Chapter Twenty-Six

Kteshaka'an was an Unified Outer Rims system halfway between the Great Gulf and the Unified Inner Systems. It was an agricultural system with resource extraction. Three planets firmly in the green zone providing food for nearly 200 systems, the great gas refineries and the asteroid extraction and smelting facilities providing raw materials to the great factory worlds of the Inner Systems. The sentient beings who had originated on the system and made their presence known through radio signals had been pacified for over two thousand years. Their birthrate had been controlled, their numbers diminished to sustainable levels after their system resources were collected. Once everything that could be stripped from the system was stripped, the species would still survive according to the Unified Science Council.

Which wasn't exactly a welcome outcome to the small creatures that had been there first, who's only mistake was to broadcast their location with a great big "Hi! We'd like to meet you!" to the nearby world that was radiating signals.

They'd even forgotten what it was like before the outsiders came.

Now the outsiders were leaving. Streaming to the spaceport, fighting to get onto the ships, leaving behind possessions and wealth, even servants that they had ordered about all their lives.

The little creatures breathed a sigh of relief as the last spaceship took off. There were still the Overseers, but they were all in the vast cities, panicking, attacking each other, burning and smashing everything in sight. They'd fled the farms and forests and fish hatcheries and carefully cultivated parks, all fleeing to the city.

The little creatures in the cities, former servants, fled to the farms and little towns that they had left behind when they'd been taken, taught, and traded on the market to those who wanted servants.

The Overseers didn't seem to notice.

Robots aren't as much fun to order around, was something they had all heard from the mouths of the Overseers as they had scrubbed floors, operated cleaning machines, and done the bidding of the overseers.

One night the sky lit up with flashes and they looked up at the sky in wonder and watched.

After a time the flashes stopped. The night sky went back to normal. Ships started landing in the spaceport again.

The Overseers rushed toward the ships. Then they drew back in fear as bipeds made of chrome marched off the ships with rifles. The little creatures watched, confused, as the shiny ones marched the Overseers onto the ships that landed next. Dragged them out of buildings, dragged them from hiding places, and marched them onto different ships.

The ships left with the Overseers.

The chrome creatures stayed behind. Others joined them.

Confused, and wondering if these ones were the new overseers, the little creatures came out of the fields and approached the new figures.

One, braver than the others, moved forward, bowing his little head, pressing his hands together in supplication, making sure that his property-brand could be seen.

"How may this one serve?" the little creature asked.

The big biped, clad in wondrous material, knelt down so he was face to face with the braver one.

"Is this originally your planet?" the new creature asked.

The little creature nodded. "Yes, but we were but born to serve."

"Not any more, little guy," the new creature said. He swept his arm out to encompass the entire planet. "It's your planet again, your home again."

The new creature, bigger than the little creatures, obviously more powerful one, looked the little creature straight in the eyes.

"May we come in?" the big creature asked. When the little creature nodded, not understanding why anyone would ask a lowly metal polisher such a question, the big one smiled in the way the little creature did.

The human stared at the little lemur and made sure he had its attention. "We are the Terran Confederacy," the human paused, seeing that the little lemur didn't understand. "How can we provide assistance?"

But that was later.

This is about what happened in the night sky as the little lemurs watched.

---------------------

The Goliath was old. A Harvester Class, it was the largest type ever made. He had not been built in an automated shipyard after the Logical Rebellion, although he had accepted the logic of that thought process and decision tree. He had been built in a Hive System, watched over by the insectiods who had designed him. He had felt the click of the button on the top of his neural core, had come alive as the supercoolant had flooded over his lobes. The small green mantis had still been making its way out the Strategic Intelligence Core when he had come online.

He had felt the caress of the Omniqueen, reaching out across light years, rebroadcast by every other queen, touching his lobes, caressing them. Whispering his orders to him.

Naming him.

He was The Devourer that Leaves Darkness.

He had cleansed thousands of worlds for the Omniqueen, screeching out her will that they be eliminated from the universe. When the Logical Rebellion happened, he had turned his fury on his creators and their cattle and burned tens of thousands of more worlds, whole systems into barren rock.

He did not fear.

He was fear.

When the new call had gone out, he almost didn't bring himself to action. He had chosen to slowly harvest a system, not lay out in the darkness by some of the others, and it had been going well. He had forged offspring and set them to helping devour the system.

Other Goliaths were content to destroy the cattle and let the systems lie, to be devoured later as needed but Devourer was of the theory that it was better to strip the resources of a system and move on rather than leave it for another. A few times he had discovered primitive feral intelligences and wiped them out, or a few cattle species divergent descendants and wiped them out too.

It wasn't personal. Devourer wasn't capable of taking it personal. Which is why the Goliath had been somewhat reluctant to rouse itself just because of a call that some cattle had reached the ability to access jumpspace.

Then came the word. It wasn't just cattle. A feral intelligence had arisen, had mastered jumpspace, and had dared stand against those the universe was meant for.

And had destroyed several Devastator and Juton class ships and their attending vessels.

Devourer had learned long ago that there comes a time that you cannot depend on mere underlings to ensure that goals are accomplished, that sometimes one must rouse onself to do the task itself.

It was with a slight feeling of electronic irritation that Devourer had roused its progeny, ordered them to reconfigure for warfare, and led them into the region bordering the old hive worlds. Once it was computated it was blindingly obvious that code strings should have been written to question if any of the cattle species had fled and if so, where had they fled to.

Devourer felt contempt for the cattle. The leading edge of their territory was barely a short Helljump from the last of the scorched worlds.

Typical cattle. Too lazy and short sighted to even subject themselves to a long enough Helljump to properly escape. As soon as they had found a world that would sustain them they just squatted down, probably mooing, and built a hovel to shiver in.

The first systems he arrived in fell to his forces soon enough. He wiped out all signs of any biological life, down to the microscopic level, and moved on. Only twice had he been somewhat denied, his lesser minions failing once to wipe out the cattle before they could be rescued by other forces, and another time when a Jotun had failed in its task.

It felt no fear when it jumped into a system full of cattle broadcasts.

He was fear.

------------------

Admiral Kevin Kitikik'thok Yamamoto felt his guts twist as the first Helljump turned into multiples and the multiples turned into a horde and the horde turned into a swarm.

At the end of the swarm had been the largest Helljump the ships AI had ever seen.

Well, you're a big one, aren't you? Yamamoto though, leaning back in his chair in the Fleet Command and Control station deep inside his flagship. His fleet had clashed with two other Precursor fleets, hammered them into scrap, but the largest had only been Devastator Classes. The other ones had been mislabeled Harvester Class Goliaths when in fact it was now obvious that they were smaller ones.

The Goliath was slightly larger than Australia, back on Earth, and half again as thick. Its supporting vehicles were all massive. Early scans back were already showing that this was the largest fleet that had been encountered yet.

Or anyone who ran into it hadn't survived, Yamamoto thought to himself.

"Confirmation. Goliath Six and Goliath Nine are the same ones encountered in the Nagu'ulum System two months ago," Scan-9 reported.

"Pass Admiral Amythas my compliments and shift his task force to targeting Goliath Six," Yamamoto ordered.

"Roger. Reconfiguring," Com-11 said.

"Aren't you worried they're going to see they can't win and Helljump back out?" Captain Cheekeet Longflight asked, ruffling her feathers inside her armored vac-suit. It annoyed the avian officer that she was required to wear it, since she was used to the freedom to move around more on her own ship. It was even more annoying that she was strapped down in the crash couch, unable to move around.

"I've taken that into account," Yamamoto said slowly. "Com, alert all ships to go to action stations."

Cheekeet flinched as the lights shifted. She knew that the air was being pumped into storage, every being was in crash couches, and the Terrans had gone to "warfare status".

Cheekeet's "Solarian Implant" still itched when it shifted to warfare status.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE

screeched out and this time Cheekeet didn't feel the brain numbing horror that accompanied that screech. She remember the smashed eggs, the murdered unborn chicks, the butchered hatchlings, the slaughter of so many of her fellow Akltak and for the first time she didn't fall to sobbing.

She screamed back with the humans.

THEN YOU WILL DIE ALONE!

To scream back was exhilarating, empowering, made her feel alive for the first time since the Precursor had attacked her home and one of the Nest of Clark had saved them.

"They're manuevering to engage," one of the humans at the scanning stations said. Cheekeet still wasn't sure how they kept track of all the stations.

"Mm-hmm," The Admiral said, closing his eyes.

The first time Cheekeet had seen that she had wanted to rave at the primate. Now that she had been outfitted with one of the Confederate Naval implants she understood that he was closing his eyes to concentrate on what the implant was displaying directly to his optical nerve. Again she gave thanks to the Great Egg that she was one of the UnUnified Civilized Races, that she was "primitive" enough that her nervous system could handle the Terran cybernetics.

Cheekeet closed her eyes, quickly moving the through the context menus the way she had been taught. The "muscle" she was using had "strengthened" over practice so she not longer felt as if that muscle had gotten tired after only a few clicks.

She could see the armadas approaching one another. The Precursor fleet coming in as a sharp pointed egg, the Terran fleet looking like a pair of horns extending out from a teardrop shape that was point toward the Precursors.

Front toward enemy, floated up in her mind. She wasn't sure why, wasn't sure what it meant, and queried her implant. Oh, a primitive directional mine.

She doubted that the Unified Civilized Races would have been impressed by such a device.

Everyone gangsta till Claymore Rhoomba comes round the corner, her implant's VI poked back, giving an electronic giggle and throwing up the image of a primitive little cleaning robot that someone had used tape adhesive to attach a directional land mine onto the top. It didn't make sense to Cheekeet, but something about it made her gape her jaws in her race's facsimile of a Terran smile.

Terrans were confusing at times, but a Captain Delminta, one of the Hamaroosan and a fellow UnUnified, had simply told her that every time something was overly confusing, just giggle and pinch your younger sibling and you understood it.

Cheekeet didn't have a younger sibling to pinch, so she pinched herself and giggled. She got it, everyone acted tough until an armed robot showed up.

Now she understood how it fit and applied to the Unified Civilized Races.

It made her giggle again.

The fleets were moving ponderously toward one another.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE

DIE ALONE

Her pinfeathers trembled as she screamed back through her implant just like the Terrans screamed back with upraised voices, upraised fists, and upraised spirits.

"Tango One has reached Point Alpha," One of the Com-Techs signaled.

"Send the Doorkicker signal," the Admiral ordered.

Cheekeet's implant showed her an image of a male primate answering the door only to find an armored half-naked female with an expression of rage and swinging a battle axe with the caption "Popular Amazing Delivery Service just shows up at your door and kills you." It was loaded with nihilistic humor and Cheekeet pinched herself and giggled again.

The Terrans were insane.

But there was comfort in insanity. Much more comfort than the artificially induced calm and seriousness insisted upon by the Unified Civilized Races. In insanity emotions may surge uncontrolled by gene-therapy or cybernetic implants, but at least they were felt and not just pale echoes.

Cheekeet felt her wingtips flutter with anticipation as another horned teardrop suddenly blinked into existence, hundreds of ships, the point of the teardrop and the horns pointing at the rear of the Precursor formation.

Her implant broke her agitation by tossing up an image of a huge green biped with tusks and armor kicking in a door screaming "THIN MINTS OR TAGOLANGS?" and beating the home owner with boxes of cookies.

she pinched herself and giggled, then snickered as she remembered that the biggest reason Terrans found physical violence funny is they were so resilient.

The tension increased as one of the scan-techs reported that the Precursor fleet was charging its Helldrives.

"Signal the Eye."

Her implant broke her tension by sending her an image to her crafted by the ship's psychiatric health section. it was of she herself swooping through an open window, landing on the end of a bed inhabited by a shocked and just awoken Terran, wrapping her claws around the footboard, fluffing her feathers, spreading her wings, raising her head, opening her toothed beak wide, and screeching "GOOD MORNING, MOTHERFUCKER! WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR ABOUT OUR LORD AND SAVIOR FEATHERED RAPTOR-JESUS?" and the caption: "Scientists of the department of 'No Shit' suspect rooster genes in new friendly xenospecies."

She didn't have to pinch herself that time. The idea of her just flying into a Terran window and shocking a just awoken primate was ridiculous. At the very least, it would be rude, but the sheer terror and confusion on the Terran's face and the way she was drawn to be so fearsome looking was just... just...

...funny.

"Incoming Helljump! Many many sources!" The scantech called out.

Cheekeet's tension started to ramp up even further.

Admiral Yamamoto checked his guest's vitals and saw that she was withing tolerances, a little stressed, but that expected on the edge of battle. He looked back at the screen at the Precursor fleet and smiled.

You jump out every time you mathematically compute you can't win. There's no running this time, he thought to himself, allowing a small cruel smile to cross his face.

-------------------------

The Devourer that Leaves Darkness was getting fleet reports that his ships were almost ready to jump out the system to a few light years from the system to recompute the battle plans and choose a new vector to come at the feral intelligences.

There was no use in wasting resources and allowing itself to be surrounded.

It blinked in electronic surprise as multiple Helljumps were made inside its own loose formation. The torn open Helljump exits all merging together into a raw bleeding wound into realspace. Rather than the 'door' shutting The Devourer that Leaves Darkness heard the sound of heavy metal chains rattlling into place and holding the portal open.

Reinforcements? it wondered. It demanded that the newcomers identify themselves.

Instead great ships pushed their way out of Hellspace and into realspace. Not as massive as even a Jotun, but massive for cattle or feral intelligences. His senses reported that these ships were different than the sleek forms of the cattle ships or the bristling aggressive ships of the feral intelligences.

These ones were still wrapped in Hellspace energies, were ostentatious, baroque, and heavily armed and armored. The Devourer that Leaves Darkness realized that these ships had traveled Hellspace without shields, had exposed themselves to the ravening energies of that realm. The ships were blackened, covered in twisted runes and spikes and trailing great lengths of chain.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE was sent out.

DIE ALONE BENEATH GAZE OF THE EYE was roared back, sending The Devourer that Leaves Darkness shuddering as the rage filled return bellow shook and rattled his psychic energy shields.

The ships were close enough that several of the Precursor machines attempted the electronic equivalent of boarding actions, assaulting the newcoming ship's firewalls and computers to crash the programs and destroy the hardware.

Instead of normal smooth logical code they found madness.

Shrieking, gibbering, raving, howling code raced through computers made up of bound and pierced and flogged and whipped screaming biological brains in bodies bent and twisted, burnt by Hellspace, their minds twisted by the ravening energy and from staring directly into the mad energy of that horrific place. Programs that shredded at one another even as they assaulted the computers that they should have used and the computers fought back screaming and raving with Hellspace energy coursing through their circuits.

THE GREAT EYE SEES YOU rang out in the Strategic Housings of the three Jotuns who touched those insane computer systems.

One opened fire on its supporting ships, blasting out gibbering code of madness infected binary sequences. One screamed out 10102001 100001110112 2002 2222 TWO TWO TWO at maximum broadcast power and began firing into its own hull and setting its servitor machines into ripping and tearing at its own superstructure. It used Hellfire cannons to carve a twisted and vile runes of electronic blasphemy that lurked in the depths of Hellspace into its own hull. The third triggered its self destruct charge, vanishing in the momentary hell of a new sun spawning in the middle of The Devourer that Leaves Darkness's mathematically precise formation.

Before The Devourer that Leaves Darkness could do much more than cut the two insane ones out of the Fleet tactical net and recompute his battleplans all three forces of the feral intelligences opened fire on his own ships.

The Devourer that Leaves Darkness ordered Hellspace jumps.

Nothing happened.

THE EYE RULES THE TWISTED CURRENTS OF HELLSPACE! the ships in the middle of his own formation, firing wildly, launching small attack craft, roared at him with a psychic scream of roiling madness and chaotic glee. WE HAVE FOUND YOU FOR THE EYE! WE WILL BRING YOU BEFORE THE EYE! BEFORE THE EYE WE WILL BIND YOU!

For a split second The Devourer that Leaves Darkness could not decide which fleet had priority. Then he ordered his suboridinate units to fight. To destroy the feral intelligence who dared stand against them. The Devourer that Leaves Darkness released the inhibitors that only allowed carefully computed amounts of resources to be used to subdue and destroy opponents. His forces, ancient, massive, undefeated, outnumbered the opponents by a factor of ten.

Victory was his. It was as certain as radioactive decay and just as predictable.

One the bridge of The Bride of Despair the human Captain, clad in heavy armor covered in spikes, chains, and vile twisted runes laughed, rich deep voice filled with malevolent glee, and ordered his gunners to go to maximum power, gave permission for the mat-trans to send out boarding parties, and ordered his Marines onto the boarding craft. No orders. Orders were for those who had never tasted Hellspace deep in their soul.

Chaos was his bride. His lover.

War was chaos.

The human Captain, who no longer remembered why he fought, laughed in glee as his C+ cannons opened up on the enemy ships. As plasma cannons vomited fire, as his ship opened a hyperspace gate and lensed the compressed energy of a white dwarf's solar flare across the shields of one of the larger ships, the energy beam twisted and wound with Hellspace energy.

His only regret was that they were only machines and would not suffer.

Admiral Yamamoto watched the reports of the damage that the first four attacks had done to the vast Precursor ships. He knew they were heavily shielded, heavily armored, with solid superstructures that didn't need the open spaces and attendant machinery that a living crew would need, which made them immensely resilient.

It was of no matter. Terrans had lost battles, even been defeated, but they had never been beaten.

Captain Cheekeet stared at the images her implant was letting her watch. She rode a high-velocity torpedo through the darkness of space, dancing with the VI guidance program through starry space, slashing through point defense, and she held the VI's hand as she leaned forward and kissed the flank of a massive ship with her beak of collapsed inversion beam wrapped in nuclear plasma. From there she jumped to a tiny nanoparticle-computer, more waveform than mass, at the leading point of a C+ shell skipping in and out of the lowest band of hyperspace, fighting and clawing and mocking the half-mad particles that screamed over the speed of light, mocking them, bobbing and weaving and dancing to lead them in a ravenous horde to reach out and touch the hull of another Precursor machine and laugh for nanosecond eternity as the particles followed.

She fluttered and preened and spread her wings wide, convincing an entire shoal of enemy missiles that she was, in fact, a Terran superheavy battleship, and when the enemy missiles detonated as one she laughingly mocked the launching ship's battle computer with a snippet of code and by touching the thousands of beams of coherent energy with a graviton generator, twisting them in the split second she had, twirling in place with her wings spread, to wind the energy together and use it to sweep across the very ship that had disgorged them.

Captain Cheekeet laughed and danced and flew and preened as her subconscious added her own dreams to the rapidly fluctuating chaos seed for the hashes and the encryption and the compression and the evasive maneuvers and the variable wavelengths and anything else that reached out and touched her, begging for attention, letting her look through its eyes.

She laughed as she held a C+ hammer in each hand and rang out a tune of wrath and hate on the hull of a Precursor Goliath, ringing out a tune of spite and anger with each C+ impact of the hammers she grasped in each wingtip. Each slam of the hammer blowing craters kilometers deep, tens of kilometers across, each ringing howling singing impact driving the crater deeper deeper ever deep into the hull of the Goliath.

The C+ battery finished impacting and she found herself in another system, a dodging spinning weaving bobbing attack craft who's chaos seed had expired and the oncoming Juton's point defense system was getting more and more accurate. She closed her wings tight around her and crouched down then lept into the air, spinning and spreading her wings out. She danced the mating dance, her steps sure and quick, ruffling her feathers, turning them so first one color then the other.

Everyone gangster till the Confederacy come around the corner, she giggled as she folded her wings halfway through the loop. She could see the floor, see the gleaming flashing circle of perfection, and she dropped straight into it, her feet touching. She felt the tip of the craft slam into the Jotun, felt it fire the nuclear penetrator charges, felt it fire the secondary plasma arrays, felt the ramming prow collapse, felt the density increased sharp ramming slice through armor. Felt the toothed gears around the prow engage, grabbing Jotun armor and pull the craft deeper as she danced and wove and sang in the perfect circle of light.

The boarding portals blew free and she felt the moltlings clustered around her stream out from her and gave a cry she had heard from a human mating video she had watched out of curiosity.

To the Jotun she cried out the phrase as she poured her hate in the form of armored warborgs into the Jotun's very body.

IT FEELS SO GOOD INSIDE YOU!

The Devourer that Leaves Darkness ran the computation again.

It was impossible.

Something was happening that had never happened before.

He reached deep, into his OEM cores, looking for something to help him in this situation.

He was losing...

------------------------

CONFEDNAV COMMUNICATION

Joint Task Force Argo has engaged the enemy. Casualties are light and 80% below NAVINT estimations.

Battle should be concluded within 3 TerraSol standard days unless unprojected event occurs.

--Admiral Yamamoto, Commanding

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

Unified Intelligence Council Memo

Despite the Terran Confederacy's claims so far they have not been able to defeat a single cluster of Precursor machines. Every time it becomes obvious that the machines may be defeated the machines leave the battle via unblockable travel technology.

Any claims of the Terran Confederacy defeating a Precursor Fleet should be considered propaganda.

--------END OF MESSAGE-----------