Chapter 264: (The Great Herd)

Kra'atmo'o considered himself a talented Lanaktallan.

In only two centuries he had risen to be the Most High of nearly two dozen stellar systems, all of them out of the way and far from the Inner Systems, true. At basically the Outer Systems and Outer Rim border, yes. On the 'backside' of the Unified Council Systems, true.

But he was placed in charge of 21 systems and 650 billion living beings, all but 75 million were Lanaktallan, by the Unified Civilized Council.

He had accomplished this by being careful, conservative, and stable. He chose his subordinates carefully, with an eye toward how well they kept the status-quo rather than any sweeping changes they made.

He had refused most Unified Military Council suggestions for his Military Most High, finally settling on an aging Most High who had spent the last hundred years overseeing nearly empty worlds.

Kra'atmo'o preferred ordered stability. He disliked surprises or things outside of his predictive analysis programs. Running a high tech society was a difficult chore, one that demanded that the lows and highs were managed to keep tears from appearing in the fabric.

The systems themselves were out of the way, down and 'out' from the Core Systems.

He had secretly reached out and took over the thirty star systems between his territory and the vast emptiness below the galactic arm. While he wasn't the acknowledged ruler of those systems, most of them did not even have a Most High, just a Ninth or Tenth Most High and three of them had Most Highs only in the fact that there was a title there that nobody was filling.

Which meant, in reality, he was in charge of 55 systems, 1.2 trillion living beings, with 12 billion neo-sapients.

Including three systems that gravitational force had 'flung' from the arm stub and nearly sixty light years into the darkness between and below the galactic arms.

That was two hundred years ago.

Once he had control of the systems he placed subordinates carefully. His only orders were to ensure that none of the neo-sapients rise high enough to challenge the supremacy of the Great Herd and try to attack. He knew that would bring the attention of the Unified Council to him, something he wanted to avoid, since politicians and council-beings had a tendency to mess up carefully laid plans.

Other than that, nobody cared what he did. He could order every Lanaktallan under his authority to dye their hides orange with garish lime green stripes and nobody on the Councils would care.

As an experiment, fifteen years ago, he had nearly stopped sending updates to the Unified Council, just allowing his VI to put together a formulaic "Everything is fine" letter and send it out on the second on the date he was supposed to transmit the system status of his area.

For three years he afterwards he removed system names from the status report.

For nearly a year, after it had been reduced to three stellar systems he had made up he had actually stopped sending the updates.

Nobody had seemed to notice.

Which suited Kra'atmo'o just fine.

The GalNet nodes still worked, fitfully, sporadically, and slowly, but still work. That was how he had seen the horrors of when the Precursors had attacked. He knew there was over two thousand light years between himself and the Precursors, they were "up" and "in" from him, but still, he had been worried.

The military Most High had agreed it was concerning, but what could they do? The Precursors would easily defeat even the military forces.

So Kra'atmo'o had watched the GalNet streams, laggy and constantly buffering, on his personal high speed GalNet link.

Often he would set several datastream to download and wait a day or two for it to fully download.

The GalNet connection was terrible, the linkages never finished sometimes.

That's why the GalNet in his area was known as "CompuNet" since it was almost entirely self-contained.

Then he had seen the images of "Terrans" start to appear.

He still got, somewhat garbled, government updates, so he knew more than the average Lanaktallan on the street about the Terrans. He had managed to link CompuNet to SolNet for a brief period of time and had spent his time examining it.

He liked stability, so, like an ancient sailor, he kept one eye on the horizon for storms.

He was sure that the Terrans were going to be turned from a sunny day to a storm.

His Military Most High had gruffly predicted that the Unified Council would do "something stupid, I am sure" toward the Terrans.

Kra'atmo'o had ordered a few things on SolNet, sending a minion in his fastest ship to liaison with a junker to accept delivery, making sure that there was no hint about where the order had originated from or where it was taken when complete.

Both he and the elderly Military Most High had examined the object ordered. A simple object in possession of every Terran in existence. Had watched it work, had experimented with it, and had been quietly horrified about the implications of it.

The Military Most High had been even more alarmed and reiterated his statement.

The Unified Council would ignore the possibilities of the simple device and 'do something stupid.'

It galled Kra'atmo'o to know that the elderly being had been right.

But he had chosen the Military Most High for his willingness to tell the truth, not polish Kra'atmo'o's hooves and hindquarters with his tongue.

Still, at least he didn't have to put up with some Executor Most High frothing at the mouth for the extermination of the Terrans while dropping patties on Kra'atmo'o's office carpet, blowing spittle everywhere, and spitting well chewed cud on the walls.

There was no Executor Most High working for him.

There was no Executor Council in his territory.

So sad that the Lo'okma'a Fusion Energy Facility exploded, he mused to himself. Luckily, the city was largely deserted due to the chemical leak, so only the Executor Complex was destroyed. Shame about the loss of life all those years ago though.

To his credit, he had practiced that thought so long that there was no sense of sarcasm. Even a truth-beam would bring forth that line.

The Corporations had learned to do what Kra'atmo'o said. Due to the fluke of where the systems sat, it was a six year trip from the edge of what he liked to think of as the "Kra'at Systems" to the nearest Unified Council System. Jumpspace was weirdly twisted and warped and in some places a ship would actually go slower than light and if they exited the region instead of traversing the 'shallows' for three months, they would be further away then the edge of the rapids, ending up further 'down' and 'out' from the edge of the shallows.

The Corporations, Consortiums, and Trusts had been angry when he had cancelled the debt peonage system, but rapidly changed their minds when Kra'atmo'o started charging them, retroactively, for use of his planetary space, permission to travel within the system, charged them for the value of the resources extracted, charged them for each being they hired, and even charged them for how much energy from local stellar mass fell upon their property.

There had been a few of the Corporations who had tried massing their fleets against him.

It hadn't worked.

Most beings refused to fight, others simply defected to Kra'atmo'o.

The rest had been destroyed.

Not just the standard 10%. All who refused to surrender were destroyed utterly. Their names, ship registries, even their system records purged.

The computers didn't even contain records of the Corporate Rebellion of over a century ago.

He was Kra'atmo'o, and he like things nice and steady. He liked order. He liked stability.

Which is why he was nervous.

He knew it was going to happen eventually. It was bound to. They were everywhere, they were rushing in too fast, they were too aggressive.

The Military Most High had simply stated 'we're too far out for them to care, they won't come near us' but for the first time, the Military Most High had been wrong.

Kra'atmo'o knew the elderly warrior would be wrong.

Kra'atmo'o had rolled the dice, selected a system only a dozen light years from one that began screaming they were under Terran attack, and had taken his personal ship to the system.

The trip took three months and Kra'atmo'o had to keep dropping into realspace to send messages for his subordinates not to attack any random Terrans. His direct subordinate, who most would consider the Second Most High, stayed in constant communication with him, as did the gathered beings that others would call a Council.

When he had arrived in the system he had ordered the system defense forces to drop beacons around the system, broadcasting loudly, then settled down in his ship and watched.

And waited.

He didn't mind the solitary existence on his ship. The computers, robots, and VI were orderly, predictable, and followed patterns.

Kra'atmo'o liked that.

He played with one of the objects he had ordered off of SolNet nearly two years ago, still fascinated by its capabilities. He had learned quite a bit about the object, the computers that drove it, and the programming that instructed it.

It was an orderly thing.

And he liked orderly.

Finally, it happened. Only a few hours off of what his predictive analysis programs had estimated, but close enough that Kra'atmo'o was satisfied. They had not arrived like he had thought they would. He had assumed, most possibly like every other Lanaktallan, that they would arrive on the resonance zone, jump drives bleeding energy and proclaiming their existence to all of reality.

They proclaimed their existence with HEAVY METAL INCOMING.

Instead they... streaked into existance. Coming in between the habitated world and the resonance zone as well as between the habitated world and the stellar mass.

HEAVY METAL IS HERE! rang out.

Kra'atmo'o admitted that was a bit disheartening and demoralizing.

The ships hung in space for a long moment and Kra'atmo'o knew they were examining space with their sensors.

He lit up his drive, just turning it off and on a few times, then left it on and hung in space, letting his beacon squawk his location and identity.

One of the ships streaked into nothingness and reappeared with the same streak in front of him, only six light seconds away. His computer received a lexicon request and he granted it, taking deep breaths. He wished, for a long moment, before admonishing himself, that he had not insisted that real food, not nutripaste, had been the diet of every being in the Kra'at Systems.

He could use some calming drugs.

Finally, he got a request for communication.

He shut down the object and turned his attention to the screen as he activated it and opened the communications channel.

They're even more imposing in person, he thought to himself as he stared at the bridge of a warship obviously ready to commit mayhem. There were primates, saurians, insectoids, and even avians on the bridge, all in the same uniform, all wearing armored vacuum suits, all moving with precise unhurried movements.

The Terran staring at him had half of her face replaced with matte black cybernetics. Her cybereye glowed green but her flesh and blood eye had a cold amber glow in the depths.

"I am Admiral Norkret, Thirty-Eighth Fleet, Commanding," the Terran said, enunciating slowly and carefully. "I represent the Terran Confederacy and the Terran Confederacy Armed Forces in voted on and cassius belle invoked military actions."

There was silence for a moment.

"I am System..." he paused, wondered if he should use his self-proclaimed title or his Council title, then went with a decision. "I am System Tyrant Kra'atmo'o, of the Independent Kra'at Systems. I am here to parlay."

The Terran paused. "What is your allegiance to the Unified Council Systems?"

"I stole these systems from them. We have not had any relation with them for many years," Kra'atmo'o said. He decided to play stupid. "Who is the Terran Confederacy and by what right do you bring armed warships, cleared for action, beyond the resonance zone of one of my sovereign star systems?"

The Terran paused a few seconds and nodded. It reminded Kra'atmo'o of a bad CompuNet conversation with the lag.

"We are at declared and open stellar warfare with the Unified Council Systems, Tyrant Kra'atmo'o," the Admiral said. "However, we also seek allies."

"I have no interest in any war. The Unified Council and its organs are vestigial parasites upon the galactic stub. Do with them as you may, but should you come here, you will only find blood and slaughter," Kra'atmo'o said. He made a motion with his hand. "We cannot resist you, your creation engines ensure you have no supply lines, your cloning arts ensure you do not need to delay for reinforcement, and your weaponry far outstrips my defenses while your defenses are magnitudes more powerful than my strongest weapons.'

Kra'atmo'o touched his fingers together on all four hands.

"How much flesh and blood does it take for a primate to gag? How much blood will make it that you and your people are unable to look at yourselves in the mirror?" Kra'atmo'o asked. "You seek war. I do not."

"Will you agree to a non-belligerent status and recognize the sovereignty and right to life of the Confederacy and its allies?" the Admiral asked after the required lag.

"I am empowered to do so. However, I am interested in making another offer," Kra'atmo'o stated.

"And that is?" The Terran looked suspicious and the cold amber glow seemed to brighten and warm slightly.

"A mutual defense pact to begin with. A trade of knowledge in addition to that. Finally, the eventual normalization of trade between the Kra'at Systems and the Confederacy," Kra'atmo'o stated. "We have no interest in war, but should the despotism of the Unified Council attempt to bring darkness to the worlds under my guidance, I wish allies I may depend upon as I defend myself."

The Admiral again nodded slowly. "That will take some time to decide."

"This world will be a good place to hold the negotiations. It has agreed to host such an august occasion, as long as their leaders, who owe fealty to me, get to sign their names upon the documentation and are recognized as the hosts," Kra'atmo'o said.

The Admiral waited a moment, paused a few extra seconds, then nodded. "Agreeable."

"It will take me nineteen hours to arrive at the planet. Please inform the planetary government that negotiation will be taking place and to disarm the Doomsday Device," Kra'atmo'o said. "I will transmit the same."

"Doomsday Device?" the Admiral asked.

Kra'atmo'o nodded.

"We will never be enslaved again. The Tyranny of Representation will never be given up. We will planet crack our own worlds before we allow ourselves to be forced to kneel," Kra'atmo'o said slowly. "We just want to live in peace, comfort, and cooperation."

The Admiral didn't change expression, but nodded again. "I will have my warships retreat to the resonance zone boundary," she said.

"Your flagship is welcome to orbit the planet. Your graciousness in having your military forces stand down will be noted during the negotiations," Kra'atmo'o said. "I await your meeting."

The Admiral nodded and cut the channel.

The warships further in the system streaked away, reappearing at the system's edge. The flagship jumped only a few light seconds from the inhabited planet.

Kra'atmo'o nodded to himself and turned his ship toward the planet.

It was a gamble. Kra'atmo'o hated gambles.

His vision was proceeding nicely. His goals were being met.

The Terran's arrival didn't mean his plans were ruined. He had spent the months adapting his plan to include them.

Any system that could not adapt to new input was an inferior system and inferior systems were never stable.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

You're kidding? He holds elections every ten years? And he's been reelected nearly twenty times?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

I've never even heard of these guys.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU GESTALT THINGYMABOBBER

We were on the High Council and never even heard of this guy, much less the Kra'at Systems, whatever they are.

Are you sure that it's real?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Without a doubt. Oh, and get this, he's known as the Tyrant, his vice-leader, who happens to be a local sentient, is called the Despot, and his military leader is known as... you're going to love this... The Fist and Shield.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

So this guy flat out STOLE an entire region of the Council's territory and nobody noticed?

What convinced him to talk rather than fight?

Or, well, planet crack his own worlds.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Chromium Christ, that they're willing to do that speaks volumes as to how they have to have been treated before this maniac showed up.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS GESTALT AND I GUESS A WEIRD GOVERNMENT THING

The creation engines.

His "Fist and Shield" realized something about them.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

What? Let's see if he figured it out when it took us forever to figure it out.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

ALKTAK SOARING WORLDS DOES IT READ OUR THOUGHTS NO JUST READS YOUR EMAIL SO STOP SENDING PINFEATHER PICTURES PERVERTS

That creation engines and cloning banks and SUDS on the ships mean that the Terran Space Force's supply lines and reinforcements lines are only as long as the nearest system them control or the system they're fighting in.

All Space Force needs is an Oort Cloud or a gas giant and POOF! They can completely rebuild ships, reload food and water, replace casualties, even create more ships.

That the cloning banks mean that Space Force can run off a few million planetary garrison troops, create a few support ships with the creation engines, and jump to the next target in the time it would take anyone else to get the ammunition supplies to reload their guns.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

That's one of the hardest things to understand. Your resupply is right there.

Usually making a Tri-Vee or something.

Just a few menu selections and its printing out magac rifles, body armor, and emergency survival kits.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS

They're Fist & Shield convinced the Tyrant and his assistant the Despot that the Terran military wouldn't need to hang around and risk attack, that they'd move on to the next system, completely garrisoning and occupying the entire system all the way up to heavy armored vehicles. Every hour that went by the Terran forces in the system would get stronger, not weaker.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Right. Normally a military force is at peak right after resupply, then gets weaker until the next resupply. With the Terrans and the Creation Engines, they just get stronger.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Add in the cloning banks, and it gets damn near logarithmic.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TRNVRUAGTSLT TNVARU GESTALT

So, his people vote on their leaders?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

They recreated the idea of a Congress. His government consists of several counter-balancing organizations, including room for dissedents.

They also discarded the Council legal code and created their own.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Notice they all politely ignore what must have been a bloodbath of epic proportions back when it all started?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

I noticed that all his military vessels are unique designs instead of Council designs.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

I wonder if they'd be interested in selling those two worlds around that pair of red suns.

Think they want them?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

How many times do we have to tell you? No. Nobody wants those worlds but you, you freak.

DASS hugs THW

It wouldn't hurt to ask.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU GESTALT

This is such a weird time to be alive.