Chapter Fifteen

It had started slow.

A research station here. A science outpost there. A new or struggling colony over in that place. Ships vanishing now and then. A few GalNet posts had to be censored for disturbing content. A few Universal Social Media posters had to be banned for violation of the Anti-Violence Statutes. Then gaps in GalNet started blossoming out on the Unified Outer Territories but nobody was that worried, half of those worlds were the UnUnified Races or the Uncivilized Races, some of whom had barely had star drive for a century.

But whispers started.

Something was out there. Something was wiping whole worlds away.

Those who whispered first found their posts wiped away with no explanation. Then they found their accounts more than banned, they were purged.

Then those who whispered started vanishing.

A Vuknaraa with 1.2 billion followers mentioned that her cousin out at a research station hadn't GalNetted her in over a year.

Less than an hour later she was gone. Not just from GalNet.

Her luxury apartment, with eight private rooms, was empty and for purchase.

A Tnvaru shipping magnate mentioned to some friends at dinner that his second cousin, who had established a colony three years ago, had missed her last six shipping deadlines.

He vanished without a tuft of fur.

The dull gray vehicles of the Executors were seen. Those who recorded them vanished.

Then it happened. A capital world started screaming. Video, audio, text, pictures, flooded GalNet with the governor's code attached so that it couldn't be supressed without wiping out whole nodes of GalNet, which the Unified Science Council would never allow.

Beings watched in horror as ships fired from orbit, boiling away oceans, turning the very atmosphere to plasma fire, turning the exposed bedrock of the planets to glass. Massive war machines landed on planets, disgorging smaller ones, that began swarming cities and killing all who inhabited it.

They didn't just kill.

Killing was clean. Killing was quick.

Most machines, by accident or design, just killed.

These machines murdered.

The video of a sobbing Inhamahn brood mother, an EVR rig sloppily put onto her, the skullcap held in place by jagged shards of metal, being held in cold steel claws and being watched as each egg was smashed, the insides smeared across her feathers and beak, before her head was twisted off from the body, had over 1.2 trillion views on GalNet before the EVR video was wiped away.

It wasn't recorded by a bystander.

The machines themselves had recorded it.

Recorded her despair on EVR.

Had preserved every egg being broken, every unborn chick being crushed, every iota of her pain.

And posted in GalNet.

Every post, every video, ever picture, every audio file, all had the same header.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE

Audio of an entire city of 1.2 billion Savashan screaming in pain and agony was overlaid across the Unified Executor Council's broadcast for calm, over their claim that rogue hackers were simply trying to alarm people.

Before 12.5 trillion viewers the twelve council speakers were each overlaid with smaller videos of a member of their race not only being killed.

But being murdered.

The code that overrode the broadcast turned out to be a high level intelligence agencies disaster code from a world that had gone silent months before.

Random pictures and videos started having horror attached. A random advertisement for an air vehicle would have the vehicle suddenly massacre the happy family, with complete EVR of how it felt to be part of them. A simple picture of a sunset suddenly warped and showed a metal claw crushing a screaming Elmetankii.

The Chief Executor's, a Savashan with glossy scales and a thick tail, made an announcement watched by trillions that everything was under control. His image was suddenly replaced by a tiny unborn Savashan being pulled from its egg by a barbed needle, the tiny saurian squirming before plasma roasted it alive even as the Chief Executor's voice droned on and anyone with EVR felt the infant's confusion and agony replace the Chief Executor's calm and confidence.

The victim had the colors of the Chief Executor's brood.

Planetary governments began screaming for protection, demanding that the Unified Military Fleet protect their worlds, no matter how far from the encroaching blackness they were.

The fact that there wasn't enough ships in all of the Fleet to post a single ship at even a 10th of the worlds was leaked onto GalNet public information boards before the Unified Military Fleet could even make a decision.

The Unified Military Fleet was ordered to protect the Core Worlds, the oldest worlds, of the most powerful and wealthy of the Unified Civilized Races. Some ships mutinied, heading for the home worlds of the majority of the crew.

Others vanished into jumpspace and were never seen again.

Riots started, sweeping over major cities. Government officials and peacekeepers were killed where the mobs found them. GalNet was awash with video of the riots, taken from the omnipresent cameras. Those hunted by the rioters found their locations being reported on GalNet.

And the location of their families.

Their killings were broadcasted live.

GalNet became a horror show.

Then the virii attacked. Slashing into databases, from lowly cooking recipes to high end corporate research R&D databases. They were everywhere.

And they knew how to kill any who wore EVR.

Horribly.

GalNet became a war-zone where the virii, self-replicating and evolving, attacking everything from public transport to person to person calls.

One place fought back.

They erected barricades of neon and chrome, raised up firewalls of streaming green code, and attacked back.

Code that worked within a simple game worked outside, on GalNet itself, but it had to be guided, had to be used to be effective. It required will.

From out of a simple game poured tens of millions to fight.

Battlefields were strewn with the gasping avatars of dying players and the scattered prisms of defeated virii. Foxholes were dug into shattered infostores, berms erected inside Social Media chat rooms littered with the dead, aid stations built in the wreckage of traffic control systems.

They were defeated, no matter how valiant they were, more often then they won.

They still fought on. Climbing over their dead and wounded, taking the fight to the virii.

But the message had gone out.

Then, one day, for no particular reason at all, a diplomat was shot in the head.

In GalNet, in bunkers of chrome and neon, in fortifications of streaming green code, in foxholes dug into shattered databases, the word went out.

HOLD THE LINE, CHUMMERS!

WE'RE COMING!

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Kuldunaat stood on the bridge of the Gentle Mercy of Untaraa with his hooves braced and his coat expertly manicured. His hooves shown, his sash of leadership glittered with medals, his feeding tentacles were plump with confidence, his jowls mighty and pendulous. His six eyes, two in back, two to the sides, two in front, were clear and focused as he waited with confidence for the First Communications Technician to tell him a message was waiting.

The four scanning techs, all of the First Class Order, were still staring at the screens, plying their scanners and displays for the smallest iota of data, the faintest wisp of ion trail, the faintest ping of jumpspace energy.

On the display was a fleet. It annoyed Kuldunaat, High Executor of the Unified Executor's Fleet, that the ships on the display outnumbered him.

It was most vexing that over half of them were larger even than his flagship.

"Harumph, put them on screen, they've waited long enough," He intoned, his tendrils trembling with amusement as he lifted his crest into an authoritative position.

The screen switched from showing those strangely arrayed ships, so different from the elegant and overwhelming line of his ships, to showing a bridge full of...

...of primates.

And not halfway civilized primates, but ones with forward facing eyes, almost furless except for what was on their heads. Two had no hair on their heads but instead their scalps were smooth and gleamed in the light. They all wore uniforms, stark uniforms made for utility rather than to properly show a being's rank and position.

Not a sash to be seen.

The centered primate, a bald one, simply stared at Kuldunaat. To his right one of the primates was smirking, hair around his mouth as he crossed his legs.

"May we come in?" The bald one asked.

"Harumph, I think not," Kuldunaat said. "Who am I speaking to?"

"Admiral Krempin, Terran Confederate Navy," The being said. Rather than continue on with his species, his rank, and his position, he simply leaned back and waited.

"Why are you here?" Kuldunaat said.

A small window opened up, crackling into being. A figure wearing a set of armor with thick plates appeared. It was obviously female, a mix of primate and feline, and her eyes were replaced by swirling spirals. Little animated fists waved over her head and steam shot from the cracks of her thick plated armor.

"DOKI DOKI DOKI!" the little figure squeaked.

One of the primates that had first appeared touched the panel in front of them and the strange window vanished.

"Apologies. Some of my troops are over-stimulated at the idea of assisting you," The bald primate said.

The one with hair on his face smirked wider.

"Why are you here?" Kuldunaat said, harumphing again.

"To render assistance. Are you a representative of your government?" The primate, Admiral Krempin asked mildly, as if he was inquiring about the weather.

"I am the High Executor of the Unified Executor's Fleet, the most learned and powerful Kuldunaat. And why do you think we need assistance?" Kuldunaat asked.

The words "DOKI DOKI DOKI" danced at the edge of the viewscreen, with "WAAAAAAGH!" floating up from the bottom and "FOR THE EMPEROR!" streaming down the other side.

The same primate as before made a motion on her board and the sets of symbols vanished.

"Again, pardon. My troops are eager to assist," Admiral Krempin said again.

The smirker smirked harder. He was really starting to get on Kuldunaat's nerves. It was like he knew that when Kuldunaat was a child he had stolen a schoolmate's lunch and eaten it before blaming it on another.

"And again, I ask of you, what makes you think we need assistance?" Kuldunaat asked.

Twelve thousand light years away an inversion charge turned a city of 250 million into ash.

Over a period five minutes.

The city's screams were recorded and broadcast onto GalNet.

"From what we have observed and learned, you have a Precursor problem," The Admiral said.

The smirker kept smirking. Now Kuldunaat could swear he could see the slightest suggestion of a hint of bared teeth.

He was really yanking on Kuldunaat's tendrils.

"The Precursor's have been dead for over a hundred million years," Kuldunaat scoffed.

"But their war machines are not," The Admiral said, making a basic primate shrug. "Right now, they're massacring your people."

"That is baseless foundless panic inducing rumors! That is disgusting anti-Executor propa..." the High Executor cut off as the female feline-primate hybrid, reduced to a cartoon, ran onto the screen.

The Admiral held his hand up and stopped her by placing his palm against her cartoon forehead. She flailed against the air like she was actually there and trying to strike at him past his hand.

"DOKI DOKI DOKI WAAAAAAARRRRGH!" the little cat-hybrid shrieked in a high pitched voice that made Kuldunaat and most of the rest of the bridge crew wince.

The Admiral turned slightly, pursed his lips, and blew.

The little hybrid in the heavy ornate power armor with overly thick plates tumbled off the screen.

"For a rumor they seem to be burning your systems at a rapid pace," The Admiral said. He stood up, leaning forward slightly, and the smirker's smirk got smirkier. "You let them get a foothold and now your systems are infested."

His eyes got intent.

"May we come in?" He asked.

Kulumaat opened his mouth to deny this annoying uncivilized brute when the door to the lift opened up. A dozen Savashan rushed the bridge, waving small arms taken from the security armory.

"YES! YES! COME IN! WE REQUIRE ASSISTANCE!" One screamed. "HELP US!"

"That's good enough for me," The Admiral said, leaning back.

A cartoon version of the Savashan, a lowly Janitorial Technician Fifth Class, appeared on the screen, lifted up in celebration by cartoon heavily muscled green primates with overly large tusks, the green primates wearing stuck together metal plates painted red and yellow and firing weapons into the air in joy at the word WAAAAGH appeared over the Savashan. They paraded the Savashan back and forth as dozens of little armored cat/primate hybrids ran around him waving tufts of multicolored plastic strips and throwing hearts and sparkles into the air.

The screen went dark.

"HOW DARE Y..." Kulumaat started to say.

His bridge captain, an Inhamahn , smoothly drew her pistol and shot Kulumaat in the back of the head.

The last thing that appeared in Kulumaat's darkening vision was the face of the smirker.

Smirking.

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TO: ALL

GO GO GO GO GO!

-------NOTHING FOLLOWS---------

MANTID FREE WORLDS INTERNAL MEMO

oh god