Chapter 280: (TerraSol)

The Terran Confederacy had forced the Lanaktallan to do something they had not done in tens of millions of years. To use ancient protocols that they had to cargo cult their way through.

Each pilot, each commander, each infantryman, had been forced to endure electronic memory transfer so that they could relive the battles of their forebearers, from the Great United Herd War to the Precursor War to countless dominations of species.

Their minds were hardened for battle, willing, as their forebearers were, to take any amount of losses if it meant the Great Herd survived. The fact that nearly 42% of them lost their self in the process, reduced to either mindless drones full of combat related neural reflexes or in the splintered minds of a hundred warriors before them was acceptable.

After all, the Great Herd must endure.

But, like any good cargo cultist, they knew what they thought they should do and slavishly followed the appearance of the method.

And so average Lanaktallan were loaded with the memories and reflexes of War Stallions.

A subspecies that had been extinct since the end of the Second Great Herd Reformation.

That had gone extinct with the powerful and prideful Herd Stallions and the loving and protective Herd Matrons.

Because they didn't know, they didn't understand, they didn't care.

Historians would point at that simple part as the mistake the Lanaktallan made.

Others would point at the Lanaktallan Battle for TerraSol (AKA: The Sixth Battle for TerraSol) as the main mistake they made.

Still others would look at the entire thing, turn to the historical experts, and say: "You're mad if you think it was a single mistake on either side that led to what occurred."

Those ones were usually thrown into a fountain lest the truth of that infect the self-proclaimed reality of the historical experts.

But that was later.

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A solar system is more than the planets and moons that make up the celestial bodies, more than the stellar mass or masses within the system that burned brightly. More than the odd rock here and there or comet happily swanning through space.

A solar system has an abundance of one thing: empty space.

For the sixth time in its history once the planetary bodies had formed, there was little empty space to be found in the Sol System.

Swarms of Lanaktallan ships drove hard for their targets, willing to take the beating, the outer layer of warships protecting the troopships. The planets all had planetary defense shield generators, so did all of the moon. Even some of the larger random rocks had them. Every planet, every planetiod, every moon, every comet, every asteroid large enough had weapons on it. From eVI crews to full on warborgs the hammering of the guns came from every direction at the ships of the Great Herd.

The Lanaktallan weren't surprised to find nuclear dampeners covering the surfaces of every chunk of matter large enough to put a defense shield generator and a C+ or nCv cannon or rocket pack.

That meant the only way to destroy the planets, to open them up to planet crackers, were to destroy the shield generators and the nuclear dampeners.

Which meant landing on the planets.

It was expected.

Which is why the Lanaktallan had brought enough troops to ensure ground-side victory.

The warships were hammered, superstring compressor cannons fire through the entire formations, destroying heavily protected troop ships, various types of resonance cannons ripped at the formations, missiles hammered in, torpedoes carried in payloads from the esoteric to good old fashioned atomic warheads.

But still the Great Herd drove for the surface of the planets.

The lemurs were committed, the Great Most Highs had to admit. Not even the most brutal historical simulations had shown anything as mad and violent as what they were experiencing, some of them for only moments, others for hours, but the Great Herd would not b e denied.

The most heavily defended world was 70% ocean of highly corrosive salt water laden with heavy metals, over half the land masses covered by vegetation.

All of them with massive batteries of defensive firepower.

The first fleet to come in, to pass through the shields (only losing a fifth of their ships), saw one continent, only the size of a Harvester Class Goliath, that the center of the continent was thick with C+ cannons roaring at the battle. Air defense was thick, but almost half of the troopships made landing, scattering from the eastern edge spackled with cities to the harsh interior where the batteries and defense shields were located, to the western jungles.

In the middle of the continent nearly a hundred troop ships slammed down at a hard 1.5G landing. A tenth of the troops were injured, but that did not matter. The Corporate troops had trained hard in 1G to ensure they could carry out combat operation on the harsh surface of Terra itself.

The pilot of the lead troopship reported that he could see huge flocks of birds running at where the ships were coming in.

The Great Most High of the landing force ordered the pilot down, insisting the birds, fat bodied with long necks and legs, would scatter when the dropships made landing.

Another pilot noticed that the birds seemed to sense the landing zone and began running around it in circles, three thick circles, the inner and outer one clockwise, the center one counter-clockwise, the birds swarming in the hundreds of thousands.

The ships hit and deployed their landing ramps.

The birds charged, giving fierce cries of rage at their home range being invaded.

They would allow no intrusion upon their lands.

The Lanaktallan infantry charged out of two thirds of the ships. Tanks and armored vehicles rumbled from the others.

The infantry Most Highs sneered and ordered the front ranks to open fire on the idiotic looking birds.

Infantry weapons hit feathers capable of turning aside crew served force packets, down undercoating capable of absorbing the kinetic shock of a light anti-tank round ensured the fat body, full of compression spaces and flexible bones with well designed organs.

Even the crew served weaponry and anti-tank weaponry didn't slow the birds down as they rushed, shrieking in rage. A few hundred of the Lanaktallan's psychic shielding wasn't up the challenge and those Lanaktallan went to their knees as the psychic scream boiled their brains out their ears.

The birds fell upon the infantry, knocking down Lanaktallan, raking them with talons that peeled open their armor like tinfoil, slamming down beaks into helmets with enough force it would have shattered the armor of a warborg's skull, more than a few belching out plasma. When a Lanaktallan was down, the armor torn open, some would stop to eat, ripping at the still alive, still conscious Lanaktallan as they feasted.

Tanks opened up as the birds began to spit, explosions cratering armor. Some of the drivers and commanders panicked, became separated from their fellow armored vehicles. The birds swarmed the tanks. Tore open the sides of the armored personnel carriers and lunged inside to feast, jumped onto hovercraft to rip open the sides.

And eat.

Thousands of the birds rushed inside the transports, spitting at everything with hawked up phlegmy chemicals volatile enough to scar and pit warsteel, raking with claws that could disembowel a Terran warborg. They swarmed into the troop transports interior spaces, hunting down crew while braying out their war cries. They herded the Lanaktallan like they would have any other prey. Pushed them into groups so that the birds could attacks.

And eat.

Even the heavy tanks were not safe as the birds ran in circles around them, spitting on them, jumping on the back deck and raking with their talons before jumping off, until the engine was revealed, then they spit and spit

and spit some more.

In under an hour the eatmu's of Outback Ozland were finished and raced away from the wreckage, their bellies full of meat, holding chunks of battlesteel in their beaks to feed their chicks and let the little savage raptors sharpen their beaks upon.

The Mantids would have laughed.

The dirt and dust of Outback Ozland covered a billion Mantid skulls.

But there was plenty of room for the Lanaktallan skulls.

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A dozen troopships managed to get through the defensive fire, veering away from attacking the western edge of one of the main northern continents, landing on the largest of several islands. They landed at night, their drives lighting the fog that covered the islands as the troopships veered away from the main assault and went for a secondary target.

The troopships slammed down, half of them into massive cities, crushing buildings as they did so, the exhaust of their jets adding more steam to the already foggy landscape.

The sides slammed down and Lanaktallan charged out, into the fog, which clouded visual, thermographic, magnetic, and every other sort of scanner.

It was like a wall you could walk through.

The infantry quickly made a perimeter around the ship, digging in in the rubble.

There was only fog and odd lights that bobbed around.

The tanks rolled out, quickly assuming defensive positions. They attempted to see through the fog but as far as their instruments were concerned they were inside a solid block.

From off in the distance it was heard.

BONG

It echoed through the fog, bouncing off the buildings, echoing through the apparently empty streets.

It repeated again. BONG**.**

And again.

The Lanaktallan nervously checked their weapons.

Drones were sent out, but crashed, unable to see in the fog.

From her throne made of skulls of those crushed by the fists of her ancestors, the Cybernetic Undying Queen Chromium Victoria the XXIV tapped her scepter of warsteel and lossglass and spoke in the voice of the Undying Monarchy of Fog and Blood.

"Won't someone rid me of these troublesome Lanaktallan?"

The words rolled over the Lanaktallan still digging in, making them stop and look at one another nervously as the whisper reached their ears.

From the fog surrounding the Lanaktallan was roared the reply.

"THE DIGITAL OMNIMESSIAH AND MY RIGHT!"

The dying started.

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The Lanaktallan troopships, nearly thirty in all, each carrying thousands of Lanaktallan, slammed down near the cities. The Most Highs landed in the agricultural areas surrounding the cities, gleefully destroying the growing plants. Others slammed down in the thick jungle, their thrusters burning away the vegetation around the troopships.

Twenty thousand Lanaktallan rushed out of the troopships and into the jungles, convinced that they would crush this region beneath their battlesteel shod hooves.

One Lanaktallan, a twentieth Most High, stepped on something that broke beneath his hoof. He looked down and ordered his men to stop.

He had stepped on a Terran skull. Breaking it had revealed more Terran skulls around it. He heard his men shift, the humid day full of the sound of insects and wildlife, and heard bones break.

The Twentieth Most High felt dread fill him as every step seemed to make bone crackle beneath the hooves of the Lanaktallan troops.

It's a killing field, went through his mind.

He knew he shouldn't be afraid, knew he shouldn't have fear.

But...

It was still hot and humid but it felt suddenly chilly to him.

Another step, and a Mantid skull broke beneath his hoof.

For a moment he had the urge to order his men to retreat to the troop ship, have the pilot select a new landing zone.

It was silent. Just the pattering of moisture, the buzzing of insects.

Then the insects stopped buzzing.

The Twentieth Most High looked around.

All he could see was jungle.

He suddenly knew, without knowing how, that he'd die here.

Another skull crunched and he shuddered.

He knew somehow that this place devoured every invader.

But he was part of the Great Herd, and it had never known defeat.

The skulls could have told him that their armies had never known defeat either.

Because the people who lived there could not be beaten.

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Nearly two hundred troopships landed on the continent known as the Hamburger Kingdom.

The ghosts of a hundred million Mantid began laughing.

Because invading a place called the Hamburger Kingdom when you looked like two cows grafted together was a joke of cosmic proportions.

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In space the battle roared on.

The Sixth Battle of Terra hadn't reached its peak.

The Lanaktallan had realized they couldn't leave, jumpspace and hyperspace somehow unavailable from this endless dark, even the stars missing.

From every surface, every speaker, roared one simple statement, carried by a billion human voices and infused with their rage.

I'M NOT TRAPPED IN HERE WITH YOU! YOU'RE TRAPPED IN HERE WITH ME!

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The skies may be sundered and the stars ripped from the void, the endless hordes of hateful ignorance will seek to burn all you hold dear, the darkness of callous reality may seek to drag you into the unforgiving depths, the wretched universe will seek to tear you atom from atom.

Throughout it all, remember that the fight rages on. In worlds yanked from the fabric of time in a coin toss to determine their fate, the fight rages on.

In the aborted space-that-never-was, the twelve disciples of the Digital Omnisiah rage against the coming night, the immortals scream defiance into the time-that-is-not.

The mighty Mantid remove their implosion wires and revoke their vows, their hands raised as one to lift the infinite weight of their ancient war machine. They know well the-universe-which-is-unborn.

The Rigellians charge defiant into the boiling maw of battle in the void-that-does-not, their fleets and armies charged with the defense of their ducks, their children, their home.

In the-place-that-cannot-be the Treanad warriors don their balaclavas, light cigarettes, and ride toward the howling, senseless foe. Their matrons and queens urging them on with cloud's of vapor and fury.

In the DASS lanaktellian ships scream and smash each other to pieces as they are shredded from the inside out, fighting enemies they cannot truly comprehend, who's weapons are the very ones the foolish herd brought with them.

The Clone Worlds print a billion billion new soldiers, each born-whole in grand power and experience. Each with a rifle gripped in their flawless hands. Each marching towards a doom which will not matter. For they are born whole, and they will be again.

From the surface of Blessed TerraSol, Restored Venus, Hateful Mercury and Wrath-Filled Mars come the Terran Descent Humans. Their minds unshackled, thousands of years of subtle gentling to protect their closest friends shattered by foolish enemies who could not possibly understand what they had done. Lashes of blistering disgust, enraged screaming, and unfathomable hatred roll off the planets, an infinite beast that needs only a target.

Guns thunder through the not-void, the skin of that-which-was-not-and-will-not-exist shudders and flexes as it struggles to contain the energies released, possibilities and potentials annihilated before they are conceived, galaxies removed from a future that never came to pass.

This may be the final war of Humanity.

We Shall NOT Fall.

--Prologue to "The Fury of the Sixth Battle for Terra", by Tsavong-117, DS, Doctor of Contemporary History.