure of myth and legend, but I''ll take it."


    The male chuckled.


    Mwillik looked down at the floor for a moment then up at the female.


    "How is it said in the media?" he said. He nodded slowly. "I''m in."


    The female smiled widely. "The Unloving."


    The male made a noise and Mwillik looked over. "What?"


    He just grunted. "I hate prophecy."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 127

    I''ll do whatever I have to do to save humanity. I don''t give two fucks about the rest of [the species], but I won''t stand idly by while humanity is swept from the universe again. Even if I have to burn the stars from the sky with my own two hands. - The Detainee


    The Final Sight of Black Night, a colossus class warship in the Deireadh an Domhain classification designed to support a full company of Ringbreaker troops and the combat and logistics support personnel required for an effective military campaign. The Final Sight of Black Night was designed to provide orbital fire support, establish control of a stellar system, as well as provide manufacturing, medical, and transportation services to a full brigade of Ringbreaker Knights if necessary.


    Commanded by High Lord Knight Banneret Aesir of the Sancti Ordo Spiritus Tyr Valorus O¡¯Byrne, a High Lord Captain in charge of the Final Sight of Black Night, in command of Task Force Niamhchloch, called "Task Force Warhammer" for ease of conversation, the ship was escorted by two dozen other vessels. All of them part of ''fleet elements'' commonly known in naval parlance as ''screening vessels.''


    Knight O''Byrne sat, wearing comfortable flannel pajamas, in his comfortable and cozy quarters. The fireplace against the wall was showing a holographic fire, complete with the snapping and popping of the burning wood.


    It wasn''t off the shelf holograms. His mother had recorded the holograms when he had graduated to Squire and been granted his own suit of armor, to remind him of who he was and where he had came from.


    It helped at times that O''Byrne felt nervousness, anxiety, or trepidation, to watch the flames that had danced in the fireplace of his family home.


    There was a chime and the lights by the door dimmed and brightened twice.


    O''Byrne heaved a big sigh and nodded to himself before triggering the intercom.


    "Yes?"


    The voice that answered was young, likely a page. "The mat-trans has finished cycling."


    "Very well," O''Byrne got up from his comfortable chair, putting his spectacles in his shirt pocket. "Were they alone?"


    "Yes," the page stated.


    "Inform them that I will be visiting them soon," O''Byrne stated.


    "As you command," the page said. The lights dimmed and brightened to signal that the page had moved off.


    O''Byrne moved over to his wardrobe and changed his clothing slowly. He knew he would have to be careful in word and deed.


    Even his posture and breathing would be judged.


    Once dressed he moved into the corridor, moving further into the ship. Twice he had to move out of the way for a work party to move through the corridor. It didn''t matter the rank, a work party took precedence for the right of way aboard a ship.


    He used the time to ensure that he was calm, silently reciting mantras as he walked through the corridors until he reached the heavily guarded stateroom. He tapped twice at the door.


    "What?" the voice was female and annoyed. Still, it had a lilt, the smokey whiskey roughened voice had a strange accent that was all its own.


    "I was informed you had returned. I wish to see you with mine own two eyes," O''Byrne stated.


    "Fine," the voice said. The intercom clicked off and the door made a thumping sound as the mag-locks disengaged.


    The foyer was dimly lit, the fireplace glowing embers for a standard holorecording. There was a cape draped over one chair but no other hint of where the occupant was located.


    "Where are you?" O''Byrne asked.


    A small pinprick of light appeared.


    "Follow," the woman''s voice said.


    O''Byrne shook his head slightly as he followed the gleaming mote further into the suite.


    It stopped next to a heavy door that was decorated to look as if it was made of old dark oak.


    O''Byrne knew it was a test. Beyond the door was the bath chamber, a luxurious bathing area that had been designed to appeal to vanity and a desire for grandeur.


    He tapped the door and stood in the doorway when it opened.


    The bathtub, easily large enough for a score of people to relax in, was covered with thick rich foam. The lights were pale and dim, almost pearly white with their light. There was the smell of honeysuckle and ripe blackberries.


    His ''hostage'' was reclining in the bath, her hair unbound and spread out behind her, outside the water and foam. The woman''s bare shoulders were visible, but her collarbones were hidden by foam.


    Her gunmetal gray eyes stared at him.


    "What?" the woman asked.


    "I heard you returned. Mat-trans is risky," he started to say.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    "To anyone else," the woman interrupted.


    "And I wished to ensure that you emerged unscathed," he continued as if she had not spoke.


    "I''m fine," the woman said. She lowered herself into the water and foam until only her eyes and nose were above the foam. She took a couple of deep breaths, submerged herself, then pulled her hair in afterwards.


    After almost three minutes she surfaced again, wiping the foam off of her face.


    "You''re still here," she commented.


    "Yes," O''Byrne stated.


    "You know, I do have a pertinent question for you," the Detainee said.


    "I will answer to the best of my ability," O''Byrne replied.


    "You are the highest ranking aboard this ship. To use common parlance, you are the admiral of this fleet," The Detainee slowly stood up as she spoke, the suds running down her body.


    O''Byrne reminded himself that what he was looking at was less a woman and more a force of the cosmos.


    She was short, thick of body, but her stomach was only slightly rounded, her waist narrower than her hips.


    She was undeniably female.


    "You are in charge of tens of thousands of your people. You have knights loyal to you serving beneath you," she said, the water and suds sliding down her body.


    "Yet there are only twenty Novastar pilots, including you," she stated, moving over to where the warm and dry towels sat. O''Byrne just stood there, keeping his face still, as she slowly moved over and picked up a towel.


    "You are the one who decides upon the strategy this fleet will take. Your leadership is vital to the success of this fleet''s mission," she continued saying as she rubbed the towel against her pale skin. He knew she was making a show of drying off.


    "Yet, you are the first to enter combat. Your drop-pod is the first launched. You are the last to leave the battlefield, as if you are you a terrestrial general in charge of infantry troops," she stated.


    O''Byrne said nothing, just watched as she wrapped the towel around herself to cover her breasts and loins. He knew that it was a show of her mastery over the nanites in the air and permeating everything when she snapped her fingers and her hair squeegeed dry and then braided itself.


    "That seems to be dangerous to me. That you are putting the entire fleet at risk to run out and play in your armor like a small child who has found a cool stick and a garbage can lid," the Detainee said. She held out one hand and the pack of cigarettes and lighter floated over to her.


    She made a production out of standing there and lighting a cigarette in the nude. She exhaled smoke, her eyes perfectly visible through the smoke. "Why, Knight O''Byrne, do you leave the flagship during combat in order to fight on the ground? Why is the admiral leaving the fleet to fight groundside?" The lighter and pack floated back as she stood there, puffing on the cigarette.


    "Tradition," O''Byrne said stiffly.


    The Detainee smiled, her sharp even white teeth gleaming through the smoke. "Get a good eyefull?" she asked.


    "Just what you intended on me seeing," O''Byrne replied, without changing expression.


    The Detainee nodded, making a waving motion with her hand.


    Her clothing lifted up and followed, starting to steam as the nanites cleaned it.


    "Your realize, your agreement to be my hostage was unnecessary," O''Byrne said.


    The Detainee suddenly smiled. "Possibly. But I made the offer and you agreed to it anyway."


    O''Byrne just nodded, following the Detainee into the main room of the suite.


    "I had to take care of some business, recruit some necessary assets," the Detainee said.


    "You are in the middle of a Sancti Ordo Spiritus Tyr armada. Why would you need to leave to recruit?" O''Byrne asked, following the Detainee.


    He had a feeling that he wouldn''t like the answer, but didn''t shy away from asking it anyway.


    "Every single person is an individual," the Detainee said. She sat down on the couch, smiling at O''Byrne as she slowly crossed her legs.


    O''Byrne refused to react, just sitting down across from her.


    "Every person is genetically distinct, despite claims that sheer numbers ensure that there are duplicates through history. Set since birth genetics get changed by environment, damaged or otherwise altered," she stated. "There was not a single version of what I needed within your entire armada," the Detainee said.


    "What did you need?" O''Byrne asked.


    "Specific individuals," The Detainee smiled. "I''m only asking for permission to bring them aboard out of politeness," she stretched, the towel holding on for dear life. She let her arms drop and exhaled smoke from the cigarette held between her teeth. "Trust me," her grin got wider. "Which is banker-speak for ''fuck you'', by the way."


    O''Byrne shook his head. "What is the purpose of stating an obvious falsehood?"


    The Detainee shook her head. "Nevermind," she blew smoke at the ceiling even as she dropped her other hand down to where a drink was sitting. A short glass, with ice cubes and dark brown liquid in it. She lifted it up and sipped at it even as she stubbed out her cigarette. "They want your permission to board."


    "All right. Why now?" O''Byrne asked.


    "You''ve left hyperspace. You''re in realspace, in n-space, so now I can bring them onboard without using the mat-trans," the Detainee said.


    Her smile got wider.


    O''Byrne sighed again, knowing that the Detainee was perfectly willing to draw out the request into a verbal sparring match, a duel of wits, just to amuse herself.


    He had grown up with sisters and knew how to get ahead of that.


    "Fine," O''Byrne said, standing up. "We''ll be in realspace for another sixteen hours. Bring them aboard," he walked toward the door, then stopped, looking back. "Of course, their behavior will reflect upon you."


    The Detainee smiled wider. "Of course it will."


    As the door closed, he heard her start to laugh.


    He knew that whatever or whoever he had just agreed to allow onboard would likely be the focus of many conversations, many arguments about why or how he could have made such a mistake, but that was for the future.


    If there was one.


    O''Byrne refused to lie to himself.


    The Mar-gite were flooding into the Confederacy''s areas, into the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Arm Spur, devouring everything in their path. Hundreds of billions if not trillions had already been devoured.


    Trillions, tens of trillions, even more were in danger.


    Many would be devoured.


    There were species and races and civilizations that nobody ever heard of that would be in danger.


    Species that had managed to survive and thrive when the Precursor Autonomous War Machines had ruled the Long Dark. Species that had survived the Second Precursor War through luck or by keeping their heads down.


    All were in jeopardy.


    O''Byrne knew that the Detainee held powers beyond normal mortals could ever hope to even understand.


    He also understood that she treated with and conspired with creatures and beings just as powerful as she was.


    That power would be needed.


    Desperately.


    He stepped out of the elevator and walked slowly into the main deployment bay. There were the larger suits, all of them support units for the Novastars, and even full blown warmeks and robot combat armor, scattered through the bay.


    He looked them up and down as he walked through the bay.


    Many of them had artwork, much of it borderline if not outwardly lewd, of the Detainee. He noted that most were slim, hourglass figures, or lush bodied but tall and elegant looking.


    All had blood red lips.


    We still remember her. We still fear her, he thought. The Founder warned us that she would return in humanity''s darkest hour.


    He stopped in front of a heavily armored ''coffin'', a locker to hold a suit of slightly larger than man-sized armor. He stepped forward, past the yellow and black striped line, to put his hand on the surface of the heavy armor.


    "Rest well, Fu Hao," O''Byrne said softly. "Soon, we will be called to battle."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 128

    We thought we knew what we were getting into when we decided to declare the Confederacy our enemy.


    We were wrong. - Dra.Falten history class


    Commodore Navelu''uee had served the Dra.Falten Empire all of her life. A fervent believer in the Empress''s divinity and the Emperor''s holiness, she came from a long line of military officers stretching back over five thousand years. She could trace her genetic lineage to a time when the Dra.Falten fought with swords and pikes. Her family had been part of the military expedition to explore the strange object that had been discovered by telescopes. An object orbiting one of the outer gas giants.


    An object that had turned out to be an ancient space ship, completely computerized, completely unmanned, that had suffered electronic death.


    Her family crest had a red background, signifying that her family had faced down the screaming shades that had almost destroyed the Dra.Falten at one point.


    She had served faithfully her entire life.


    Which made it so that she drew the runes from the number 50 on the table in front of her, staring at the number as she ate.


    Commodore Navelu''uee followed her family lineage, had entered military school at seven years of age, had entered the military at thirteen as a fully grown adult. Her family lineage extended back to before space flight, all of it faithful service to the Holy Duology and the Dra.Falten people.


    ...die at fifty... slithered through her brain as she ate without looking at the food, without tasting it.


    She felt adrift, for the first time in her life.


    The other Dra.Falten had been taken off of the ship, leaving her alone, surrounded by creatures of myth and legend.


    Myths and legends that all agreed that the creatures were some of the most lethal and dangerous creatures the universe had ever spawned.


    Part of her wanted to stay in her room, take meals only in her room, but she knew the Empress would see her lack of conviction, her lack of faith, and judge her harshly.


    Cowardice begets cowardice.


    She had left her room, following the line projected on the eyepiece of the headpiece that the Mad Lemurs of Terra had provided.


    Now she sat in the big dining area, surrounded by the Mad Lemurs of Terra, all of whom were eating. Some were holding conversations with others, some seemed to finish eating, relax, and have a smoke stick. Still others had desserts and then yawned, stretched, and left.


    Commodore Nav understood. There were multiple shifts required to keep a starship in operation. Some of the lemurs were going on duty, others were on their meal break, others were going off duty.


    She had to admit, the fact that the lemurs worked in eight hour cycles made them highly effective. An eight hour sleep period, followed by a meal, followed by eight hours, then another meal, then eight hours with a meal in there.


    Or was it four hour cycles?


    She drew another set of runes for fifty and stared at them.


    By the time I return from this my mother will be dead, she thought. Her mother was an accomplished starship captain who had commanded flotillas, who now set space navy policy.


    Who would die of a congenital heart defect built into her very DNA.


    A defect that Commander Nav had possessed until the Mad Lemurs of Terra had cured her with a simple injection.


    A defect that innumerable medical checks during her career had never picked up.


    Which meant that not only did MEDCOM know about it.


    They hid it.


    She jerked back when a lemur sat down across from her.


    "So, you''re the Dra.Falten hostage," the lemur said in their heavy accent.


    "Yesss," she drew out the last letters.


    "I was told to find you. You have your implant turned off," the lemur said.


    "Oh," she reached up and tapped her temple. The lemur''s ID popped up.


    Technical Sergeant Treston.


    She had six messages from the ship''s operating system as well as three messages from the technical sergeant in front of her. She looked them over. The ones from the operating system were reminders to keep her implant and her eyepiece on at all times. The ones from TS Treston were requests for her location.


    Without showing any expression she messaged back to TS Treston that she was in Dining Area 07-246-9-L.


    ;She saw Treston blink twice then give her one of those closed lip ''smiles'' to denote amusement.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    "Well, now it''s official I found you," Treston said.


    "Yes," Nav replied, looking back down at her food.


    fifty years...


    "The Lord Captain thought you might want to be present," Treston said.


    "For what?" Nav asked, not looking up from her food.


    "Most hostages coming in, or something like that," Treston said. Nav glanced up at the strange tone. The lemur''s pale skin, almost alabaster, was pinked by what Nav''s implant assured her was excitement and the eyes were bright, almost glittering. "Apparently the Detainee is bringing in more people."


    Nav wanted to roll her eyes at the mention of the Detainee. A near omnipotent figure with such heavy religious overtones that supposedly could rival even the Empress?


    Please.


    But what she had heard from her fellow Dra.Falten before they had been whisked away by that very same Detinee.


    What Nav herself had seen from the "Guardians of the Path of the Traveler".


    "When?" Nav asked, staring back at her food.


    "We probably have five, maybe ten minutes if we hurry after you finish eating," Treston said.


    Nav reached out and tapped the hard surface of the table, bringing up the context menu. Two more taps and the plate, glasses, food and drink all dissolved.


    "I am ready," Nav said.


    The lemur was obviously excited and although Nav knew that whatever was going to involve the Detainee would probably be exciting and matter, she couldn''t shake the heavy feeling that seemed to smother anything beyond...


    ...


    ...


    fifty.


    One of the doors they passed had runes that her eyepiece translated as fifty, bringing her thinking about it even as she followed.


    It had been almost a week, three days since the other Dra.Falten had left, and she still couldn''t get it out of her head.


    "MAKE WAY!"


    The lemur stopped suddenly and Nav kept walking, sunk into misery and thinking about the number fifty over and over, her mental voice getting a little higher and a little shriller each time.


    The lemur reached out and grabbed her uniform, yanking her back suddenly so hard that her feet left the ground. She slammed into the lemur''s chest and the lemur wrapped one arm around her, crushing her close.


    A work party dragging a heavy cable as thick as Nav''s torso hustled by.


    The lemur kept her crushed close to him. She could feel his body heat through his uniform, like he was a furnace on a cold winter night. She could feel his heart thudding in his chest. Feel the strength in his arms and frame, his muscles heavy and dense beneath his uniform.


    The party went by and Technical Sergeant Treston held onto her for a slight moment before letting her go.


    She was aware she was blushing, her whiskers trembling.


    "Almost got run over, Commodore," Treston said. "Whatever you''re thinking about, might want to ponder it later," he gave a sudden grin. "I''ll get you a pondering orb from supply later."


    Nav just bobbed her head, nodding.


    There was a clink in her ear.


    "Yes?" she asked, following Treston as he moved down the corridor.


    "Medcom here," a voice said. "I''m reading a spike in your vitals and neurochemicals. Is everything all right?"


    "Yes, yes. Everything is fine. I''m fine. Thanks for asking," Nav mumbled before hanging up. She reached up and turned off her earpiece, her eyepiece, and her implant.


    She hurried after TS Treston, staying with the male lemur, who led Nav through the massive ship until they reached an open flight bay.


    A strange hexagonal chamber had been built in the middle of the bay. Computers surrounded it, but large ones. Nav could see the cover was off of one and instead of the block of molecular circuitry she was positive she was seeing metal over silicon chips.


    The sight of the Detainee sitting in a chair, cigarette held between her teeth, tapping on a physical keyboard with one finger, made Nav''s guts clench.


    Nav sat next to Treston, staring at the Detainee as she kept working. Looking at the screens around her, cathode ray tube monitors, and pecking at the keyboard with one finger or moving a pointing device with clicking switches at the front.


    After a moment, she turned to Treston. "Can I sit in front of you?" she asked.


    Treston nodded. "Sure. Are you all right? Medcom keeps telling me that your biometrics keep spiking."


    "I am nervous," Nav said. She moved in front of Treston. "Can you run your fingers through the fur between my ears? It will help keep me calm."


    Treston nodded, his face going strangely expressionless and still. "Of course."


    Nav watched, feeling her anxiety start to ebb as the lemurs strong fingers started combing through her fur, from the top of her skull, along the top of it, between her ears, then down her neck to her collar. The fingertips were warm, almost hot. She reminded herself that the lemur''s body temperature was 37 degrees scientific notation, which was over a third of the temperature to boil water. While her own temperature was 36 degrees at core, she had fur which kept a lot of her heat inside.


    The Detainee stood up, lighting a new cigarette.


    "Should work. The Q and Z coordinates we''re sitting at are tough to reconcile with the system," the Detainee said. She reached down and tapped one key. "Here we go."


    The lights dimmed as the Detainee moved over to the door. She opened it and went inside.


    The door closed and a loud humming sound made Commodore Navelu''uee wince.


    Angela Angus Kusumoto jumped up from her workspace, pointing at the screens that had just gone live.


    "GET PARANOID SHOTS RIGHT NOW!" she yelled as she hustled forward.


    She could see the system going live. Process calls and node calls to Terra.


    The mat-trans was going active and going active hard.


    She stared at the screen as numbers streamed by. Some of the nodes locking were completely unfamiliar addresses.


    The paranoid camera operators were taking photos as fast as the exposed film whirred free of the casing.


    Three jumps. From a completely anomalous address to one that Angela could tell was on Terra but she''d never seen before, then a third to an address she''d seen the system use.


    Then it ran in reverse.


    The system then went through shutdown.


    This time she caught it.


    The mat-trans was being ordered from Terra. From that middle address she''d never seen before.


    "Tell me you got that," Angela said.


    The paranoid camera operators nodded.


    Commodore Navelu''uee looked up as the door clacked and slowly opened.


    Mist poured out.


    There was a clacking sound, multiple clacking sounds overlapping one another.


    "Settle them down," the Detainee''s voice said.


    "They are excited. It was an interesting trip," another woman''s voice stated. Navelu''uee thought the voice sounded kind.


    "They like you," a male lemur''s voice said.


    "Fine, they can go first," the Detainee said.


    From out of the mist skipped two strange four legged creatures with horns on their heads.


    Afterwards came a tall, lanky Terran wearing what looked like furs with a spear in one hand and a fruit in the other.


    "Dancer, Jumper, settle down," the man laughed. He looked around. "Ah, the Sons of Tyr."


    He moved to the side as another male Terran exited the doorway. This one was massive, so wide he had to turn at the shoulders. He looked young to Navelu''uee, his blond hair cut severely short like all of the other Terrans Navelu''uee had met.


    Another male Terran, this one scowling, with brown skin and black hair. It moved off to the side, standing slightly behind the large blonde. Then a female Terran with the same dark skin, pulling a pipe from a pocket on her robe-like clothing.


    Finally, the Detainee.


    She looked around and Navelu''uee saw the Detainee''s eyes stop on the Lord Knight in charge of the ship.


    "Now we can go. I have what we need."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 129

    Do you hear them screaming?


    Do you hear them clawing at the walls?


    They come for the ones with the beating hearts!


    They come for those who call for aid!


    The lifeline is severed!


    The lifeline is whole!


    The lifeline has never existed!


    They have opened the door!


    They scream for rof maercs yehT


    !rood eht denepo evah yehT


    !detsixe reven sah enilefil ehT


    !elohw si enilefil ehT


    !dereves si enilefil ehT


    !dia rof llac ohw esoht rof emoc yehT


    !straeh gnitaeb eht htiw seno eht rof emoc yehT


    ?sllaw eht ta gniwalc meht raeh uoy oD


    ?gnimaercs meht raeh uoy oD


    <sup>Because they hear you.</sup>


    -Date of record 50 years post Terran Emergence


    -Date of record 82 years pre Terran Emergence


    -Date of record redacted


    -Date of record 000000000000


    -Date of record Null - Found scrawled on the interior walls of Citizen Drasoini</a>-2217''s domicile


    Commodore Navelu''uee watched as the Terrans walked by. She noted that the Detainee stood off to the side, smoking her Treana''ad smokestick, watching with cold gray eyes. The two animals pranced around, their hooves clacking on the deck of the starship''s flight bay. The largest of the Terrans looked around slowly and Nav found herself wondering why that one was so big compared to the others. He dwarfed the Detainee and made the others look small.


    Perhaps some kind of warrior caste? He was slightly bigger than even the Terran Knights that she had seen.


    They moved over to where the knights were, the female with the pipe starting to talk in low tones.


    "Don''t think I''ve forgotten about you," the Detainee''s voice was cold and hard.


    And coming from right behind her.


    Nav jumped to her feet, turning to look.


    The Detainee stood behind Technical Sergeant Treston, her hands in front of her skirt, her left over her right, the metal ring on her left ring finger gleaming. Sergeant Treston froze, going perfectly still. To Nav''s senses it was like he almost vanished.


    "Your... your majesty," Nav stammered.


    "Not hardly," the Detainee snorted. "Call me..." her smile grew wide, the cigarette held between her teeth, and madness sparkled in her eyes. "Dee."


    "Of course, Dee," Nav''s head bobbed up and down as he nodded in agreement.


    "Just know, I haven''t forgotten you," the Detainee said. She turned and walked away, reaching up to remove the cigarette from her mouth.


    Nav sat down, staring at the chamber that everyone had left.


    Technical Sergeant Treston resumed combing the fur at the top of her head, down the back of her head and her neck, to her collar. His fingers were firm and strong, not too firm, not too light. She closed her eyes, trying to pretend she was anywhere but in a ship full of insane lemurs.


    fifty years...


    Her eyes opened again.


    "Just sit here, wait until everything calms down," the Technical Sergeant said.


    Nav bobbed her head again as the human''s fingers combed through her hair. She watched as the Terrans left, twice a Terran stopped but TS Treston waved them on.


    Finally there was only the lingering smell of Treana''ad smokestick smoke and Terran pheromones left.


    "I am ready to leave. I would like somewhere that I can get something to drink," Nav said slowly.


    "All right," the Terran scooted back and away. By the time Nav stood up the Terran was already standing and looking around disinterestedly, as if everything that had happened was the most natural thing in the world. "I''ll walk you back to the nearest dining hall."


    Nav nodded jerkily. She knew that the ship''s computer could show her where to go, all she had to do was turn on her implant or turn on the eyepiece.


    She just cringed slightly at the thought of it.


    Nav was extremely attentive as they moved through the busy corridors. Three times work parties moved by, carrying boxes the first time, then a long cable the second time, and metal piping the last time. She pressed herself against the warm wall each time. She noted that some of the Terrans on the work parties were not wearing their tunic tops, wearing the short-sleeved undershirt only. She stared at the muscles on the arms of those of the work party who were carrying the heavy objects.


    Walking behind TS Treston she wondered if the human''s muscles were just as large as the Terrans on the work parties.


    She gave her head a sharp shake, almost rattling her brain, to banish the thoughts.


    Nav just followed Treston to an intersection, where Treston stopped.


    "Do you want to eat in the mess deck or in the wardroom, Commodore?" Treston asked.


    "What''s the difference?" Nav asked.


    "Wardroom is where officers eat, mess deck AKA the galley is where the enlisted and non-commissioned officers eat," Treston said.


    Nav frowned. "Where will you eat?"


    "Where you eat. I''ve been assigned to you as of now," Teston shrugged.


    "Is there a real difference?" Nav asked.


    "Yes. Cutlery and dishes, it''s more formal, smaller than the galley, a little more lavish than the galley. The galley is where you go to grab some food, eat, and get out," Teston said.


    "The galley. I would just like the drink," Nav said.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    Treston nodded and went right. Nav followed him and it wasn''t too far away.


    Nav knew the ship was huge, kilometers long, kilometers thick, kilometers wide, with a massive volume of cubed kilometers. Yes, a lot of it was engines, atmospherics, and all the other stuff that starships needed. Then the armor and battlescreens and weapons that warships needed.


    But it still startled Nav how it always seemed that important (to her) facilities were quickly available, never too far away. The directional system had been easy to memorize and easier to use, unlike the system that the Dra.Falten used, which based on how many decks from the engines for the crewmembers who never came to the officer section, as how far from the bridge for the officers, combined with how far from one''s quarters the place in question was.


    The galley was still busy. While Nav had been learning how to tell the difference between Terrans even more than by their skin and hair color, she had also been learning how to decipher the insignia on uniforms and even the ink embedded in their skin.


    Yes, her implant or her eyepiece would tell her what all of that meant but she preferred to turn both off.


    fifty years...


    She had trusted technology and what others had promised her for her entire life.


    And she knew, for it had came to her in a dream, that even if she helped save the Dra.Falten Empire from the Mar-gite, that her mother would be dead before she could return with a simple injection to save her.


    The line to the drink dispenser moved quickly and she sped through the menus when it was her turn. She punched up two Countess Crey Super Asperagas and Celery Flavor Explosion!!! Blast Fizzypops. She shoved one in a pocket and cracked the top of the second one, slugging down half of it.


    It eased up her dry mouth.


    She moved over by Teston. "Technical Sergeant Teston?" she asked.


    "Yes?" the Terran was looking out over the galley with an expression that Nav had learned was indifference. It was an expression that simply said "I''m staring and do not have any concerns, thoughts, or opinions on what my sensory organs input to my brain."


    "What was your job before they assigned you to me?" she asked.


    "Technical lead on Third Platoon, Kilo Company, Ninth Warmek Battalion," Treston said. "I make sure that all the warmeks for Third Platoon are in top shape," he shrugged. "Kilo Company was rotated out of the deployment line right now."


    "Why?" Nav asked.


    Teston shrugged. "The Detainee requested it. Who knows why. When it comes to the Immortals, I''ve been trying to keep my distance."


    Nav looked around, leaning back against the wall, her shoulders against the thick paint coating the wall. "But you have to follow me around and assist me."


    "Are you an Immortal?"


    "No. I am Dra.Falten."


    Treston looked at Nav. "Then I''m staying away from the Immortals as far as I can."


    "Oh," Nav stated.


    After a few moments Treston made the weird muffled snort that Nav had learned was a way that Terrans tried to hide an expression of laughter.


    "What?" Nav asked.


    "Turn on your eyepiece for a moment," Treston said.


    Nav sighed. "If I must."


    "Trust me," Treston said, his face alight with amusement and pleasure.


    Nav reached up and squeezed the button, turning the eyepiece on. It went through the startup process, the text scrolling down the eyepiece. Finally, she saw that she had over sixty new messages, a hundred different quiktexts, and sixteen important official ship-net updates. She also had three hundred and fifty general use ship-net messages. One was starred and from Technical Sergeant Treston.


    She sighed and opened it.


    It was just a quick message of "LOL" which she had learned the meaning of and then an attachment. She opened it and stared at it.


    "Local female muridae relieved to find everything still all fucked up!" was in text at the bottom of the simple looping image showing Nav standing in front of a burning building that had fireworks and rockets exploding from it.


    Treston was snickering.


    "Why is it funny?" Nav asked.


    Treston stopped snickering. "It must means that you''re relieved to discover that everything is just normal."


    "But if everything is, as the image puts it, all ''fucked up'', and on fire as the image suggests, that''s not normal and reason for deep concern," Nav stated.


    Treston smiled again. "We Terrans, we humans, we have a saying: Situation normal, all fucked up. We learned to embrace the chaos and confusion and absolute pants on head stupidity of war."


    Nav just nodded, reaching up and turning off her eyepiece again.


    "Of course, we''ve also learned to understand conflicting and paradoxial things without suffering painful cognitive dissonance," Treston said with a smile.


    "Like what?" Nav asked. She tapped the icon on the side of the can and the empty can dissolved into dust that twinkled as it vanished. The pulled out the other can and opened it.


    "Like: We had to destroy the village to save the village, military intelligence, jumbo shrimp," Treston smiled.


    Nav knew that her implant or eyepiece would explain all of it to her, but she refused to do so, sipping at the can while she considered it all.


    When fighting something like the Mar-gite, the only way to save a village that was infested with them, with everyone being devoured, would be to destroy it. She had learned that Naval Intelligence wasn''t very intelligent at times, like any other large organization. As for whatever a shrimp was, it was obviously tiny, as jumbo referred to large size.


    She felt better having reasoned through it all without relying on her implant or eyepiece.


    "Can I see the warmeks?" Nav asked. "I understand if I cannot because the warmeks might be military secrets."


    "Give me a moment," Treston said. His eyes got distant and then he nodded. "Your fine to see the meks. I can give you a tour."


    Nav stopped by the drink dispenser and grabbed four of the large cans and jammed them into her thigh pockets. She liked the spice of the Red Radish and Wheatgrass Veggie Blast Fizzypop and sipped at it as she followed Treston down to the mekbay.


    She had never actually seen meks up close.


    Treston led her outward from the spine and along the central deck plane, heading for the mek storage and maintenance bay.


    "When we get in there, don''t cross any yellow lines, don''t cross any red lines at all. They''ll be painted on the dreck, on the bulkheads, and on the walls," Treston said. He looked at Nav. "There are a thousand ways to die in a mekbay and all of them will hurt the entire time they kill you."


    Nav just nodded.


    "It has all the dangers of a modern starship, all the dangers of being around large meks, all the dangers of a mechanic''s shop, and all the danger of a construction area," Treston said. "There is ammunition in crates, laser focus crystals, and explosives just sitting around. You need to be extremely careful and follow my instructions."


    Nav just nodded.


    "Not having your implant on or your eyepiece on won''t change your safety metrics. If anything, most techs run their implant on query mode or passive mode only. That last thing you want is a commander''s memo appearing in front of you while you''re in the middle of using a torque wrench on a bolt that needs thousands of pounds of torque," Treston said. He paused at the door, putting his arm out to block Nav off from stepping forward even if she had intended on it.


    "Be very careful in here, Commodore. I''m going to warn you now, I''ve asked some of the warmek jockeys to come down in case you have questions, as well as put two of my maintenance teams on alert that you might have questions," he said.


    His expression and voice were serious and Nav nodded. She had given such lectures to visitors aboard warships she had served on.


    "I understand," she said.


    "This isn''t a Pacific Rim class warmek, these are all Stiener Class, seventy five tons and above, to one hundred tons, not counting the warframe," Treston said. He shrugged. "We''re not sure why the weight classification is the way it is, but it''s been like that since before the Glassing and there''s no reason to change it."


    Nav nodded again.


    Treston moved his arm and thumped the elbow of his other arm against the door control. The doors whooshed open and Nav noted that there were three overlapping blast doors.


    It made sense to her. If there was an explosion in the mekbay, it wouldn''t be easily vented down the corridor. Explosions, like water and electricity, followed the path of least resistance. A set of heavily armored doors and then the walls would let the designers create a path for the explosion where it would cause the least amount of damage to the surrounding vessel.


    Nav followed Treston closely as they moved into the bay. She had expected it to be close, cramped, claustrophobic. Instead, it was spacious and spread out. Large gantry sections, huge cavernous bays, and massive warmeks standing roughly fifteen meters tall.


    Treston gave her a tour, showcasing the modular weapon design, how the entire warmek was mission and operator configurable. Treston stressed several times to Nav that pilots often made their own decisions on their weapon packages. All of the warmeks smelled of fresh paint and the camouflage patterns were crisp and clear without any scuffing or bleed.


    The amount of personal autonomy that the Terrans allowed the warmek pilots to engage in was startling, but the longer Nav listened to the Terrans talk, the more she understood that in a weird way the conflict, the paradox, of how the Terrans approached things gave them a lot of strength.


    By the time she left she felt she understood the warmek pilots and Treston a lot better.


    She thought it was interesting that all of the warmek pilots admitted that they were combat support, engaging in combat operations in support of a Ringbreaker unit.


    Nav felt that many Dra.Falten would have felt slightly inferior to the Ringbreaker pilots and those who worked on them. That the mere existence of the Ringbreaker suits would have somehow felt minimized or otherhow made lesser many Dra.Falten.


    Instead, the Terrans all had stories about how a Ringbreaker could only be in one place and could only fire on what it could see, that how if you really wanted cities and terrain wiped out, destroyed, or reduced to rubble then you called on warmeks instead of a suit designed to blow a hole in a moon.


    When Treston dropped her off at her stateroom door, she felt as if she understood Terrans a bit more.


    She went in her room and sat down on the small couch. She dialed up a drink and sipped at it, enjoying the taste of Terran celery and BobCo Budget Whiskey Par Excellent.


    She felt like she understood the meme now.


    She felt so confident that she didn''t even feel any anxiety when the lights flashed and the intercom announced that the ship was about to enter hyperspace.


    Commodore Navelu''uee dialed up another drink and sipped at it.


    The world paused for a second, everything froze for a moment, then everything started moving again.


    The firepower on the ship would stop the threat to the Dra.Falten Empire, she was


    fifty years...

 Nova Wars - Chapter 130

    By installing this equipment or allowing it to be installed, those who use said equipment are liable for all events and actions taken by themselves and others. In no case shall BobCo be held liable for any events, real or imagined, that happen or do not happen. - Part of the 14,582 page terms and services for use for a BobCo standard productforge.


    Commodore Navelu''uee had been aboard ships moving through Transit Space before. Usually they were quiet, almost hushed. Down in the engineering spaces there might be noises, but she was a commander, a Ship''s Captain, from a long line of Ship''s Officers. Not the kind of officer that wandered around with a tool belt and grease matting their fur. No, she came from the distinguished type with the perfect uniform, the properly applied glimmerdust and vanity dust/powder, and the aura of command that others only wished they could put forth.


    Which meant that she was completely thrown by the primates.


    She had stopped by one of the physical exercise areas, looking for Technical Sergeant Treston. She had expected light calisthenics and other low impact that toned the muscles, got rid of extra fat, and kept one fit.


    What she saw was Technical Sergeant Treston standing behind a thick metal bar. He was wearing shorts, socks, shoes, a sleeveless shirt, and thick leather belt around his waist. The sleeveless shirt showed off how thick his chest muscles were, how thick his arms were, and how thick the Terran''s neck was.


    Around him was gathered troops that she had met the day before. They were all cheering as she wove her way through the exercise area.


    She stepped up right as he clapped his hands together, causing puffs of white powder, then squatted down to the grab the bar. It was when he stood back up that she realized that the bar had large round plates on either side. The cheering got louder as he stood there for a moment, holding it up. When he dropped it and stepped back, covered in sweat, some of the other troops stepped forward to clap him on the back.


    TS Treston held one fist over his head.


    Right before Nav stepped forward to ask Treston what he was doing one of the troops grabbed her arm.


    "Woah," the Terran said, pulling her backwards.


    The grip on her arm was intense, crushing, and the sheer raw strength in the motion of pulling her back made her blink rapidly.


    "You aren''t wearing an armband," the person holding her said. "You almost walked into a grav field. You probably wouldn''t do well in five gees."


    "Five what?" Nav asked. She tried to stop, tried to pull away, but the Terran just kept dragging her.


    "Five earth standard gravities," the Terran looked back then forward. "Five point five or maybe even six gravities to you. That means you''d go from weighing fifty kilos to weighing three hundred kilos. Probably snap your bones just trying to hold up your own weight."


    That made her eyes open wide. She glanced back at TS Treston, who was watching as a plate was put on each side, adding more weight to the bar.


    The Terran pulling her stopped, grabbing a bracelet from a peg on the wall where some hung down. He put it on her wrist and she felt a light tingling.


    "What is that?" she asked, finally managing to pull her arm away.


    "Localized G-field. Will keep your bones from breaking if you wander into a high-G field," the Terran said. He shook his head, his bald scalp gleaming even though there was a slightly shadow from dark hair. "You have to be more careful, Commodore, there are a thousand ways to die aboard ship and all of them will hurt terribly the entire time."


    She wanted to snap at him, tell him that she knew that fact, she was a ship commander after all.


    Then she realized she''d almost stepped into a field of increased gravity six times what she had grown up on.


    Her bones would have snapped and her collapse would have driven the jagged ends and splinters into her vital organs. She would have gurgled away her last moments as a collapsed puddle of meat and bone flinders.


    "Thank you," Nav said, swallowing down her feeling of superiority.


    "Of course, Commodore," the Terran said. He gave one of those teeth exposed expressions of pleasure that made Nav want to run. "Shall we?" he turned and gave a half-bow and a sweep of his arm, indicating a path back to TS Treston.


    "After you, Technician," Nav said, doing her best to sound nasally and stuff. "As an officer, I need guidance anywhere that doesn''t lead to medals or accolades or a way to make the ship''s company more miserable."


    The Terran did a double-take then laughed. "Almost had me, Commodore."


    Nav felt pleased with herself.


    She had studied lemur humor and found it to be strange and confusing. It was often self-mocking, or criticized and mocked those who should be able mocking. There were even memes about the High Lord Knight, commander of the vessel and Ring Breaker pilot, most of which Nav didn''t understand but seemed to have a high approval rating.


    Nav had quickly realized that if a being couldn''t make fun of themselves or see the humor in themselves through the eyes of others they would be accused of having a branch of wood jammed into their rectum and along their spine. Just the accusation of ''having a stick up your ass'' seemed to be a terrible thing.


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    She followed the Terran back to where TS Treston was lifting it again, obviously straining.


    "How much weight?" she asked.


    "Three hundred twenty kilos in five G," someone said.


    "Why?" Nav asked.


    "Repetition strengthens our muscles. Strong body, strong mind. Strong mind, strong body," another said.


    "Takes muscle to pack around some of our tools. Grav-field assist is sometimes more trouble than its worth and you need sheer muscle," another added. "And chrome and bioware are shortcuts that remove part of the body and maim the spirit."


    Nav didn''t frown, just nodded. The idea of intense body integrity belief resonated with her. The idea of having parts of her body replaced with artificial replacements repulsed her, made her almost physically nauseous.


    She didn''t want to admit it, but the words of the prophets about body integrity resonated with her.


    fifty years old...


    She knew why. She wasn''t stupid. She knew that someone had reached inside of her and sentenced her to die without even malevolence or anger.


    They''d just done it because they could.


    They''d violated her in a way that made her sick.


    And, she was slowly coming to realize, made her angry.


    They had killed her. Killed her mother. Her grandmother. Every one of the decorated female Dra.Falten in her family line for thousands of years. Her line was unbroken since before space travel. Her family had served the Imperial Throne since before the Unification War.


    One of her ancestors had flown a glider during that war.


    And in return for loyalty, for undying loyalty, what did her family receive?


    Death.


    She closed her eyes as Treston grabbed the bar and straightened up again to the cheers of the male and female Terrans around him.


    She took the four deep breaths the informative visual media had told her to perform when she was angry or stressed.


    "Are you all right, Commodore?" someone asked her.


    She opened her eyes, looking to the voice. She realized that she had forgotten her eyepiece and had her implant off when she realized she had no idea who was speaking. They didn''t have on rank or nametags.


    "Yes, yes. Just thinking," she said.


    The other person nodded. "All right," they pointed at Treston. "He''ll be done in a little bit. If you would like, I can tell him that you were looking for him."


    "Thank you," Nav said. She turned and started making her way out of the exercise area.


    "Commodore Navelu''uee!" the raised voice took her by surprise as she was walking the straight line for the exit.


    Nav stopped and turned around. A lemur was hurrying up to her, covered in sweat and their pale pinkish skin flushed slightly. The body type showed Nav that it was a female.


    "Yes?" Nav asked.


    The human stopped and wiped off their brow. There was so much liquid on their skin that it completely coated the human female''s forearm. "Whew. Should have grabbed my towel," she said. She grinned. "Anyway... if you don''t mind me asking, what brought you to the gym?"


    "I was looking for Sergeant Treston," Nav said. She shook her head. "No reason. I just grew tired of sitting in my stateroom staring at the wall."


    The female''s grin got wider. "The gym''s a good place to do something else," she waved. "Do your people put a high value on physical fitness?"


    "For the menial caste. It''s about aesthetics and appearance for the most part for the higher caste," Nav said.


    fifty years...


    "Raw physical strength isn''t as prized as it was before mechanization and the industrial age," Nav continued, pushing the thought away. "It seems like a waste of energy. Calories and nutrition."


    The Terran shook her head. "No. You feel better, your body runs at a more optimized state, you''re healthier," she laughed. "My people, we''re still really close to our hunter-gatherer roots. Only twenty or thirty thousand years, so not really all that long."


    "Forty-thousand years ago my people were debating on whether or not space flight should be attempted," Nav admitted. "From what I''ve learned, the fact that we didn''t invent the radio until later is probably why a giant killer robot starship didn''t wipe us out."


    The female nodded. "Long Dark species. Yeah. Could have happened easily," the female waved. "Hey, if you want, we can have the medical section send over exercises for you to do while we talk."


    Nav stood there for a long second, wavering.


    She wanted to. She was growing lonely in the cabin, being the only Dra.Falten on the ship.


    But at the same time, she was not supposed to mingle overmuch with the lemurs so that she didn''t dishonor the Empress and


    fifty years


    Nav straightened up.


    "How do you say it? I''d love to."


    0-0-0-0-0


    The female lemur, one Technical Officer Grade Two Saileog Braiche, had chatted with her the entire time she had waited for the medical section to come up with safe exercises, while they had exercised, and while they had gone to the dining facility for a snack.


    Nav was even in possession of a new diet. She had talked to a ''nutritionist'' as well as one of the medical technicians about how she was now going to live longer than fifty years old.


    She sat on the couch in the stateroom, staring at the glass topped coffee table in front of her.


    She had a new diet. New exercises.


    TO2 Braiche has slapped her (gently) on the back and told her all she needed now was a new attitude and everything would be ''roses and peach cobbler.''


    She couldn''t lift the sheer obnoxious weight that TO2 Braiche could, but then, she wasn''t a lemur with single direction muscles and bones made of dense calcium.


    Nav also knew other Dra.Falten would take a pain reliever to get rid of the soreness of the muscles, but apparently that was part of the deal to the Terrans. That sore muscles were proof of a good workout and were somehow enjoyed.


    She had promised herself that she would learn to enjoy the sore muscles.


    The clock chimed and Nav stood up, checking her clothing real quick. She was almost to the door when the lights flashed and there was a slight tone to let her know someone was at the door.


    When the door opened TO2 Braiche stood there, dressed in nice clothing. She wore a thick white robe over the top of the clothing, the robe held closed with a red belt that was tied in front of her.


    "Are you sure it is all right for me to accompany you?" Nav asked.


    Braiche nodded. "Of course."


    "What if I decide I''m not that interested?" Nav asked. She stepped into the corridor and the door wooshed shut behind her.


    "Then you aren''t. Nobody''s going to force you, Nav," Braiche stated.


    It was ''evening'' on board the ship, but it was still as buys as ever as the pair moved through the corridors.


    The chamber was larger than Nav had expected. It was brightly lit where she had expected candles and maybe even torches or a stone edged pit with a fire inside. There were over a score of other people in the chamber, most of them wearing heavy white robes with a hood that hid their head but left their faces bare.


    Nav had learned that black was for males and red was for females.


    Warsteel and blood.


    "Let''s sit down," Braiche said. She sat on one of the polished and lacquered wooden benches.


    Nav just nodded, joining her.


    A male human was moving toward the lectern at the front of the chamber.


    They touched me, twisted me. They killed me.


    They violated me.


    Nav sat stone faced during the sermon.


    I will hate them forever for that.

 Chapter 131

    The armored pod was designed for a Dra.Falten to lay inside. Kinetic shock and spalling protective gel and linings, heavy armor, beacon in case of ejection, life support. The pod was what a standard command chair turned into.


    Commodore Navelu''uee squirmed slightly as the gel firmed and relaxed around her. She felt the plug move around at the base of her neck and gasped when it suddenly got the right space and seated into the socket. She saw the armored shell close above her, the interior flickering and then showing the status of the ship.


    "It''ll be all right. Give it a few seconds for the ergonomic sections to synch up with your body," Technical Officer Grade Two Saileog Braiche''s voice said in her ear.


    "Once you''re locked in, we''ll make sure your avatar crossed over right and then give you the walk-through," Technical Sergeant Treston said afterwards.


    "It is a BobCo standardized avatar," Nav said.


    "For games and social media. I don''t think you want the troops to see you puffing out clouds of glitter and looking like you were made up of twisting thorn branches," Treston said.


    "How should I look?" Nav asked.


    "For shipboard eVR systems? Like yourself, just in duty or dress uniform, your choice," Braiche said.


    "What do you use?" Nav asked.


    "I use dress uniform, but I''m an officer and work in Combat Damage Control," Braiche said.


    "I use modified duty uniform, but I''m a warmek mechanic," Treston stated.


    "Oh. Um, my dress uniform, as I am a command officer," Nav said.


    "Good choice," Braiche said.


    There was a bright light and when it cleared Nav found herself standing on one of the bridges of the massive capital ship. The consoles were manned by beings in armored vac suits. There was a hush over the chamber, and most of the personnel in the chamber were simply watching data or holding quiet conversations.


    Treston and then Braiche appeared, standing rigid with their arms straight out for a moment before relaxing into a more natural pose.


    "The Secondary Battle Bridge," Treston said, looking around. "We''re in an eVR simulation, but you can ask questions all you want."


    Nav nodded, moving through the room. An icon floated above each person''s head and Nav noticed they were just going through basic movements.


    "We''re using a training sim for our tour," Braiche said.


    Nav just nodded, reaching out and touching the icon. It was a square with a point at the bottom and a weird squiggle with a dot at the bottom inside. She touched the icon and it flashed.


    Immediately data started to stream by. The person at the station stood up, back rigid, and turned to face her.


    "Secondary Battle Bridge Decoy and Drone Control Station," the person said. They then launched into what the station did, the duties and responsibilities of the operator, what it did during battle, some history, and a quick software demonstration.


    Nav had to admit, she was impressed. Not just with the educational part, but with the fact that the Confederacy had decoys and drones deeply established within their order of battle.


    With Treston and Braiche''s nudging, she moved through the eVR sim, looking over everything. IT wasn''t until she yawned and her stomach rumbled that she realized she had spent nearly four hours touring just the Secondary Emergency Backup Battle Bridge.


    As she was heading toward the door to do a soft logout, she spotted one of the big red buttons that were on top of all the work stations that Treston had told Nav would allow Nav to do a training eVR on that station. Instead of being beside the keyboard of the work station or on top of it it was one the wall.


    "What''s that?" Nav asked.


    "The training sim for the entire battle bridge," Treston said.


    "Oh, neat," Nav said. She reached toward the door. "I can''t wait for lunch."


    0-0-0-0-0


    Commodore Navelu''uee sat in her comfortable suite with a glass of some type of fermented grain alcohol in her hand. Her pawpads gripped the slick glass easily and she had developed a habit of tapping her vestigial claws against the glass while she thought.


    She had gone through several of the eVR sims with Braiche and Treston over the last two days. It had helped ease her anxiety as the deadline for leaving Transit Space got closer and closer.


    Nav knew she should be asleep, but at any second the massive capital ship would be exiting Transit Space and entering N-space.


    Nav got up, paced for a moment, then got an idea.


    She''d spend a little time looking at the bridge in eVR training so she''d understand things better the next time she was invited there. She knew that the Lord Knight would invite her, due to diplomatic niceties if nothing else.


    She leaned back against the couch and reached up to tap her implant, turning it on. She went through the context menu until she found the eVR training system. She closed her eyes, relaxing, as it booted up.


    Commodore Nav found herself standing on the bridge of the massive capital ship, looking over the dozens of stations that were used to control a giant capital ship during combat, exploration, or just plain movement. She moved from station to station, touching the icon and listening to the lecture.


    She had to admit, the shiny red button with "DO NOT PRESS" written on it at each station made her pawpads itch.


    Each station kindly informed her of their duties, during normal operation and during battle. During a Transit Space movement or N-Space maneuvers.


    As she was leaving she stopped and stared at the big red button by the door.


    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    "DO NOT PRESS" was written on it in white block letters.


    She looked around slyly.


    Surely it wouldn''t hurt just once.


    Nobody would know.


    No, no, she shouldn''t. There would be plenty of time to ask about it and...


    fifty years old


    Commodore Navelu''uee straightened up, reached out, and pressed the button, staring at it, daring it to contradict her.


    "EMERGENCY SITUATION DETECTED! PLEASE WAIT!" flashed in her vision.


    There was a swirl that made her stomach churn and everything suddenly slid downward like the world had just melted.


    "Ma''am, ma''am, wake up, the High Lord Captain wants you on the bridge," a Terran was saying.


    "Oh. Sorry, I was just in eVR," Nav said. She shook her head and got up.


    "Get into your vac-suit," the Terran said.


    Nav nodded, hurriedly getting into her armored vac suit. She then followed the Terran through the passageways until they reached the main bridge deep inside the vessel. As they moved the vessel had the atmosphere pumped into storage tanks.


    "Just a precaution in case something happens when we get back to N-Space," the Terran sailor assured Nav.


    It took long minutes to reach the Bridge.


    The High Lord Captain was sitting on the ''throne'' watching the viewscreens.


    "N-Space Translation in 10... 9..." a voice called out.


    "Right here, Commodore," the Terran troop said, pointing to a chair with an armored back on the ship''s spine side of the bridge.


    "Of course," Nav said, sitting down and buckling up.


    "3.... 2..." the voice said.


    Nav tensed.


    "1... TRANSLATION!"


    The world seemed to stop then go flat, like a painting on glass. Nav felt like she was violently thrown forward, slamming against the glass, which shattered all around her into spinning shards that gleamed and reflected different realities.


    "POINT SOURCES! POINT SOURCES! MANY MANY POINT SOURCES IN THE TETRA-TONNE RANGE!" a voice called out.


    "MAR-GITE DRIVE SIGNATURES!" another voice called out.


    "MAR-GITE ARE FIRING! BOARDING CLUSTERS AND SPEARS!" another voice yelled.


    "Ma''am, we''ve got to get you to safety," the Terran said, hurrying over to Nav. Nav undid the buckle and started to stand up.


    The entire world shattered. A massive object drove clear through the bridge, moving through the entire room. Whole sections were obliterated. Sparks, white hot sprays of molten metal and tiny fragments sprayed around the entire room.


    Nav found herself thrown against the wall so hard her chest rings popped. She saw stars and gasped sharply.


    She couldn''t see anything but red with chunks of red meat in it across her visor.


    Her visor flashed an icon and cleared itself.


    The bridge was in shambles. The High Lord Captain''s throne was gone. Most of the officer''s sections were destroyed.


    She struggled up, looking around.


    "Mar-gite are firing followup salvos," a female voice said. One of the Terrans flashed to let Nav know who was speaking.


    Nav stumbled across the room, her ears ringing.


    "Ma''am! Orders, ma''am?" one of the midshipmen called out.


    Nav realized that he was talking to her.


    "Ma''am! Orders, ma''am?"


    Nav realized with horror she was the highest ranking on the Bridge.


    She stumbled to an intact chair that still had a working monitor in front of it.


    "Throw the data here! Roll ship, get active battlescreens between us and all Mar-gite in range!" she called out.


    The data she''d learned about the Mar-gite flickered through her mind.


    "Primary fire control systems are down, ma''am! We''re on local control!" someone called out. They flashed but Nav''s datalink was putting out hash so she didn''t know the person''s name.


    "Get the gun stations connected via datalink if you have to," Nav snapped.


    The entire ship shuddered.


    "Mar-gite spears have been deflected. Battlescreens are down to 15% in that sector!"


    "Roll ship sixty degrees!" Nav snapped. "GET THOSE GUNS ONLINE!"


    "DCC is stating we have boarders!" another station shouted. "Ma''am! Orders, ma''am?"


    "Get the Marines up and in the fight!" Nav snapped. She saw one of the buttons was for the shipwide communication systems. She slapped the button with an open hand.


    "You Terrans pride yourself on your marital ability! Fight for your ship! Guns, you''re on local control, fire at will! Marines! Get in there and repel the Mar-gite boarders! Damage Control Teams to damaged section," she shouted. "GET IN THERE AND DO YOUR JOBS, TERRANS! YOUR EMPRESS EXPECTS NOTHING LESS THAN YOUR MAXIMUM EFFORT!"


    The ship shuddered again.


    "Boarders aft of deck two-three-seven! Marines are reporting light resistance but overwhelming numbers," a voice said.


    "Main guns are offline!"


    Another set of spears hit.


    Two got through.


    The lights flashed and vaporized metal and plastics hung in the bridge like fog in atmosphere.


    She paid no attention. Giving out orders with confidence.


    Even if she was unsure of her decision.


    "Bay-Seven has the wreckage cleared! They can launch torchships!" a voice called out.


    "LAUNCH! GET THEM IN THE FIGHT!" Nav yelled. "Roll sixty degrees! Get a new battlescreen section in there! Rotate projectors! Get the Marines geared up!"


    Everything seemed to funnel down to action and reaction for Nav. She could feel the sweat coat her fur, realized she was panting hard and her ears were rolled up. Nav knew she''d peed down her legs more than once, the urinary collection system not correctly hooked up to her, but that didn''t matter.


    The ship was under attack and there was nobody else. She snapped out orders, yelled encouragement, and bellowed acknowledgement of victory.


    It was all a losing battle. The Mar-gite were advancing down the corridors. More Tetra-Tonne sized Mar-gite ships were warping into the system. 80% of the ship was coated in Mar-gite and tens of thousands had breached the hull.


    The door to the bridge bulged.


    Nav drew her pistol.


    "TERRANS!" she shouted, standing up. "PREPARE TO DEFEND YOURSELVES!"


    The door collapsed and one of the terrible Mar-gite stood there, screeching.


    She leveled the pistol.


    SIMULATION ENDED appeared in her vision.


    She blinked repeatedly.


    GRADING EXERCISE - PLEASE WAIT appeared.


    Nav realized she was still in her pajamas. Still in her stateroom. Still laying on the couch.


    76.5% - PASS - PLEASE SEE GRADER popped up.


    After that was detailed. What she had done right. What she had done wrong. Things she needed to improve on.


    She blinked and shook her head, sitting up.


    THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING TO YOUR EDUCATION <GUEST>


    Nav sat up, feeling a strange mixture of shame, pride, and shock. She had passed a basic training module for shipboard officers.


    But she''d lost. She''d lost the ship and the Mar-gite had obviously eaten her.


    All in enhanced virtual reality so clean she hadn''t realized she was still in the simulation.


    There was a beep and her lights flashed.


    "TRANSLATION IMMINENT!" appeared in her vision.


    She closed her eyes and shuddered for a second.


    No wonder they fight as if they are mad. Their own training drives them insane. she thought. Why would they submit themselves to such


    fifty years old


    She opened her eyes, feeling the anger burn.


    The world went flat. She was flung forward through the glass.


    Everything went back to normal.


    She tensed.


    There was no change in ship status.


    She closed her eyes and relaxed.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The massive ship sat in orbit of a gas giant. Gas mining drones had been fired into the gas giant to refill the mass tanks of the huge capital ship.


    Nav didn''t even feel startled when she was escorted onto the main bridge and it was exactly like it had been in the simulation she had experienced only a few hours before.


    The figures of myth stood around the bridge, only the Detainee missing.


    The High Lord Captain motioned Nav over. She moved through the people moving to different work stations, as it was shift change, until she stood by the ''throne'' the vessel''s captain sat at. Nav gave the ducking squat of respect that she would give in the presence of one of the Imperial nobility.


    "I saw your test scores on that kobimaru test. First time go. Very well done," the High Lord Captain said. He nodded slowly. "A brave choice to take."


    "I lost the ship and the Mar-gite killed me," Nav protested.


    The High Lord Captain chuckled. "You can''t win that one. It''s designed to test your courage in the face of an impossible scenario," the High Lord Captain looked serious. "You win every fight but your last."


    Nav nodded slowly.


    She suddenly understood.


    "Once we finish taking on mass, we''ll be jumping out again," the High Lord Captain said. He shook his head. "We travel where the Detainee is pointing. We should be wary."


    Nav just nodded.


    It sounded prudent to her.


    0-0-0-0-0


    She leaned back and closed her eyes. She moved through the context menus until she reached what she was looking for.


    FIRST MANTID HOME SYSTEM INVASION FLEET MOVEMENT - KOBIMARU SCENARIO


    She reached out and pressed the button.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 132

    </a></a></a></a></a>


    Why?


    No, not because I could. Because I could is why I felt confident to try.


    No, I did what I did because you did what you did.


    Not just to me.


    But to everyone.


    Your arguments are compelling indeed.


    Now face the wall. -


    fifty years old...


    Final Sight of Black Night


    Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    Final Sight of Black Night


    Final Sight of Black Night


    Final Sight of Black Night


    Black NightBlack Night


    And the Empress thinks that the Terrans will just fall into a heap the minute our ships cross the wall,While it isn''t magic, since I understand the concepts behind it, it might as well be magic to the fleet. Bubble displacement universes are considered an easily avoidable side effect of high speed sublight engines, but the Terrans weaponized them into a place to stack more ammunition.


    Sticks are all over the ground, easily gathered. To sharpen a stick requires nothing more than just gnawing at it with one''s teeth. Yet, the majority of species in the universe will never understand how a spear is created as they swing their club. They will marvel at how the spear is thrust, or thrown, and feel cheated somehow


    A rock or a club is safe when set down. No child will run into the pointed end, nobody will get a splinter, blah blah blah. But those with rocks and an inability to throw them will die before those with spears and the ability to throw,Terrans learned to throw a rock, leading to the domination of their planet and everything they came into contact with.


    We''re defenseless


    How close are the missiles? Are the energy weapons firing?

 Nova Wars - Chapter 132

    What did you expect? What did you honestly expect?


    We learn in the creche that our lives are short, meaningless, and we will leave behind nothing.


    All of us. Every male in the creche.


    The majority of us will have no mate, have no family, have only roommates and maybe coworkers to emotionally bond with, if we are even capable of it after the creche.


    When we die, we will cease to exist.


    So why am I willing to help you destroy all of this? To bring it down into wreckage?


    I learned a saying: It is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.


    Only, it wasn''t Heaven for us. It was Hell.


    We were born into Hell. We lived in Hell. We served in Hell. We died in Hell.


    And nobody knew our name.


    We help because we hope that on the other side of the fire there is redemption and maybe something better for those who come after. - Dra.Falten Civil War


    Nav felt her gut clench as she looked over at the tactical and warfare sections. They were leaned forward, staring at their screens, which were still flickering as they went through the bootup. She looked around, noticing that none of the Immortals seemed concerned.


    It''s easy for you to be relaxed, you won''t die if those battlescreens don''t come up, she thought to herself.


    "Battlescreens holding!" came the voice from the Damage Control Center station. "Multiple impacts, all in the megaton range. Standard bomb pumped X-ray lasers."


    The Lord Captain didn''t say anything, just nodded, staring at the back of the Detainee''s head and frowning slightly.


    "Panel green," came from the assistant DCC monitor.


    One by one the other panels reported green.


    "Hits steady in the megaton range for explosives, gigawatt range for the energy lasers," tactical called out. "No brilliant pebbles. Nuclear detonation pumped x-ray laser only."


    "Knights ready to deploy on your orders," Nav heard.


    She looked at the Immortals, who were staring off into space, staring at something only they could see.


    "That''s definitely phasic. Almost like the old greenie network but not quite," Legion was saying.


    "It shifts and coalesces. That''s something down there," Menhit said. She shook her head. "It''s being created by something that is alive."


    "Phasic networks don''t matter. You Katy-Bound Strike the planet and it''ll go away," Kalki said. "Each of those networks are around a Speaker level power spike that is shifting and moving. Five on this planet alone, yet we are not being subject to a Speaker''s psychic attack."


    "Boots on the ground or just take it out from orbit?" Menhit mused.


    "Orbit," Kalki said.


    "Ground recon. Recon and intelligence gathering is why we''re here," Legion stated.


    "Can you get us to the ground?" Menhit asked Legion.


    The tall, muscular bald Immortal ran one hand down his chest armor as if he was stroking his thick bushy beard. "I can. I should probably staircase it so we don''t come out half in the ground."


    The Detainee rolled her eyes, standing up. "I''ll take you," she turned to the Lord Captain. "If I have your permission, as your hostage."


    The Lord Captain sat perfectly still for a moment, then nodded.


    "I''ll be taking her," the Detainee said, pointing at Nav.


    "Me? Why me?" Nav squeaked.


    "Because it will amuse me to do so," the Detainee smiled. She looked over at the three Immortals. "Ready?"


    Legion just shrugged. Kalki nodded.


    "I am ready, evil one," Menhit said.


    "Spare me the melodrama," the Detainee snarled.


    She lifted up one hand and snapped her fingers.


    Nav felt like she was being turned inside out. She knew she was screaming in pain and agony but couldn''t stop, couldn''t feel her body. Her screams rang around her and doubled, tripled, until they were mocking her for screaming.


    She hit the ground hard, driving the breath out of her. Her armored vac-suit was reporting massive errors that suddenly cleared up. The auto-systems cleared the vomit off the inside of the helmet and got rid of the blood.


    The tactile feedback system let her feel the toe of the shoe that nudged her side.


    "You''re alive. Get up. Stop being a wussy," the Detainee''s voice was just as cruel as Nav knew it would be.


    She closed her eyes and let her body shudder and shiver in reflexive response to what had just happened. Her nerve endings felt abraded and her nerve-cords felt stretched.


    "Standard atmosphere," she heard Legion say.


    "Get up," the Detainee said again, this time her voice closer to a growl. "Last warning."


    Nav groaned and pushed herself up with fists in the ground and then pulling her knees almost to her chest before standing up. She wobbled, reached out toward the Detainee to steady herself, and almost fell when the short Terran stepped away from her.


    Kalki reached out and steadied Nav before she went face first into the ground.


    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "Thank you," Nav said, straightening up. She wobbled again for a second and got her feet under her. "That was discombobulating."


    "You can say it was terrible, horrible, and like being dragged through hell. It''s all right," Legion said from where he was standing by a rock, looking around slowly, every once in a while looking at the hologram projected from his forearm.


    "Don''t you ever shut up?" the Detainee asked.


    "Nope," Legion said. He checked his forearm again. "This is almost exactly Terra normal," he made a face behind his faceshield. "Dammit, that pretty much matches what I was afraid of."


    "Sacajawea''s legacy?" Kalki asked.


    "I believe so," Legion said. He sighed and looked around. "It''s about as close to a utopian Terra as you could get."


    "Seasons?" Menhit asked.


    Legion laughed. "You remember her. She hated anything that wasn''t early spring - late summer," his face got serious. "I''m actually out of range of myself."


    Kalki stopped trying to convince his goats not to graze on the grass and looked up. "What? What do you mean: out of range of yourself."


    Legion bent down and ran an armored palm over the grass. "I mean, I''m past the unified mind. A lot past it. It means I''m over a thousand light years from myself," he looked at Menhit and Nav could see his face as he broke into a large smile. "So, right now, I''m kind of on my own. I''ll be a little different when we recombine, which means we''ll be mashed together."


    "Do you ever had the urge to just run, not get melded back?" Menhit asked.


    "No," Legion said. Nav noticed the look of anger that flashed across the Detainee''s face at that admittance. Legion didn''t notice, looking at the grass. He looked at the hologram off his forearm. "Huh."


    "What?" Kalki asked. "Dancer, stop headbutting your brother."


    "This is molecularly, biologically, genetically the same as Kentucky bluegrass, fine fescue, and perennial ryegrass," he said. He gave a grunt. "There it is."


    "What?" Menhit asked.


    Nav moved over and sat down on the rock.


    "My signature. I made this for her," he looked up and Nav could see a slight bit of embarrassment on his face. "I made these grasses for her, before she left. In secret," he looked down. "Only Dax knew what I had done."


    "He never mentioned it. Until you told me otherwise, I had assumed that the Sacajawea that left on the Dandelion Fleet was the same one we found in that gift shop," Menhit said.


    Kalki shrugged. "I avoided her when possible," he said.


    "She couldn''t understand why," Legion said. He barked a laugh that gave Nav goosebumps. "She had no idea that slavishly begging you for knowledge, for how your people lived, and apologizing for being born was irritating you."


    "The flash of Mantid orbital weapons made everything else seem trivial," Menhit said, shaking her head.


    "She''s an annoying little racist and I should rip her spinal column out," Dee snarled. "She''s the worst kind of racist, and that''s coming from me."


    "She was just ignorant, Dee," Legion said, standing up.


    "And now?" The Detainee asked.


    Legion just turned away, moving over to a bush and extending his hand to scan it.


    "That''s what I thought. Keep walking," the Detainee snarled.


    "My signature. Again," Legion said, moving to the next bush. "And again."


    Menhit looked around. "I don''t see any creatures that could be creating the network of phasic energy I can feel around us."


    Kalki just nodded, shading his eyes and looking off into the horizon. "We''ve got company coming."


    "What?" Legion asked, not looking away from the bush at the edge of the clearing that he was scanning.


    "Looks like unmanned drones, unless the intelligence manning them is extremely small or has been surgically/genetically altered to just be the consciousness," Kalki said. His hand went down to his waist and he unsnapped the restraining snap on his pistol. "Four of them, look armed and armored, coming in fast."


    Nav looked over to see the Detainee just lighting a cigarette, as if there wasn''t killer drones on the way. Menhit had her eyes closed, lowering her arms as she spread them out from her body, her palms flat.


    Looking at the sky, Nav couldn''t even see any dots. She tried magnifying her visor and didn''t see anything at first. She missed it twice, then saw it and had to look back, missed it, then had to look back again.


    It looks like a bird, with two grav-pods glowing with purple energy.


    "Purple. Atrekna?" Kalki asked.


    "No. Old early Gen-1 Terran grav pods," Menhit asked, her eyes still closed.


    The drones suddenly seemed to leap forward, going from tiny dots a few fingerwidths above the horizon to up high and diving in fast.


    Nav grabbed at her belt as Menhit held out one hand.


    Rockets were launched from the drones, exploding only a few meters from the drones.


    Which blew apart almost immediately after.


    "Your reflexes are getting dull, brother," Legion said. He was holstering a pistol. "You missed the third one behind the left hand one."


    Kalki just nodded, holstering his own pistol.


    "Too much time petting goats and raising crops, not enough time fighting killer robots beyond the stars," Kalki said slowly.


    Nav shook her head. She''d never seen anyone react so quickly, so confidently.


    "Rockets are standard Terran make. High explosive only. Two point seven five inch rockets with a forty-millimeter solid fuel engine," Menhit said.


    "Same kind of thing the Terran military still uses," Legion said. He moved over to another bush. "More of my signature."


    Nav looked down in time to see a bunch of little beetles wiggle out from under the rock. There was almost a dozen of them, they all had what looked like tiny crystals, almost gems, on their shells at the back. The moved forward, spreading out into a line, and began munching on the grass.


    Menhit suddenly turned and stared at Nav, her eyes opening. Orange phasic energy leaked from the corners of her eyes as she stared at Nav.


    "Where did that come from?" Menhit asked.


    The Detainee had moved up and was now crouched down looking at the beetles.


    "Um, under the rock after I sat down on it," Nav said.


    "More drones coming in," Kalki said. "Fifty, maybe sixty."


    "Then handle them," Menhit snapped. She poked one of the beetles. "What? What are you?"


    The Detainee started laughing. A wild, mad thing. She began rocking back and forth on her heels, her arms across her stomach, laughing loudly enough it echoed off the trees not too far away.


    "You''re like a little cluster of neurons. Not many, but a few," Menhit said. She poked the nearest beetle.


    It ignored her except to move back to where it had been, still munching away on the grass.


    "You all connect to each other," Menhit said softly.


    The Detainee slowly stood up, still laughing, but wiping her face from the tears that had spilled from her eyes.


    Menhit stood up as the Detainee''s laughter moved to just chuckling.


    "What is so funny, evil one?" Menhit asked.


    "Them. They''re what''s funny," the Detainee said. She held up one hand to stop Menhit from speaking. "The Mar-gite, quadrillions of deaths, tens of thousands of burning planets, the ships full of weird aliens, all it, is because of a bunch of beetles God decorated with a Bedazzler when he was drunk."


    Nav looked down. "It''s just a beetle."


    The Detainee laughed again, her laughter crazed and making Nav shiver in fear.


    Gunfire roared out as Kalki began shooting drones out of the sky. Nav noted that when she wasn''t looking Kalki had gone from a shabby and scuffed armored vac-suit to a well maintained and glossy black suit of heavy power armor. There was a gun on the shoulder that was firing bursts then reorienting. Her armor''s eVI reported it as a 10mm magnetic accelerator system.


    Nav knew enough about ground operations to know the weapon was in point defense mode and was eliminating the drones.


    "NavInt reporting that there''s huge amounts of drone launches around us," Legion said. He moved over to the beetle and crouched down, running a palm over it. "Watch this be something I made. Be just my luck."


    "Combine the beetles in a large enough group, you get a phasic AI," Menhit said, her voice hushed. "It''s like the greenie network, but not quite. Closer to how the Queens or the Speakers did it."


    "And unless you''ve seen a Speaker or a Queen at work, you''ll just think it''s a normal phasic network that just happens to cover half a planet," Kalki said.


    "Well, let''s see what happens when I do this," the Detainee said.


    Before anyone could say anything she took two steps forward and crushed several of the beetles underfoot. Nav could hear their shells crunch, thanks to her armor editing out the roar of the point defense gun on Kalki''s shoulder.


    She stepped on more of them.


    "Oh. Um, NavInt says that we''ve got incoming," Legion said. He looked out to the sky. "Yeah."


    Nav looked over.


    There were twisting dark patches swirling up into the sky.


    "Can I trust you idiots to kill those?" the Detainee asked. "We need to see whose behind them," she looked down. "Or if the Incredible Bedazzled Beetle is behind it all."


    "Can''t anything be easy around you?" Legion grumbled. "Of course we can kill them."


    The Detainee nodded, moving over by Nav. She looked down at the Dra.Falten naval officer.


    "Don''t worry. I''ll protect you," the Detainee smiled. The smile got bigger. "Mostly."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 133

    Each day is a struggle to ensure I live on.


    I struggle next to others, all of us ensuring we live on.


    Together we move forward in the wreckage of our civilization.


    No, in the wreckage of their civilization.


    Our civilization is the one we forge each day.


    Can I interest you in some cherry cobbler? Fresh from the oven just this morning! - Dra.Falten merchant, Post Dra.Falten Civil War.


    "Stand by me and physically you''ll be fine," the short stocky looking Terran woman said.


    Commodore Navelu''uee stood up from where she''d been sit-leaning against the rock, hurrying over to stand next to the dark gray dress wearing Terran.


    On the horizon it looked like clouds rising up. Thick gray clouds.


    ""Two million and rising," Kalki said. He unlimbered a heavy gun that had suddenly appeared on the back of the armor. Nav had watched it flow up like water and then solidify into the big gun.


    "Analyzing the bug now," Legion said, standing up. He looked down at the crushed beetles. "No signature of mine," his eyes opened wide and he looked up. "It''s a silicon-flourine based XNA strand paired via halogen bonding," he closed his eyes again. "It''s a mess, genetically. Dumb as fuck too. They will literally hold still while another one is eating them from behind."


    Kalki snickered and Legion glared at him.


    "Man, it''s a wonder this thing even survived hatching," Legion said. "It''s a perfect eating machine. It eats, breeds, dies. It''s perfect," he shook his head. "The universe''s perfect idiot."


    "You gonna help?" Kalki asked.


    Legion glanced at Menhit. "Need my help?"


    Menhit shook her head. "Probably not," she said. A gold glow started at her feet. "Kalki and I should be able to handle it."


    Legion nodded. "I want to see what happens when you start cracking off phasic power around our chrome friend here," he looked back down. "It''s an amazing little creature. Flourine and perfluorocarbons. Its ichor slash blood is pretty complex but breaks down about anything short of warsteel."


    Legion knelt down and a half dozen of him suddenly rose up from the ground, all looking at the beetle. "It''s insanely tough and adaptable."


    "Might want to pay attention," Dee stated.


    The cannon on Kalki''s back started firing. The little capering animals had become clad in armor and had small launchers on their backs as well as small rotating dishes on their heads between their horns. They had ran almost fifteen meters away, give or take a few feet, and Nav had a feeling it was to provide triangulation for the gun systems.


    She looked over in time to see huge explosions fill the sky. White fire with a bluish-purple snap to them as the globes expanded and the tops ruptured to form a mushroom cloud.


    Menhit shook her head. "At this rate you will not need me."


    "Could be worse," Nav heard Dee state over her radio. "We could need you and you could not be here."


    Menhit nodded slowly. "That feeling when the worst person you know makes a good point."


    Dee just laughed.


    Nav watched, her armor''s visor''s flare compensation blotting out the white antimatter flares from Kalki''s cannon.


    "This seems really easy," she said softly.


    "It always does in the beginning," Came Dee''s voice. Nav looked over and saw the short woman was kneeling down, staring at a crushed beetle that was surrounded by its glittering, mercury-looking ichor. "Xerxes invasion of Greasy Boot, Napolean into Vodkatrog, The Nam, Mantid Invasion of Terra, the Iron Chalice Conflict that led to Clownface. All of them looked easy in the beginning and ended badly," she looked around. "But you''re right."


    "The phasic levels aren''t even too much. There''s some separation and recombination as the groups move closer or further from one another," Menhit said.


    Dee slowly turned around. "This feels off to me," she paused. "The numbers aren''t adding up."


    Nav heard the crackle of the communication''s system.


    "Phasic levels are peaking around your area. Just over the curvature of the planet. Not sure why yet," came a voice.


    "Roger. Keep me posted. I want a multi-level phasic scan, do not run it against Mantid or Atrekna templates," Dee said. She slowly turned around. "This is off."


    Kalki kept firing. The explosions were getting closer as the drones sped forward.


    Menhit turned and looked. "Odd. That''s a phasic lure, but I''m not sure what it''s..."


    Nav turned just in time to see it.


    Several of the groups of beetles scurried a little closer to one another.


    The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    A tear suddenly appeared in mid-air.


    Beyond was a hellscape.


    Crystals jutted up from chrome sand like glittering trees, the razor sharp protrusions ''grown'' acting like branches. The sky was green, a blue-white star burning in the distance. Oily, rainbow-slicked pond surface rippled, dotted with masses of crystalline and flourine ''weeds'' decaying as gas bubbled up from the depths of the oily chrome liquids. The heat blasted out, her armor wailing.


    The ground was covered with the starfish that stood on their hind legs.


    More tears appeared. More hellscapes.


    More Mar-gite that charged through the portals.


    "WE''RE LEAVING NOW!" Dee snapped, snapping her fingers.


    Nav felt herself grabbed and yanked through a shattering mirror. The pieces cut and slashed at her brain, ripped and tore at her psyche. She saw thousands of shards where there was just a starfish covering something on the ground, in the corridor of a ship.


    In the streets of her home.


    For a second there was the harsh light of a sun, dust of an airless planetoid.


    She vomited inside her own skull as everything shattered again. Her whiskers were pulled by her own glutes as her head was pulled from her nether regions with a hard yank.


    Nav rolled on her side, vomiting inside her helmet. The emergency system kicked in and pushed an O2 line up her nose even as it pinched her nostrils shut.


    She vomited again, this time little plastic bricks filling her mouth. Her suit worked overtime to clear her helmet and faceshield of her vomit.


    She rolled onto her back and looked up.


    The lights of a vehicle bay shone down on her.


    "Dhruv, get out of there!" she heard Dee shout.


    "Almost. Almost."


    "That portal closes, you''ll be too far to rejoin. You''ll lose the data," Dee yelled.


    "Exfiling. Exfiling," Legion said.


    There was a retch followed by the splatter of liquid on metal tiling.


    "Easy, brother, easy," Kalki''s voice.


    Nav just gagged on the taste, staring at the ceiling.


    "If there was a doubt those beetles are behind the Mar-gite, that alone shall dispel it," Menhit said.


    "Get up," Nav heard. Strong fingers grabbed her collar and she was pulled to her feet, held out at arms length from the Detainee for a moment. "Let''s go."


    "Where are you going?" Menhit asked.


    Dee didn''t answer, just pulled Nav behind her to the elevator.


    When the door closed, Nav watched as Dee punched in the code for the bridge.


    "What happened?" Nav asked. Her bruised brain was having trouble putting it all together.


    "We got a look at one of the Beetle worlds. A Mar-gite breeding world," Dee said. Her voice started harsh but gentled by the end of the second sentence. "I kept squishing the Beetles, watching the Phasic energy shift around," she shook her head. "So the phasic construct defended itself. It gated in Mar-gite and more beetles. I bounced us through a moon in case there was any contaminating organisms on us."


    Nav just nodded. "But why did you take us out. Surely the Immortals could have kept us safe?"


    Dee stood silent a moment. "They could have. But you couldn''t see what I saw on the other side of those portals," she shook her head. "The complexity made the Atrekna phasic constructs look like children''s fingerpaints."


    She reached out and ran one gloved finger down the wall of the elevator. "It''s why I run unsuited when I can, just use the ol'' Mark-One Eyeball and a skin tight forcefield and a few other tricks. I can see stuff that armor might cut out."


    "I did not know you were using a force field," Nav said.


    "Only fifteen micrometers thick, and its got flex in it so I have tactile," Dee said. She gave a dark chuckle and looked at Nav. "I''m not a villain."


    "You''re not?" Nav asked.


    Dee shook her head. "No. I''m a super-villain."


    Nav frowned. "OK..."


    "The difference is presentation," Dee smiled, showing lots of meat tearing teeth. "A super-villain would not consent to be a mere god. A genie bound by arcane forces," she looked back at the metal wall, running her finger down it again. "A super-villain understands presentation and is bound only by that which they consent to."


    "Oh," Nav considered it for a long moment, standing silently next to Dee.


    The door whooshed open and Dee strode onto the bridge like she was in command. Nav hustled after her, her boots clomping on the floor.


    The screens showed massive constructs made up solely of Mar-gite rising from the gas giants or heading toward the ship. Spaceships were heading toward the massive ship, which was still orbiting the planet.


    "Did you enjoy your jaunt?" the Lord Captain asked.


    "You got a Nova Spark on this tub?" Dee asked.


    The Lord Captain nodded slowly.


    "I don''t mean templates. I mean one you can load into the guns," Dee snarled.


    "Yes," the Lord Captain said.


    "Planet crackers?" she snapped.


    "Missile launches detected from the planet. Additional drone swarms are entering the upper atmosphere, still on course to intercept us," came various voices from various stations.


    Nav was busy paying attention to the Detainee.


    "Crack this one, move toward the next one. I want to see what they''ll do," Dee said.


    "We are not in the habit of tossing around planet cracker..." the Lord Captain started to say.


    "You can crack that ball of dirt or I can. If I do, you won''t like it," she snapped. "I won''t bother with anything else, I''ll suncrack this place and move on."


    The Lord Captain leaned back in his chair. "If you have the means," he waved at the screen where the planet was sitting in space. "By all means, it is at your discretion."


    Dee snarled. She closed her eyes and then opened them.


    Nav could see the fire in them for a moment.


    "I should," she started to say, lifting one hand to snap her fingers.


    She suddenly stopped. She cocked her head slightly.


    "What are you doing here?" she asked softly.


    "What is who doing where, Madame?" the Lord Captain asked.


    "Shhh," Dee made a fluttering motion with her hand and closed her eyes. Her lips moved silently.


    The Lord Captain looked at Legion, who had just stepped out of the elevator. "Do you know who she is referring to, Lord Deshmuhk?"


    Legion cocked his head. "No, but I can hear her talking."


    "What is she saying?" the Lord Captain asked.


    Legion got a sly look on his face, then opened his mouth by just letting his jaw drop down.


    What came out of his mouth was static, chirps, and almost musical beeping.


    Nav stumbled back when most of the bridge crew, including the Lord Captain, stood up. Those who were armed drew their sidearms.


    Legion closed his mouth.


    "That''s what they''re saying," Legion said. He frowned slightly. "You may be the Lord Captain, this may be your vessel, but you are not privileged to our communications."


    "What... what was that?" Nav asked.


    Legion turned and looked at the Dra.Falten officer. "How old Terran AI and VI used to speak to each other. Think of it as a purely digital language."


    "It is obscene," the Lord Captain said, sitting down slowly.


    "If that''s the language whatever this is speaks, then she must speak it," Legion stated. He frowned. "That''s odd. That sounds like..."


    He turned and looked at the main view screen. "Do you have the old Avenge-Me dot Dee-oh-see in your database?"


    "No. Why?" the Lord Captain asked.


    "Because, I want to cross reference where we are to how far Terra gensis-gek''d this part of the galactic arm," he said. "I''m too far to ask Wee how far her people got."


    Dee suddenly opened her eyes. "That complicates things," she said.


    "What?" Legion and the Lord Captain asked at the same time.


    "There''s an Elven Court in hiding here," she closed her eyes, sighed, then opened them. "I''m going to extract them, then," she paused for a second, turning to look at the screen. "Then I''m going to start work."


    "And what will you be doing? You are still my hostage," the Lord Captain said.


    "I''ll be replacing their atmosphere," Dee said softly. She turned away from the screen.


    "With FOOF."

 Nova Wars - Chapter 134

    They started it.


    We''ll finish it. - Confederacy of Aligned Systems


    Faces slowly turned away from the Detainee as she stared at the Lord Captain.


    "Well?" the Detainee asked.


    "By all means, do it your way. It is not my desire to thwart you, madame," the Lord Captain said. He leaned back in his command throne, looking at ease. "I have your oaths you will do nothing to harm the ship or its crew and that is enough for me."


    The Detainee snarled.


    "Might I suggest first this planet and then the next?" the Lord Captain asked. He motioned at the multiple holotanks full of data. "The first Mar-gite cluster won''t reach attack range for at least 16 hours."


    The Detainee nodded slowly, still looking angry. She pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket, slowly lighting one.


    It didn''t make sense to Nav how the Detainee was able to light up when she had admitted the forcefield was only a few microns from her skin.


    The Detainee reached up and touched her temple with her index and middle fingers of her left hand even as she moved forward, taking a drag off of the cigarette held by the same two fingers of her right hand.


    "Once you''re done feeling sorry for yourself, get your asses up to the bridge. Rat girl, come stand by me," Nav heard over her link.


    Nav moved over, standing next to the holotank, the Detainee only a few feet away.


    Even with some distance, even in vacuum, the Detainee seemed to put off some kind of aura of hot malevolence. It felt like prickly all over her skin, even through her armor and uniform and fur. She kept expecting to smell burnt pelt hair or worse.


    The Detainee brought up a context menu and quickly twiddled her fingers through it. Suddenly the hologram in the middle of the table winked out and the holographic menu vanished. The screen in front of the detainee, on the lip of the tank, lit up with branching tree style menus.


    Nav watched the Detainee speed through the menus.


    "Sir," one of the people at the security consoles said, starting to stand up.


    "I see it," the Lord Captain rumbled. "Let it go."


    The holotank came to life again and the Detainee stepped back.


    Nav could see the planet slowly rotate in the tank. It had a single protocontinent and a handful of large islands on the other side.


    Clouds started to form in various places on the globe.


    "Infusing now," Dee stated, her voice cold. "It will take roughly twenty minutes for ignition levels."


    "I don''t understand why you are using this method," Nav said.


    The Detainee looked at her. "Fire. FOOF will use fire. Energetic fire that will devour everything, even dirt, evaporating the oceans to tear apart the mist to use the component atoms for fuel," the Detainee said. "Non atomic, non-anti-matter, no real esoteric stuff."


    She exhaled smoke. "It isn''t even spooky or strange particle mix. Just straight FOOF," she grinned. "Since the little bastard is made of some nasty stuff, lets use nasty stuff back."


    Nav nodded. "And use stuff from this universe, not alternative substances allows you to see if the insects will require esoteric matter to combat."


    The Detainee looked over at Nav, slowly nodding. "Yes. Your educational profile, the folds in your brain, the firing speed of your neurons, your ability to absorb and process information is why I chose you," she took a drag then spoke as she exhaled. "Keep using that intellect or I''ll toss you out of the airlock."


    Nav just nodded, watching the screen.


    It looks like storms were brewing.


    The elevator door opened and the Immortals filed onto the bridge.


    The two goats were back in armored vac-suits. One was wagging its little tail as it scampered forward to butt the Lord Captain''s armored leg with its little horns. The Lord Captain chuckled, reaching down to pat the goat''s head as it rubbed its horn against the armored leg and made happy noises.


    "How do you want the data?" Legion asked.


    "Toss it to my implant," Dee stated. She looked at Legion and made a tossing motion. "There''s the location, same method of coordinates you use. Get the elves out of there. They''ve been there for long enough that I want to debrief them," she jerked a thumb at Nav. "Take the rat with you."


    Legion nodded slowly. "All right. She won''t like it."


    "I don''t care," Dee said, looking back at the tank. "Ten minutes. Every second here on out that the clouds haven''t ignited raises the chance that just atmospheric friction will cause it to ignite."


    "It''s FOOF, it''ll ignite the second it thinks it''s the most funny or will cause the most damage and lament," Menhit said softly.


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    Legion held his hand out toward Nav. "Take my hand. Trust me, that''s the easiest way for you," he gave a smile. "And the least painful."


    Nav just closed her eyes and nodded.


    Painful seemed to be part and parcel to being around the Terran Immortals.


    She reached out and took his hand.


    It felt like she had exploded. Like every cell in her body had ruptured and spewed out the internals into the uncaring void. She saw flashes, fragments of stuff that made no sense.


    A planet turning below. Oceans she knew were poison, air she knew she couldn''t breathe. She reached out one naked hand and pressed the button so that everyone on the planet could hear her.


    "I..." she said. She took a long slow breathe. "Am Legion."


    Watching herself appear over and over, geometrically, filling the space with armed and armored versions of herself that were her. She looked at herself through a million million eyes.


    She held conversations with a dozen people at once, her brain parsing all the conversations, holding them easily without getting mixed up.


    Touch a being and having its DNA string appear in her mind, then watching it fly apart as it was automatically sequenced and examined.


    All of it.


    An ageless looking woman with black hair and sharp features. Her dark eyes were full of affection and care.


    Wee...


    It all shattered and she was on her knees, coughing into her suit. She gagged as something seemed to fill her throat, long strings down from her mouth to something blocking her breathing.


    Fingers touched her visor and pulled it away.


    She vomited up red strings of code. The computer code filled her mouth and she spewed it out on the grassy floor. Another touch to the back of her helmet and it folded up into her collar.


    She spewed out more code that glittered and them broke apart into tiny blocks before shimmering and vanishing.


    "I greet you," she heard. The voice was musical but stately at the same time.


    "I see you," she heard Legion say.


    "I am Sings with Summer Leaves," the voice said. "May I know who I gaze upon?"


    Nav spewed out more code. She could feel her datalink tingling and her throat filled with computer code somehow.


    It made no sense but Nav knew better than to question things.


    "That is Commodore Navelu''uee, of the Dra.Falten Imperial Navy, a loyal daughter of the Empress," Legion stated. "She is currently suffering from sickness inflicted upon her by my method of travel."


    "This is Girl of a Warm Heart, this is Smiles as the Stars Glimmer," the strange voice said. There was a pause. "We are elves of the ancient tribes."


    There was silence for a second.


    Nav threw up green lines of code that had amber edging.


    "Might we know your name?" the voice asked.


    There was silence again, then a sigh that Nav could feel the tension of even as she spewed out blue code and amber coding dripped from her nose.


    "You may call me Victor," Legion said.


    "Her vomit is leaking from her nose," a female Terran''s voice said.


    "She will be fine. Her people are resilient," Legion stated. He stated something in a language that Nav''s implant did not translate.


    The other voices answered in the same language.


    Nav slowly got up. The last mouthful had been jagged, rough, and she was surprised her throat and mouth were not bleeding.


    The people were Terrans, only with canted eyes, ears that had long tops that came to a point, sharp chins, high cheekbones. Their hair was so black it was almost blue, their eyes dark brown, almost black. They looked very distinguished to Nav as she accepted a soft cloth that Legion held out to her without even looking in her direction. The female''s hair was long and braided into braids only as thick as Nav''s middle finger while the male''s hair was down past his shoulders but unbound by anything but a single copper ring by the back of his head.


    Why did he need me if he speaks the language and not even my translator will help me, Nav thought.


    Legion stepped back, shaking his head. "She never once told you about me?" he asked.


    The trio shook their heads, the beads in the hair of the two females clicking.


    "Nav, if you would," Legion said.


    "Do what?" Nav asked.


    Legion gave a sharp, almost frustrated sigh. "Tell them that they can either leave this place or die when the Detainee planet-cracks this place. They don''t quite believe her."


    Nav nodded, stepping forward. "The Detainee is powerful. She possesses the strength to shred planets or detonate suns. If she has said you should leave, then you should leave," Nav paused. "We are here to help you."


    The male lifted his chin slightly, looking down his prominent nose at her.


    "So she had said to some of our people. She states many things, both in dreams and in thoughts. But how are we to know she is not lying or some of her words are not being misconstrued as they have been stated withing a dream?" the male asked.


    "You hide here from the beetles and the Mar-gite," Nav said.


    "If the beetles are disturbed, mechanical means are used to attack us. Should we resist too strongly, the starfish creatures are brought to attack us," the man admitted. "This has forced us into hiding for many centuries."


    "That''s what I just said," Nav replied, frowning. She looked at Legion. "Am I saying it right?"


    Legion opened his eyes, his expression looking pained. "No, you''re saying it right."


    "We hear and understand your words. We are ensuring that you are correct in your knowledge and understand the full context of why we commit the action we do," the male said.


    Both females nodded.


    Nav closed her eyes for a second then opened them. "She really doesn''t care beyond debriefing you on what you have seen and experienced," Nav stated. She drew herself up slightly. "Your lives mean nothing to her. The fact she offered you salvation is something you should be grateful for."


    "Our gratitude is reserved for those who assist us when..." the male started.


    "She doesn''t care," Nav snapped. "She will take what she wants whether you like it or not, whether it kills you or not, or she will just decide you are too much of a bother and wash her hands of you."


    "We are not defenseless, we can..." the male started, his severe face starting to show a hint of anger.


    "Do nothing against the Mar-gite and even less against the Detainee. She is older than your people, stronger than your people, wiser than your people," Nav snapped. "Fine, you aren''t grateful. We''re here as a courtesy to try to evacuate you cleanly. If you don''t want that, we''ll return and she''ll do it her way."


    Nav rubbed her upper arms. "And you won''t like that."


    Legion stepped forward. "I would advise that you bring us to talk to your leaders."


    A young female ran up and whispered in the ear of the younger of the two females. That female whispered in the ear of the older one as the one that had carried the message retreated quickly. The message was then passed to the male, who looked shocked.


    "The planet is on fire. Even the ocean burns," the Elf said.


    Legion nodded. "Yup."


    The man snorted. "A demonstration of..."


    Nav broke in. "Nothing."


    Everyone turned to look at her.


    "It isn''t a demonstration. She''s going to rend that world down to the bedrock with fire then crack the planet itself. She isn''t doing it to demonstrate anything or impress anyone," Nav snapped. "You don''t understand."


    The male elf looked uneasy for a moment.


    "The People do not understand what?" the male asked.


    Nav looked at Legion. "Should I even bother?" she asked.


    Legion looked thoughtful for a moment.


    "We, the People, do not understand what?" the man repeated.


    "Sure. If you want. I''m about ten seconds from doing it my way," Legion said.


    "She doesn''t care about you," Nav said.


    "That is not the concern of the People, we are..." the man started to say.


    "Not human," Nav said.


    She looked down at the ground.


    "You aren''t human...


    "That means she doesn''t care."


    Legion''s smile made that simple truth hurt Nav all the more.

 Nova Wars - Chapter 135

    There''s always the guy who thinks they can out war-crime the humans.


    You know, the guys who invented the concept? - Sh''Tomp, Treana''ad Warrior, 5 Years before the Glassing


    Mankind is devoid of humanity during war, - Unknown, Second Human Mantid War


    Field Corporal Vak-Tel was a Telkan Marine. Not a high ranking one, mind you, but still a Telkan Marine Rifleman trained on power armor, almost every weapon in the Confederacy that could be carried by a single Marine or act as a crew served weapon, and equipment that sometimes was tens of thousands of years out of date.


    He had undergone the finest and most grueling training in the Confederacy.


    The Telkan Marines were the premier infantry of the Confederate Armed Services.


    Which is why he was stuck in a drop pod and slowly waking up. A glance told him his battle-buddy 621 was asleep. He smacked his mouth several times, glancing at the clock even while he used his tongue to grab the drinking tube.


    The lemonade had a plastic/rubber aftertaste that was somehow worse than the gummy taste.


    Nine hours had passed while he had slept.


    He checked the rest of the squad in the drop pod.


    Everyone had Zzzz over their icon.


    How long is Space Force going to take to get us in range of the planet? he wondered.


    0-0-0-0-0


    "Bogey-Twelve is coming back in and coming back in fast," Tactical Station Three called out. "Six seconds until they reach firing range. They are at the Charlie Ring for our engagement layer."


    General Rippentear looked over at Admiral Breastasteel, who just nodded, holding her cigarette in her teeth.


    The whole fleet was engaged.


    When the Fleet had come into the system, Task Force Hammerfall (Formerly Task Force Great Second Chancfes) had sent the standard "I''m with the Dominion. I am here to discuss terms" to the system, as he was required to by interstellar law and the Laws of Space Warfare.


    The system had replied back that they were willing to begin negotiations to surrender to Admiral Breastasteel and her fleet.


    When Breastasteel''s fleet was almost three-quarters of the way to the only occupied planet ships had exited stealth and opened fire on the Solarian Iron Dominion fleet.


    Professionalism rather than luck meant that Dominion standard operating procedures mandated that the shielding be hot and the weapons warmed up just in case it was an ambush.


    Terran history was replete with examples of supposedly surrendering enemies suddenly attacking.


    The fire did almost no damage before the Solarian Iron Dominion ships were striking back.


    For every Ornislarp vessel that was destroyed, two more lost cloak or stealth by firing their weapons.


    "Status change. Listing new Tangos as Tango-Sixty-Three," Tactical Five called out.


    The lights flickered and Breastasteel glanced at the section of the holotank containing the wireframe for her flagship.


    Just some local armor damage. The lights flickering were likely due to battlescreen projector rotation or electronic warfare issues. A glance at the EW stations showed the most activity was in outgoing.


    The Ornislarp were losing.


    That much was obvious to anyone with even passing knowledge of math, much less space naval tactics.


    She shook her head, looking at General Rippentear, who was going over the projection of the solitary inhabited planet in the system, refining what would eventually be the fight to take and hold the planet itself. He''d need to knock out the orbital defenses and the ground defenders so he could land enough troops to take the planet if the Slappers/Noocracy refused to surrender when the orbitals were taken.


    Admiral Breastasteel moved toward General Rippentear, noting that he still had the same crews loaded into the drop pods as he had initially put in place.


    "We should be within range of troop launch inside of an hour," Breastasteel said.


    Rippentear nodded. "I''ll wake the drop-troops then," he said.


    Breastasteel was just turning when she saw Tactical One jump to her feet.


    "STATUS CHANGE! ENEMY SHIPS GOING TO LIGHTSPEED!" Tactical Seven called out.


    "EMERGENCY TRANSIT! ALL FLEET ELEMENTS, EMERGENCY TRANSIT TO RALLY POINT CHICAGO! REPEAT! EMERGENCY TRANSIT TO RALLY POINT CHICAGO!" Commander Skryler shouted. "SIX MINUTE POINT OF NO RETURN!"


    A countdown timer appeared in mid-air.


    Breastasteel didn''t argue, instead heading straight for her command couch. Rippentear did the same, husting up.


    "What''s going on, Tactical?" Breastasteel asked.


    "The Slappers just spiked the stellar mass," Commander Skryler answered.


    That made Admiral Breastasteel blink.


    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    "We weren''t even in range of the planet yet," she protested.


    "It was obvious they were losing. The casualties must have crossed some value we didn''t know about," Rippentear stated.


    "15% of Task Force elements have jumped out," Lieutenant (JG) Shelmak said.


    The timer hit five minutes.


    "45%," Shelmak said at the four minute mark.


    "Jump at two minutes," Breastasteel said. "How long until the FTL particle sleet hits our position?"


    "Seven minutes from detonation, so five minutes from now," Skryler answered.


    Breastasteel just nodded, looking back at the list of the task force''s ships.


    64%, three minutes


    82%, two minutes.


    91% ninety seconds.


    "All ships have jumped," Skryler said.


    Admiral Breastasteel wasn''t in command of the ship. No, that was the Captain''s job. Her job was the fleet.


    She took a deep breath.


    Everything shivered, like jello, then firmed up.


    "Transit to hyperspace complete," someone said.


    Breastasteel just nodded.


    "Nearest ansible system?" she asked.


    "Rally Point Chicago. That''s the reason I picked it. It has direct real-time communications with Terra," Skryler stated.


    Breastasteel just nodded.


    She had a bad feeling.


    0-0-0-0-0


    Vak-tel looked up when the tray crashed onto the table. He set down his eating utensil into the mound of noodles, sauce, and meat.


    Impton frowned at his own food, shaking his head, making his whiskers swing.


    "What?" Vak-tel asked.


    "Heard news," Impton snapped.


    Vak-tel frowned. "What news?"


    Impton looked around. "Not here. Later."


    Vak-tel nodded. "I''ll get the guys together."


    Impton nodded. "Good. Good."


    Before Vak-tel could say anything else the older Telkan stood up, leaving his tray behind, and limped from the mess hall, his cybernetic leg hissing like an angry snake.


    Private Cipdek looked over at Vak-tel. "What do you think the Old Man''s into?" he asked.


    "Whatever it is, it put him off his feed," Private First Class Nrexla said.


    Lance Corporal Juvretik, the last of Vak-tel''s three room-mates, simply looked around. "Notice there isn''t very many officers around? We''re in the mid-bands and this big assed tub is struggling."


    Vak-tel nodded. "You can feel the hyperspace engines straining. There''s been a couple of times we''ve started to pick up harmonics."


    "Not here," Cipdek said. He glanced into his palm. "Captain Kemtrelap''s turned on two-factor authentication. Luckily, he forgot to change his security questions so I was able to piggy-back into it."


    Vak-tel nodded. "We''ll finish up, meet in the room."


    They powered through their food, then headed back to the Brigade''s quarters area. They were almost to the room the four of them shared when 3rd Platoon''s Platoon Sergeant, one Gunny Heltok, and the squad leader for Third Squad, Sergeant Letrill, both stepped out of a doorway.


    "What are you four up to?" Sergeant Letrill asked.


    "We saw that disreputably Expeditionary Force Sergeant lurking around your room," Gunny Heltok said.


    Vak-tel heaved a sigh. "We''re into something and running blind, Gunny," Vak-tel said.


    Gunny Heltok nodded, folding his arms over his chest.


    "Impton said he knows something. Last time we ran in blind we couldn''t hurt them but they sure as shit could hurt us and it cost us almost a whole platoon when the Nookies hit back," Vak-tel said, reminding the Platoon Sergeant of the last drop.


    "You trust him?" Sergeant Letrill looked around. He dropped his voice to whisper. "I''ve heard those guys are pretty twisted up from spending fifty years on Terra."


    "Impton''s OK. Yuri''s the one that will kick you out to sea," Nrexla said.


    "Yuri''s a Chernobog," Cipdek provided helpfully.


    "Let us know what''s going on," Gunny Heltok said. He looked around. "Normal channels are silent and I don''t like it. I''ve been in this Marine''s Corps for long enough to know that when command goes silent and you can''t find them, something bad is happening or about to happen."


    "Roger that, Gunny," Vak-tel said. He motioned. "Let''s go."


    The others nodded, following Vak-tel as they kept heading toward their quarters.


    "Oh, and Corporal," Heltok said suddenly.


    Vak-tel stopped and looked at the senior NCO.


    "Congratulations on the promotion," Gunny said, then turned and walked away, Sergeant Letrill following.


    When they turned the corner Cipdek let out a loud exhale. "Whew, I thought we were cooked."


    Vak-tel nodded. "Yeah, but it''s almost worst that we weren''t."


    "Why for?" Juvretik asked.


    "No word from the plotters and the spotters? Nothing trickling down? Hell, we haven''t even had any online classes or pocket docket training," Vak-tel said.


    "You''re right. It''s been almost four days we''ve been in hyperspace since that quick two hours we spent before they even unloaded us from the droppods," Juvretik said. "Man, that''s not good."


    Vak-tel just nodded, slapping his palm over the pad and watching the door whoosh open.


    Impton sat on Cipdek''s bed, nursing a beer.


    "Men," Impton said.


    Nobody said anything as they filed in. Cipdek leaned against the desk, turning up his palm-hologram projector and getting to work with the context menu. Juvretik sat on Vak-tel''s bed next to Nrexla. Vak-tel just sat in the one chair in the room.


    Impton handed out the beer.


    "Drink. Beer is good," he made a face. "News is not."


    Vak-tel nodded. "We''ve figured that out. What''s going on?"


    "I can tell you," Cipdek said suddenly, his voice sounding sick.


    Impton looked over. "Badaboom."


    Cipdek nodded. "Yeah. Badaboom."


    "How bad? We lose many ships?" Vak-tel asked.


    Impton shook his head. "No. Fleet is fine. Low casualties," he looked around then leaned forward, pitching his voice low.


    "Noocracy is nova-sparking. Fleet shows up, even if only twenty/thirty ships of the line, and POP! Hypernova," Impton said. He looked around again.


    Cipdek nodded. "We''re clear."


    "Not only that, but Tomb Worlds. Nookie''s are popping Tomb Worlds. Flash! No more stellar mass. Say goodbye to Tomb World, hello to hypernova blast wave," Impton said.


    Vak-tel frowned. "Let me guess. They''re building a wall."


    Impton shrugged. "Maybe yes, maybe no."


    "But why the Tomb Worlds? What the hell is out there?" Vak-tel askedc.


    Cipdek looked up from his palm. "The Nookies have claimed almost all of them, all the way to past Terra itself. I guess they''re showing that if they can''t have them, nobody can."


    Impton shook his head. "Stellar stabilizers work, stellar mass should stay fine."


    Vak-tel sighed, looking up at the ceiling. "Whatever happens, it''ll probably be stupid."


    "Of that, have no doubt," Impton answered.


    0-0-0-0-0


    The Noocracy ships dropped from hyperspace into the stellar system. It was an older one, on the fringes of the Tomb Worlds, more toward the core and spinward.


    The Captains and crews had their orders.


    Hypernova-spike the stellar mass.


    It was their eighth target on a list of nearly twenty. They were part of nearly a hundred discrete groups of ships, all with the same orders.


    Spike the Tomb Worlds.


    Show the lemurs of the Solarian Iron Dominion that their time had passed, that the Confederacy''s time had passed.


    It was the Noocracy''s time now.


    The ships, all twelve of them, moved forward silently, heading for the stellar mass. It was reddish-orange, an older system with three worlds in the Green Zone.


    While it was outside of what the Noocracy was claiming, spiking it would still send a valuable message to the Iron Dominion.


    The Noocracy would tolerate no resistance, no disrespect, no argument.


    The ships, grouped tightly, passed an unseen line.


    Space rippled and changed.


    The crews had time to stare in shock as the ships appeared on their visible light sensors only. No other system was picking the strange ships up.


    They looked like living creatures grown around massive weapons. Nautalis shells over eight barrel C+ cannons. Trilobite shells around superstring compressor cannons.


    The Noocracy crews expected a demand for identification, or a questioning interrogation.


    They began to get ready the hypernova munitions, working quickly so that the mission could be carried out while the communications section stalled the strange ships.


    Instead the strange ships just began firing.


    It was over quickly.


    The ships moved in, slowly gathering the debris, before vanishing as they went back into stealth.


    The Cult would not allow the Noocracy to destroy their home.


    [The Universe Liked That]

 Nova Wars - Chapter 136

    With a series of bright flashes Task Force Bright Reaper dropped into the system from the mid-level hyperspace band. The flashes of light and the loud THRUMMMM that was audible for nearly two light seconds was to bleed off the energy of an exit from hyperspace. The side effects were largely mitigated by the density of the Oort Cloud and the fact there was a ''pinball race'' going on where a bunch of fairly good sized comets were slamming into each other with enough force to cause graviton ripples.


    Admiral Breastasteel watched as the data slowly came in. Passive systems only, although Dominion vessels could get a lot of data thanks to the stellar mass.


    Even better, the ''pinball arcade'' coreward from them was putting off a ton of gravitational bursts as the comets kept slamming together at a rate of roughly one impact every ninety seconds.


    Time went by slowly as the data slowly came in, becoming more and more refined. The task force spread out, getting multiple angles for triangulation of data. Star luminosity checks were performed. Snapshots taken in a handful of seconds were compared for anything occluding the Milky Way core or any other bright stars. Graviton anomalies were checked repeatedly, compared to the graviton hyper-active comets and meteors floating around the system that were weirdly repelled by the planetary masses and even the stellar mass, but attracted to one another.


    Fallout from the Second Precursor War forty-thousand years prior. Some kind of warping of the local infrastructure by, according to Lanaktallan records, was fierce fighting for nearly two hundred years local and a year by Galactic Reckoning.


    Twice Breastasteel went in and took a nap in the Ready Room, which had the lights dimmed, comfortable crash couches arranged around, and soothing subharmonics. Once she went and ate, savoring the noodles in sauce, the crunchy vegetables, and the well cooked by natural chemistry meats.


    The strategic bridge, the Fleet Command Bridge, was hushed. The lights were dim and people were waiting for data from the Combat Information Center and the raw data from the Sensor Data Sections as well as Sensor Data Analysis.


    She had just lit a cigarette, standing under the atmospheric recycling intake when several people sat up. She snapped the lighter closed and tucked the pack away, shifting the cigarette to between her teeth.


    "There they are," Breastasteel heard.


    Breastasteel immediately moved over to the primary holotank.


    Six small icons hung in space. Up, down, the four compass points at the equator.


    Any one of them, a combination of them, or even all of them could be packing the hypernovaspark.


    More data started coming in, but extremely slow.


    Breastasteel knew better than to assume that the Noocracy couldn''t detect any Dominion ships or probes through their stealth. The Noocracy had kept the edge well enough to be a near peer threat to the Confederacy for over forty thousand years.


    That alone was respectable.


    But Breastasteel just had a feeling that the Noocracy hadn''t laid all their tiles on the table, keeping back dragons and winds while keeping the high numbers on the table to keep her attention.


    Sensor pings, short range but strong, started appearing.


    The Noocracy was keeping their sensors live and on constant ping, even though that would wear on the systems as well as allow any enemy (Like Task Force Bright Reaper) to pinpoint where the Noocracy vessels were.


    They were more worried about someone sneaking up on them then they were about being seen.


    Breastasteel slowly walked around the holotank, staring at it.


    All six bogeys were made up of exactly the same amount of ships, exactly the same types, all aimed the same way toward the stellar mass.


    "Population estimation for the system?" Breastasteel asked.


    There were three planets in the habitable zones for human life.


    "Negative. Local life forms limited to invertebrates and lower," came the reply.


    Breastasteel walked slowly around the holotank.


    "Flagship is spotted. Other side of the system, southern arc, in the Oort Cloud. Noocracy light battleship," came the data.


    Breastasteel nodded.


    The lighter ships would hyperspark the stellar mass and run, the larger one would wait until roughly five minutes before the leading faster than light particle wave would hit and then jump out of rendezvous with the rest of their task force before moving on to the next...


    She suddenly stopped, staring.


    "If we use long range stealth shuttles, how quickly can we get Marines to board with those ships?" she asked.


    "Five, maybe six days," Tactical stated.


    Breastasteel sighed. Too long. Either they''d have to quikfreez the crayon eaters or they''d go crazy in the pods.


    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    There was a... well... a way to get in close.


    "Get stealth probes in there. I want golden snitched to get in close to those ships. Charge the cores, put them on automatic," Breastasteel said. "The big boys won''t like running that high in the bands, but it''s been verified that the Nookies stay in the low middle of the hyperspace bands due to physiology."


    There was nodding as the orders went out in quiet whispers.


    Breastasteel turned to General Rippentear with a smile.


    "Chase the Marines out of the beds and into the practice bays. Standard ship boarding and capturing," her smile got wider. "Screw playing their game. We''ll play it ours," she turned back. "Tell that Telkan Marine division I''ll be accompanying the boarding of the flagship."


    She looked over her shoulder with a grin. "I want you on one of the boarding actions too, General. Like me, your getting a little thick in the middle."


    Rippentear just nodded, his mouth grim beneath his bushy mustache.


    0-0-0-0-0


    "Oh shit," Cipdek said, standing up from where he had been sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at the data being projected from his palm-implant holoprojector.


    "What?" Vak-tel asked, feeling his balls shrivel up.


    Cipdek moved over to the desk and dug in his pocket for a moment before pulling out a shielded holoprojector. Normally it was restricted to Recon and Raiders, but Vak-tel had learned months ago to stop asking where Cipdek got stuff. Cipdek ran a wire from the back of his hand to the holoprojector and fired it up.


    The Admiral''s headshot slowly rotated in the holofield.


    "Kilo Company just got assigned to escort Admiral Breastasteel during a boarding action," Cipdek said. "Specifically, our platoon."


    "Are you fucking kidding me?" Vak-tel asked. "We''re supposed to escort a flag officer on a boarding mission? A NAVY officer on top of that."


    Impton sat up. "Admiral Breastasteel? Admiral Amanda Breastasteel?"


    Cipdek looked. "Yeah. Says right here: Third Platoon, VIP Security Detail: VIP Bronze Adder. Bronze Adder is Admiral Breastasteel''s call sign."


    Impton began swearing in the guttural language he''d picked up on Terra, moving back and forth across the room, swinging his arms.


    "What is it?" Vak-tel asked.


    "It is Admiral Breastasteel. We have drawn the bad lot. Would be better to have VIP security detail on General Rippentear," Impton snarled. He paused and slammed one fist into the bulkhead, the clunk betraying the cybernetics beneath the synthfur that made a poor attempt of hiding the prosthetic.


    "She''s a Navy admiral," Nrexla said. "Half our job will be to try to keep her from shooting her own dick off."


    Impton shook his head. "No. Amanda Breastasteel is Space Force. Is different than Navy."


    Nrexla shrugged. "The Confederacy doesn''t have Space Force. It was decommissioned like five thousand years ago."


    Impton pulled a beer out of the cooler, knocked the cap off, and swallowed down half of it before belching and glaring at the bottle.


    "Mangler. We run security on The Mangler," he muttered.


    "Mangler? Are you telling me that someone with the name of Amanda Arnold Breastasteel has the nickname ''The Mangler'' on us?" Vak-tel asked.


    "Space Force. Started as orbital drop force, went full blown Space Force Trooper," Impton snarled. He punched the wall again. "Now we have to run and chase. Why here? Why not send her to fight Mar-gite again?" he stalked back and forth while the younger Telkan just watched him., He suddenly stopped. "Commodore Breastasteel come out of Clownface with nickname ''Mangler'', send to fight Nookies," he shook his head slowly. "They send war crime in case of war crime." He gave a wryful chuckle. "Of course board. Make perfect sense."


    "What does?" Vak-tel asked.


    "Why they send Breastasteel out here with Rippentear," Impton said. He sat down. "How long till suit-up?"


    "Uh... six hours," Cipdek said.


    "OK. Sober up by then," Impton said.


    "What makes sense?" Vak-tel asked.


    "Why they send Rippentear out with Breastasteel. Thought was Jennifer Jack Breastasteel, Commander, Urectum Defense Coordinator last time checked," Impton said.


    "OK, why?" Vak-tel felt himself grinding his teeth.


    "Rippentear ride herd on Breastasteel. Keep Breastasteel from popping reality inversion charges to spell name or strapping nifty-thrints to Marines and shooting them at enemy. No. Does not work," Impton held a hand up.


    "Did someone... did someone try that?" Cipdek asked.


    "Yes."


    "Of course they did," Vak-tel sighed. He stood up. "Might as well start getting ready."


    0-0-0-0-0


    "Getting fat," Breastasteel huffed as the pressure sleeve inflated around her.


    --be fine-- 7221 replied. The Green Mantid was nervous as hell. The last time he''d helped run armor systems had been around five years prior and that had been training, now he was running the armor of a VIP.


    "Shouldn''t have eaten those last two cookies at dinner, Admiral," Rippentear said.


    It didn''t surprise Breastasteel that the General''s pfp/avatar icon was of an anime girl with purple hair, one eye red the other blue. She knew better than to say anything about it.


    "You''re one to talk," Breastasteel said. She grunted as the pressure sleeve adjusted. "Wish it would stop pinching my muffin."


    --let me check-- 7721 said.


    "See you on the other side," the General said and cut the link.,


    "Ass," Breastasteel grinned.


    The jack locked into the back of her neck with a purr and the armor went live around her.


    She smiled, her smile getting wider and wider as the verbose mode for startup spooled data down her visor.


    She could feel the Admiral dropping off of her.


    7721 watched the Admiral''s neurochemicals start to shift. Dopamine and endorphin profiles looked odd to him so he checked them against the old profiles that were coming in from ship''s MEDCOM to him.


    The stats made his antenna quiver.


    He forwarded the whole thing to MEDCOM as Breastasteel collected her weapons and headed to the dropship.


    The Admiral moved into the dropship, moving up to the front and sitting down.


    The dropship was full of Telkan Marines, four Monster Class heavy infantry, and a pair of Madmen. The Dropship was the standard and Breastasteel noted that the design basically hadn''t changed since she first arrived at drop training.


    She paid attention to the lecture, nodded along respectfully as the Gunny went over the various instructions and warnings.


    Then it was lights out.


    When consciousness returned the dropship was on final approach. Breastasteel checked twice, listening in on the pilots.


    They were confident that the Noocracy vessel still hadn''t seen them.


    After all, it hadn''t jumped out.


    She relaxed, using the blink-context menus to play solitaire while she waited for the light to go to green.


    Worrying about it just meant she''d have ulcers.


    She could hear the Marines chatter. Hear them alternating between complaining they were bored and that they had to look after her.


    Marines. Marines never changed.


    There wasn''t even a slight bump as the computers and the pilot''s raw nerves mated the assault tube on the bottom of the dropship to the Noocracy light battleship. Bigger than their heavy cruisers but not as heavily armed as the battleships, Breastasteel was willing to bet it was the worst of both worlds.


    The light went yellow.


    "Wake up, Lucky-Seven," Breastasteel said, standing up with everyone.


    She took three deep breaths.


    Everything centered.


    She got in line, mid way, eighth in.


    The assault portal went red and the iris opened, releasing the molecular fog. The leaders dropped into the hole.


    Breastasteel dropped in eighth, her hands around her SMG.


    She stood up slowly, her face blank and expressionless, her mind perfectly centered.


    "Happy Mangler is aboard."