Chapter 633: The Spoked Offensive

"We had no idea about the War in Heaven. The assault upon Sam-UL the Grand Architect by the Detainee and the Biological Apostles.

"We had our own problems.

"Lots of problems." - Dunta'akto'o, Fifth Most High (Major) of the 319th Irregulars

"I'm sorry, Momma," - Unknown Infantryman, last words

"The Mantid Diplomatic Representative for the Fourth Interstellar Hegemony realizes that you are unfamiliar with Terrans and believe, mistakenly, that humans are just like everyone else. Trust us when we tell you: suppression and cruelty and deprivation in a concentration camp may make other species give up and die from hopelessness but all you have done is housed two point two million insane killers on your homeworld and made them more feral and savage.

"We're offering the chance to surrender to you before they hit the red line and begin to...

"...we're sorry to inform you that the diplomatic window has closed. That screaming you can hear? That's the Terrans.

"They're coming.

"For you." - Wetted Pen and Sword, Mantid Diplomat, minutes prior to emergency evacuation of Jrek'lerk, home planet of the Ruktrakin, extinct species.

"It has to work. It has always worked before thus it must work now." - Atrekna Council, Prior to The Spoked Offensive

"Look at me and tell me the Lemurs cannot hurt us. LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT MY FACE!" - The Defiled One

"May your sword stay wet like a young girl in her prime." - Hail of the the Metal Kings' Men of War, Terra, Unknown Era

"Cornholio? That is a name I have not heard in a long time." - General TP4, Post Third Clone Consortium War, prior to the Fourth Holy Reformation

"In this grave you have dug for me, there is room within its confines for us both," - Terran Descent Humanity

The Atrekna had used the strategy before, in their pre-history. It had taken months of concentration and meditation on ancient crystalline memory-matrixes that had been recovered through temporal archeology, but the strategy had been rediscovered and examined.

It was the strategy that had forced the Herd Lords to scorch the hyperatomic plane. That brazen unthinkable act had been the only way to stop the Atrekna from overwhelming the galaxy and then the universe.

The tactic was simple. Take one critically situated system that had passed through or would pass through a large amount of other stellar systems that would also pass through or had passed through the same spacial location of other systems.

Once that system was taken, the chronoshift would be slow as the system was sunk into the temporal tides. Once the sun was slightly reddened, gravitationally and chronotationally prepared, the Atrekna would then open chronospacial portals to at least thirty other systems. Once the system was slightly 'sunken' to prepare it, each of those systems would open five portals, connecting to five different worlds. Each of those worlds would connect to five others. Repeat for a total of five times.

The central system would provide the primary 'hub', the initial thirty would provide the base of the spokes that would each have five links to the next set of systems, in a chain five links long. Each 'spoke' would consist of roughly 3,125 stellar systems, with thirty spokes, for a grand total of 93,750.

That would end the resistance of the Mad Lemur's allies as well as the Herd Lords and the Hive Lords.

All that would be left was for the Atrekna to mop up the last feeble resistance and take possession of the few stars left in the galaxy that were not under Atrekna control.

Dalvanak could have told them that the idea of a mere hundred thousand stellar systems being seized would give them control of a single arm of a galaxy, much less the entire galaxy, was beyond foolish. It was naive and ignorant.

But nobody asked him and he was too busy looting a "Amaz-Mart" shipping center to care.

The plan was prepared, with all the logical care and precision that a race that was convinced it beyond primitive emotions could bring to bear. Logical attempts to counter the tactic were accounted for. Each possible scenario that was plausible and had evidence of being attempted was examined and either accounted for or discarded according to probability.

The Atrekna had kept up attacks on systems that had been deemed critical by the previous High Convention but the majority of their resources had gone toward the upcoming offensive that they knew would bring the enemy to heel and force the galaxy and universe to submit to Atrekna will.

[The Universe Will Remember That]

The initial assault had gone as predicted. The system was assaulted, the defenses swept away, and the Atrekna had set about building chrono-spatial gateways of phasic energy and psionically constructed lattices that would allow the Atrekna to quickly and easily bring reinforcements back and forth between connected stellar systems with less effort and minimal expenditure of energy. Once those were complete, they moved to the systems that would form the base of the spokes before the planet itself was subdued.

The strategy normally called for each system to be completely subdued, but the Ferals had proven extremely adapt at planetary warfare and the time it could take to completely subdue and alter a planet could take decades or years.

The altered strategy stressed offensive tempo speed.

From each of the thirty worlds, as soon as the system was controlled, before the planets were subdued, the next set of phasic powered psionically created chrono-spacial gates were opened.

The Atekna could taste victory on the tips of their feeding tentacles as the spokes began to expand into the stellar systems beyond Herd Lord space. Into the territory that had been devastated by the titanic struggle millions of years ago.

On worlds that had been shredded to bedrock the Atrekna used their mastery of time and space to rejuvenate planets and return to existence species that had been extinguished. The latter was not done out of some sense of charity but rather to find a species that could withstand planetary combat against the allies of the Mad Lemurs of Terra and the remaining war machines of the newly extinct species.

The Atrekna were on the edge of victory, their attacks and reinforcements coming too fast and thick for the allies of the Mad Lemurs of Terra to resist.

But, like any of a hundred species could tell you, it was when you had victory in your hands that the Mad Lemurs of Terra somehow snatched defeat from the grasp of victory and beat victory to death with it.

The Cult of the Defiled One knew that the plan was in jeapordy when four screaming words were bellowed out into the Hub System with the arrival of a single ship.

STEAMBOAT WILLY IS HERE!

-----

Admiral Thennis staggered, her hand involuntarily going to her hip as the puncture wound drove deep into her flesh, chipping the top of humerus, and blood gouted out from the exit wound in the middle of her glute. She snarled, spitting purplish-black blood on the smoking deck at her feet. She raised her baton, pointing at the Harvester Class Goliath.

"FIRE!" she screamed, her voice carrying through vacuum to rattle the interior spaces of the Harvester.

Sweating teenage girls, stripped to the waist to reveal thick muscle and heavy bone, slammed the breaches shut and stepped back, crying out "GUNS LOADED!" in high voices. The striped shirt wearing girls with the puff topped berets cracked their whips and shouted "LOAD THE NEXT BATTERY, YOU SCURVY WENCHES!"

The girls manning the sights squinted, their tip of their tongues held between their teeth, their faces pale and bloodless, their eyes black as night with tiny red pupils.

"FIRING!" they screamed as one, bracing their feet and pulling the firing lever.

The Harvester knew none of that. It only knew that the gravely wounded Lemur warship had just brought all of its targeting to bear on the Harvester with enough strength to rattle loose material inside the Harvester's subcontinent sized hull.

The dozens of guns fired, rippling spacetime around the muzzles of the massive guns. Flame gouted out into space, in strict defiance of the science and vacuum and the shockwaves shook the heavy bases of the guns.

The shells bypassed the Harvester's shields, its armor, its armored interior spaces. Shells flashed into existence in a spray of energized dark matter that glowed a dark purple for the split second it sprayed out from around the rounds' entrance point.

Hull armor peeled outward as massive explosions tore free of the Harvester's hull.

The ancient ship broke up, secondary explosions stomping across the hull as the internal systems detonated.

Thennis raked her gaze across the skies and more than a few of the Harvesters figuratively flinched from the scanners that probed and gazed through space. Three rolled, changing the frequency on their shield, putting forward a different profile as the gaze raked over their hulls.

There is no life in the void the Harvesters heard. There is nowhere to hide from my sight.

The voice was that of a female lemur, but somehow cold, empty, as if all had been drained away by entropy and only left the hollow echoing voice whispering through a void that was beyond empty.

Admiral Thennis felt it more than heard it. A bone deep exaltation as the words bellowed out across space-time and reverberated in her very bone marrow.

HAVE GREAT FEAR!

THE MIGHTY MO' IS HERE!

was the first.

More followed as the Black Fleet followed the beacons she had launched through the bubble-gates.

Grinning with victory, Thennis pointed at one of the larger Harvesters that had made the mistake of exposing itself from where it had been hiding behind a supermassive gas giant.

"WHITE KNUCKLES AND HELL DIVERS!" Thennis shrieked, pointing with her baton even as space thundered around her from missiles and nCv shells shattering on the Steamboat Willy's battlescreens. Five more slid out from behind the ringed supermassive gas giant, all having maneuvered to try to get a better angle on the Steamboat Willy and to give them better targeting solutions while using the time behind the gas giant to make repairs.

The Harvesters heard the words echoing inside of its hullspaces. They didn't make sense, the Harvester lacking the context for any of it. It focused all of its sensors on the annoying Lemur craft, trying to push through the jamming, distortion, false images, and warping of space. It was wary of any tricks the Lemur vessel would attempt and would not fall for any deceptions or base trickery.

It pushed forward, only a few thousand kilometers from one of the thick rings around the supermassive gas giant.

The rings were made of ice and rocks, of comets and asteroids that had hit the now-absent moons and exploded, as well as wisps of gas vapors that the moons had pulled into orbit around them before their demise. The rings had thick 'arcs' where the ice was brighter, more reflective, but that was not uncommon in 'short lived' rings.

The Harvesters ignored the returns, knowing that it was little aside from standard rings.

As the Harvesters' shadow passed over, the coasting light attack craft banked their wings, tiny graviton spikes sliding out from graviton systems no larger than what was in a greenie's boots. The pilots and gunners were shivering in their leather bomber jackets, their scarfs around their necks and wrapped over their faces, their hats pulled low and the ear flaps covering their ears. The gunners and the pilots pulled their hands out from under their jackets, flexing their finger-covered gloves.

The Harvesters were only a few thousand kilometers away.

The tiny craft, almost invisible at the distances, were spread out, a set of ten squadrons for each of the Harvesters and five squadrons for each of their attendants.

Opening their legs wide, the gunners pulled out the bombing sight, rubbing the frost off of it as they looked down between their legs at the mechanical glass-lens sight. The pilots pressed a button on their control yoke and a mechanical ring sight popped up. All of them grabbed the lever and ratcheted it back and forth, loading their forward and wing guns.

The Harvester was almost at its closest to the rings when they swarmed out, flying dead stick, engines off, all systems completely shut down, without a trace of RF or EM leakage to give them away. The wings and fuselage was coated with dust covered ice that swept back off the wings with long icicles.

The girls scrubbed their goggles with their thumbs and tightened their grips on their controls. All of them held their foot over the flat pedal even as they pumped the engine fuel pedal with their other foot.

The Harvester devoted more scanners to the Steamboat Willy, trying to cut through the cloud of microprisms that drifted with the massive ship, unmoving relative to the ship but moving inward toward the sun relative to the Harvester.

The girls banked slightly, breaking up into eight flights of tiny craft, the tiny graviton spikes sliding through the fabric of space just enough to produce enough 'drag' to allow the craft to bank away from the others and then level out.

One by one the little craft slipped through the battlescreens of the massive Harvester warships.

The Harvester had gone to firing its batteries at the Steamboat Willy despite not having good targeting solutions. Massive batteries of nCv cannons that measured in the hundreds of miles instead of by the gun, tens of miles of mass-driver missile launchers, huge gauss cannons firing slugs the size of a locomotive.

The gunner for the lead craft checked the paper map in her lap that was whipping with the wind that only seemed to cause effects on the two-man crew of the fighters. She had a small instrument in her hands, measuring distance and angle. She leaned forward, tapping the pilot, and gave quick hand signals to the pilot. The pilot nodded grimly and swallowed, tightening their grip on the controls as the gunner turned their swivelled seat around. The gunner held up a hand mirror and flashed the light of the star at the ones behind, quickly passing a message in a simple code of flashes.

The tiny ships separated even further, the squadron leaders heading for the targets.

The Harvester growled to itself as it realized it had missed by over ten thousand miles, wasting all of its effort on a dancing false image. Two of the Harvesters with it put forth that the single ship was a waste of expenditures, that the Atrekna perhaps may want to conserve resources better.

The Harvester contemplated their message for a moment, then turned its attention back to the invading ship.

-*-RECOMPUTE FIRING SOLUTIONS-*- the massive Harvester ordered.

The little craft slid by the invisible line.

Before the Harvesters division mates could reply Hell found them.

The girls kicked the starter switch, stomping it even as they pumped the 'gas' pedal. The engines roared to life, the circular disks at the front of the planes 'roared' into existence. Sirens kicked on, blaring loudly enough to make the dust and rock in the rings dance and shiver.

As one the planes over the hulls of each of the Autonomous War Machines banked and went nose down one after the other.

The Harvesters heard the sound, felt the vibration somehow rumbling on their hulls, heard the siren echoing in the silent internal maintenance spaces.

The girls, looking nearly 'straight down' screamed in ecstasy as their targets came into view, their ships plunging thousands of meters in as many seconds. They triggered the nose guns, firing deadspace mined antimatter loaded with the fierce savage hateful glee that filled each of the girls till it shown in their eyes.

**THIS UNIT IS UNDER ATTACK** the autonomous war machiens all screamed at once.

The attack craft pulled up hard, the frames creaking, the wings dropping down and the guidewires attaching the ends and middle of the wings to the fuselage singing in the vacuum with the high tight tones of stressed metal.

Half the autonomous war machines attempted to determine how sound was carrying in a vacuum. Others didn't bother, merely began looking around wildly for whatever warship was engaging them even as the tiny craft raked the miles thick armored hull of the AWMs with their guns.

The rounds were not just cratering the armor. More than a few of them vanished into elsewhere, reappearing with a splash of dark matter deep inside the AWM, then exploded with the bright flare of antimatter and a scream of phasic rage.

Targeted points slid up and the gunners stared at the marked lenses they held tightly between their thighs, a few scrubbing the frost off of it quickly. The hull slid by and when the gunners saw the right combination of markers they yanked the lever back once then pushed it forward.

From the bottom fell heavy bombs, a third as long and half as wide as the fuselage of the planes. The fins glowed as the grav systems created 'drag' on the back, the tip glowed as the systems created 'pull' on the tip, orienting the bombs nose down and driving down toward the hull of the ship, still keeping their 'side' momentum.

Right before the bombs would hit the hull they vanished in a ripple of dark matter that 'splashed' from the entry point, evaporating into sparkles of light and glitter.

The bombs reappeared inside the hull, driving through one or two internal bulkheads.

Almost sixty percent found their targets.

Magazines. Assembly point reactor storage. Drive cores.

The planes had banked hard, dropping low to the AWM hull, racing for the edge of the massive ships. Two of the gunnery girls stuck their hands out past the fuselage, middle finger extended, as they raced across the massive hull.

One AWM, an ancient Harvester brought forward through temporal replication, got a quick glimpse of one of the fast tiny craft.

One of the female lemurs had stood up, turning so she was facing away from the scanner. As the Harvester watched, as the heavy bombs detonated deep inside its hull, the female lemur bent forward at the waist, pulled down her tights, and raised her skirt, displaying her bare buttocks at the scanner. She had "NYAH!" written in crude letters on the flesh of her glutes in blue paint stick.

For some reason it didn't understand, the AWM felt intensely insulted.

Thennis watched as the fruit fly ambush wreaked havoc on the Harvesters and their attendants, turning her attention back to the thicker flotilla. The melee had grown savage, with the two newcomers attacking point blank, Atrekna ships fighting Atrekna ships, and some just fleeing.

The Atrekna manned ships had broken away from the autonomous flotilla, still being swarmed by more fruit flies as even more streamed toward them.

Admiral Thennis suddenly knew that the rounds fired long hours before had reached the deployment point and she pointed her baton at the stellar mass.

"LET THERE BE LIGHT!" she shrieked.

Deep inside the stellar mass the torpedoes fired off their charges or activated their warheads.

The temporal and stellar mass stabilizers activated even as the temporal resonance charges went off.

The sun flickered for a moment.

The Atrekna stared in horror as the sun went from a dim purplish to a bright yellow in seconds.

The Hellspace and hyperspace interdiction systems failed as the temporal resonance charge's blast wave washed over them.

Thennis's smile was a terrible thing as she pointed her baton at the clustered Atrekna living ships.

The battle was winnable.

"GUNS FREE!" she shrieked.

-----

The system was a 'spoke base' system. It had impressive stellar resources and once the Atrekna had archeoreversioned the two planets back into life bearing state it had even more. The sun was dimming from bright orange to dim orange, the bubble-gates had been created, five in all, and the massive spawning pools and manufacturing facilities had been built in and around the gas giants.

There were dozens of Harvester class Atrekna AWM's in the systems, entire Hives of Dwellerspawn, not to mention hundreds of Atrekna warships guarding the system. Hyperspace and Hellspace and Jumpspace interdiction systems were in full place, even though the Atrekna did not understand hyperspace yet, they understood that gravitational shadows could be generated to block Hellspace just as one would block jumpspace.

A torpedo had slided out of the primary bubblegate that led back to the Hub System then disintegrated in a spray of exotic particles, including chronotrons and gravitons.

For long minutes, stretching into an hour, nothing happened.

The Atrekna breathed a sigh of relief, believing, logically, that the weapon was a stray round from the fierce fighting taking place in the Hub System. The fighting had grown fierce enough that the Convention that ruled the Hub System had ordered Spoke Base Systems to send reinforcements immediately.

The autonomous war machines, Dwellerspawn, and Atrekna war ships were moving toward the Primary Hub Bubblegate when it happened.

Space bulged, somehow looking from all angles as if space was flat at the bulge was pushing up despite all logical and scientific evidence to the contrary.

The bulge split down the middle, dark matter spraying out like water. The edges burned with Hellspace energy even as the area of the split glowed with a lurid purple light.

A massive vessel, nearly two-thirds the size of a Goliath Class Harvester, burst from the bulge, which exploded in a spray of dark matter, leaving behind a ripple patch of purple glowing dark matter hanging in mid-space.

The vessel looked like a huge wet-navy vessel. The front of the prow sported massive cannons in the six-barrel rotating configuration as well as five deep grooved pits surrounding an even larger one.

Before the Atrekna could react the ship's battlescreens came on, so thick that the vessel vanished inside a cocoon of interwoven energy.

The enraged bellow, however, left no doubt which species the ship represented.

HAVE GREAT FEAR!

THE MIGHTY MO' IS HERE! roared out across the system, even the stellar mass shuddering with the force of the roar.

Thinking arrays, shrieking arrays, Atrekna cognitive brains, all shuddered under the impact of that mighty roar. More than a few detonated in a spray of liquefied tissue, blood, and neural fluid. The hull plates of the vessels nearest the massive ship buckled as if the starship had run into the blast wave of a detonating gas giant.

The Lemur warship began firing its guns, not bothering with C+ cannons as it already had the tactical and strategic updates from the Steamboat Willy. Unlike Steamboat it didn't bother to release parasite craft or torchships.

The barrages aimed at the Atrekna hit and hit hard, the Lemur ship ignoring the autonomous war machines and the Dwellerspawn to focus on the gathered Atrekna-manned fleets. Shells hit hard enough to shatter neutronium and phasite alloy. The explosions drove nuclear and atomic force deep into the tissues of the hybrid flesh/machine ships.

Before the Atrekna could recover from the first barrage, they realized that several more were on the way and that the big Lemur warship was firing again.

Then the massive cannons at the front began to fire, rotating once every fifteen seconds to fire again, the previous barrels cooling slowly. The deep grooved pits glowed deep inside and then, one by one, firing opposite one another from the massive central pit. Energy lanced out that streaked across light hours in seconds, impacting the larger Atrekna ships.

The ships were cored out by the blasts that hit and appeared to splash uselessly on the armor, but the central core of energy tore through armor like tissue, reduced the tissues and machinery that made up the interior to its component sub-atomic particles, then blasted out the other side in a circular spray.

Unseen by the Atrekna, stealthy torpedoes slid through the subspace foam.

Each heading for one of the five bubblegates.

The Missouri knew it was only the first line, the beachhead, the Marines storming Iwo Jima.

The Black Fleet would cut off the Hub System from the Spoke Base Systems.

The Confederate and the Free Herd navies would handle the rest.

The Atrekna ordered the autonomous war machines and the Dwellerspawn to engage in flank speed, to head directly for the Lemur war machine, even as they desperately tried to use those fleets for cover.

They missed the torpedoes sinking into the subspace foam.

Where they raced for the stellar mass.

-----

The groundkeeper/janitor watched his wife's face as he relayed to her what he had seen. She had their five children sitting on her lap, beside her, and at her feet.

He took a drink of the fizzybrew as he described how the sun looked. Swollen, purplish-red, like a overripe rengup friuit left too long on the branch.

He told them how he could hear the thunder of the lemurs fighting the Atrekna as he had watched the sun slowly turn yellow again.

His wife was smiling, nodding along, her eyes sparkling with enjoyment at the story.

He smiled at her as he took another drink of the fizzybrew and she flicked her ears at him in affection.

She was happy.

Which meant life was good.