Chapter 293

The universe will take away everything good, everything you love. It will take everything from you and laugh while it's doing it. - Terran saying

Why is it that everyone sees the primate happily playing with its toys and decides that this is who they want to run up on and club in the back of the head with a rock? - Mantid Philospher Sees Beyond the Answer to the Question

Who knows what would have happened if humans had been left to just play. There are ruins of those who came before that somehow ascended to something else, possibly pure energy, and went beyond the petty concerns of the universe. The humans have surpassed those ancient people's achievements, who knows where they might have gone. Instead, each of us, every one of us, have attacked them, and forced them to turn what could have been technology for peace and advancement into the cold tools of war. - Thoughts of Terra - Blanarkak Numekrekvian, Mulmanik Philospher

In war they are a nightmare. In peace and cooperation they are a dream. As allies they are your brother. - P'Thok, Treana'ad Hero

There is no problem that they will not attempt to assist you with. They care as deeply for those they just met as many do for their family. They will guard your ducks as fiercely as they would their own children. For that, we love them. - Rigellian diplomat

I just want left alone. - Osiris of the Warsteel Flame, after his rebirth following the assassination of the Digital Omnimessiah.

Nuts. - Terran military commander, pre-diaisporia, Second Global Conflict, Terra.

The Executor Fleet came in via hyperspace, thinking they'd be able to penetrate deeply into the Sol System and attack the planets without having to engage the out defenses which would undoubtedly be engaging the Corporate and Military Fleet.

They dropped out of hyperspace at the Resonance Zone due to a massive gravity shadow, almost as if the stellar mass was a thousand times larger than it was.

The Executor Fleet was immediately engaged in combat before they could even get their shields up or clear the sensors. Many Most Highs weren't even sure what kind of weapons were engaging them as their Task Forces and Fleet Elements were torn apart, blown out of the sky, or crumpled like a beer can against the chrome forehead of a Bongistan Cyberball Hooligan.

Still, they had their orders, and those unable to do anything but follow their orders set to carrying them out slavishly.

The Executors could see that the entire system was a nightmare of defenses, with more coming online all the time. The ninth planet had broken up but the guns were still firing even as something was happening to the planet.

The conflict was too huge for any one computer system to handle, the computers deliberately having been reduced in effectiveness to prevent enough processing power to allow Terran Digital Sentience attacks and enhanced Virtual Intelligences from scrapping the ships from the inside.

One particular fleet drove for the innermost moon surrounding one of the gas giants. It was in the middle of a strange plasma torus that surrounded the gas giant within the orbit of the satellite. The satellite itself was wreathed in electricity and magnetic fields to the point where a 'tube' of electricity connected the moon to the gas giant. It was a red, yellow, red, and green satellite that had, surprisingly to the Executor sensor technicians, over a hundred volcanoes on the surface.

It also had some of the heaviest planetary shielding in the system, coming from a small satellite that rotated quickly around the gas giant's moon, which was the fourth largest moon in the Sol System.

The strange part is that it had very few orbital defenses, just the planetary shield generator and a few armed satellites that had already been disabled.

Fifteen Task Forces descended on the planet. Half were destroyed by the plasma torus when somehow it suddenly ignited, surrounding the great gas giant in a ring of fire. Half of the remainder were destroyed when the electrical and magnetic fields suddenly reached out to rip and tear at the ships of the task force.

The planetary shield was set to even destroy landing craft.

One a single ship got through to land on the surface near the one single installation that could be seen on the surface.

In the middle of heavy combat, caught between an Executor Fleet and a Military Fleet, Legion saw the ships descending on the moon, saw them try to make landing.

Part of his brain tried to get him to order his gunners to fire on that fleet, ignore the two fleets attacking, concentrate on keeping the Lanaktallan from reaching the surface of that moon.

He pushed it aside with a snarl and went back to shredding the two fleets that dared engage him. Didn't they know who he was? Who he had walked with? Who he had served? What he had done?

He had been Vat-Grown Luke before the Betrayal. He had Fallen and become and Immortal.

Didn't these pathetic creatures get it?

He. Was. Legion.

Part of his saw that a single ship got through and landed near the sole facility on the moon that had not been covered by sulphuric lava.

He sneered at the pathetic Lanaktallan and devoted two seconds of firepower at the forces around the moon to shut up the tiny voice ordering him to stop them.

Then he went back to shredding the invaders, rending them into wreckage and ruin.

He knew what those pathetic creatures would find.

The corner of his mouth twitched in cold smile.

On the surface of the satellite the Lanaktallan saw the orbiting ships suddenly take fire from one of the massive defensive fleets and break apart. Those capable of independent thought realized that they and they alone had made it to the surface and they weren't even a troop ship.

The Executor Grand Most High of the ship allowed the troops and the crewmembers who were chomping at the bit and stomping their hooves to don their body armor and charge out onto the surface, to drive their tanks out onto the surface.

Most of the tanks just drove in circles blaring out their support for the Great Herd and promising the primates a certain doom. The ones that charged out ran toward the sole facility, made of black warsteel and set into a dead volcano, and then slowly came to a stop when they realized that shooting their plasma rifles wasn't really doing anything.

They stood out there and slowly formed ranks, just standing out in the thin atmosphere of sulphuric compounds, the electromagnetic interference making them vanish and waver, the hostile environment held off, for the time being, by their armor.

The Grand Most High stared for a long moment and sighed. Due to the heavy EM interference, nobody could radio those ranks and order them back and he knew they wouldn't respond unless they were spoken to correctly.

For a split second he thought about just leaving them out there. They'd stand in formation till they died, their brains full of nothing but conflicting memories fighting over neural tissue not designed to handle the overlays.

He rubbed his face to banish his own headache and then got into his armor.

The facility was worth heavy orbital protection but nothing on the planet beyond some kind of energy field and being made out of that damnable warsteel. That meant it was important, but he couldn't figure out for the life of him what made it important.

Part of him believed it was part of the system defense infrastructure, but something about it just seemed strange to him. He had no word for the concept he was struggling with. It was disconcerting in its lines, it was threatening in its stillness and silence, it made him feel uncertain with its coloration, and its placement on a hellish satellite of a gas giant made him want to back away from it.

A Terran would have told him it felt ominous and he was feeling dread.

But he had no concepts for those emotions. The pale shadows of those feelings that he had felt and applied those words to while under the influence of population control measures, before the neural templates had been applied were nothing compared to the feelings surging within him.

Still, he got in his armor, selected eight crewmembers who didn't respond to "good morning" with shouted slogans about the Great Herd, and an extension of the ships half-brain dead VI, and headed out across the sulphur landscape to the facility.

There was a platform, with steps leading up to it, sunk into the sulphuric rock, made entirely of warsteel. An energy field protected it, an energy field that tingled slightly as he passed through it.

The EM distortion cleared as soon as he passed through the field.

At the far side was a massive black wall of warsteel, with a single door in the middle. There were runes all over the wall as he clattered toward it, nervously tapping his armor covered hooves as he approached.

His armor couldn't translate the runes as he stood and stared at them. They were carved into the black warsteel and inlaid with some kind of metal that burned white. The runes were strange, almost threatening.

A holographic human appeared, dressed in heavy power armor. It spoke rapidly, its voice full of authority, its face stern. The plates were thick, heavy, the armor appearing strangely ancient and formal, with a avian with spread wings on the chest, done in burning warsteel.

Age had made phonetic drift an issue and his armor could only translate a handful of words.

"Warning... danger... prison... not... die... warning."

His Fifth Most High turned to him. "What do you think it was saying?"

"It is warning to other primates, undoubtably," the Grand Most High said, thinking. He stared at the door. "If we open the door, is what is inside a benefit to us as well as a danger to the humans or is it dangerous enough that both ourselves and the humans will regret opening this door."

"It feels like some kind of vault to me, not a redoubt," the Second Most High Gunner Officer said slowly. "I dislike this, let us return to the ship."

"The battle goes badly. The Terrans were much better prepared than we expected," The Grand Most High said. "Their weapons are more powerful than we were led to believe, their defenses stronger than our intelligence warned us of, and they are much more adept at warfare than even the worst case simulation had predicted."

"Because whoever prepared the data were incompetents," the Sixth Most High of Intelligence Analysis stated. "This was a venture commissioned by idiots, prepared by the mentally defective, undertaken by fools, and manned by the ignorant."

"Still, that does not assist us in this endevour," the Grand Most High said.

"Our choices are simple. We retreat back to the ship, try to gather the lost ones, and try to get off this planet and either surrender or escape or we try to open this facility," the Sixth Most High of Intelligence stated.

"Or get blown out of space by rabid lemurs wildly firing superweapons in all directions while they laugh," snorted the Second Most High Gunnery Officer.

"Can anyone else feel that?" the Most High Medical Officer asked, moving toward the door. "It's coming from the door."

The Grand Most High focused on the door and moved up next to the Most High Medical Officer.

Yes.

He could feel... something.

"Yes, I feel something. I am not sure what," the Grand Most High said, slowly approaching.

Beside the door was a heavy lever in the down position. In the middle of the big heavy door was a spiked wheel. It all gleamed with a light coating of some kind of thick lubricant.

"Should we open it, Grand Most High?" the Second Most High of Engineering asked.

The Grand Most High stared at the door for a long time, thinking hard. "If whatever it is is something that the Terrans fear, then perhaps we should leave this where it is."

The others all nodded.

Together they turned around and headed back, stopping in front of the empty ones and gathering them up, marching them back to the ships. The Grand Most High had ordered the tanks to return and most of them were starting to return when one fired its main gun. The Grand Most High saw on the scanners that the hologram of the armored human was back.

The tank crew had either panicked or thought they had seen a valid target and fired.

At the door.

The Grand Most High ordered that the tank cease fire as it clattered forward, its tracks spewing out sulphuric compounds behind it.

It kept firing as it roared up the steps and slammed down onto the huge dias before the door.

It fired its main gun point blank at the hologram.

And hit the door.

The hologram vanished and there was a long moment of silence.

The tank exploded, shards of battlesteel flying out into the ugly barren landscape. Lightning coursed across the front of the facility buried in the dormant volcano, reached up toward the massive gas giant hanging in the sky, and raked across the buried facilities exposed section with enough fury to leave the warsteel white and smoking.

"Prepare for liftoff," the Grand Most High snapped. He heard the ship's engines start to labor, trying to lift off. The ship shuddered and managed to get of the surface, the protective fields spinning up even as the ship tilted upward at the bow and started to move.

"The shield is missing," the navigator said.

"Make for space, keep us in the grav-shadow of the gas-giant. Go to full stealth, we'll try to ride the battle out, wait for the stars to return, and make for home," the Grand Most High said, feeling his guts loosen strangely.

The ship managed to slip away from the massive moon, sliding through the strange torus of plasma around the massive gas giant, staying in the grav-shadow from one of the further out moons.

On the moon itself the warsteel front of the door began to glow. First a dull red, almost lost in the light of the star and the light reflected off of the gas giant, then bright red, then yellow, and finally white. It began to slowly sag, soften, and then rivulets of molten warsteel began running down the face, obliterating the runs, streaming across the dais to flow across the sulfuric ground.

The door began to deform, bulging out in spots, until it folded slightly and flew free from the frame, flying through the hellish atmosphere to land in a pool of sulfuric acid.

A figure stood in the door, wreathed in purple and white and blue lightning.

He vanished in a puff of purple and black smoke.

Not that anyone noticed.

The battle was too furious, there was too much jamming, too much EM interference, too much combat going on throughout the entire Sol System.

The Lanaktallan were losing. Their landing forces were being wiped out. Their aerospace forces were being devestated. Their orbital support ships being wiped out of the sky.

The only thing that still kept them in the running was there was just so many of them.

The Corporate Fleet was wiped out, the remains mathematically insignificant.

The Military Fleet was down to less than 10% of their forces.

The Executor Fleet was less than 30%.

The Lanaktallan would have fled, the casualties having racked up to the point where even their war stallion implanted memories were screaming at them to fleet, to rout.

But the stars were gone. There was no where to go.

But ringing across the system came the offer.

SURRENDER OR BE DESTROYED