Chapter 425

System 391-3888-a83. The system possessed only a few technological assets. A GalNet Repeater, a low fidelity system scanner, a communications hyperlink capable of transmitting messages at 25,000 times the speed of light. Other than that, nothing.

There really wasn't any use. Even for the Great Herd, the Unified Council, the system was next to worthless outside of overly expensive resource extraction.

As far as its physical makeup, it was a mess. A trinary star system. A red giant with a yellow star and a white dwarf orbiting it. Sixteen gas giants, a third of them super-massive. Five winding asteroid belts. A Kupier Belt and Oort Cloud so thick with debris it was measurable and prevented outside observation.

An observer could not sit a light month or two outside of the system and observe what was going on inside the system. As little as two light-days out and the system was nothing but a hazy glob.

That meant any exploration or examination of the system had to be done from within the system. The gravitational pulls of all the supermassive gas giants and the three suns made estimations based off of gravity completely useless.

The system was a nightmare of physics.

The system had been largely left alone throughout history.

But not always.

Debris from an ancient battle had slowly been drawn into one of the stars, or into the gravitational well of the gas giants.

Originally, far far back in history, the system had contained a single planet. A small rocky planet that had orbited the system in a winding path. The planet had been important, back in those days, as there was a single resource that could be extracted from the center of one of the supermassive gas giants.

What it was, there were no records or evidence any longer.

But back in history, far enough back that nothing in the Orion-Cygnus Galactic Spur was recognizable, there little planet had been important enough that all three of the dominant races had ensured they had representation.

Then, a disagreement had led to warfare, as the disagreement could only be solved by the elimination of the other two.

The planet had been destroyed, broken into chunks that were eventually devoured by the stars.

In the silence afterwards the system had been forgotten.

Decades, centuries, eons moved past. The system went on as it always had, a confusing mix of gravitational force, orbits, and radiation.

But history is a flat circle.

Four different groups had plans.

One intended on trapping the other and ambushing them.

One intended on springing the trap with overwhelming firepower and destroying it.

One intended on using the system as a deep strike base.

One intended on investigating on whether or not the supermassive gas giant still produced a rare and valuable material.

Four plans.

The universe, cold and malevolent, saw the plans.

And laughed.

The first two intended on showing up early to prepare their ambush.

The second two had no idea that the others were on their way.

The first was confident in their ability to arrive, hide, and prepare an ambush.

The second planners had a history of everything going bad, of plans lasting only thirty seconds into reality or ten seconds after contact with the enemy. They knew that the best laid plans of mice and men had less than optimum outcomes for either.

The third had computed an overwhelmingly positive analysis of how seizing the system would enable them to strike deeply into enemy territory. It did not matter that the older, more experienced of them had broken contact and vanished into their own plots.

The fourth had taken the time to analyze the damage to the system caused by that ancient battle. Between the damage and the gravitational anomalies, they would have to follow linear flows rather than their preferred methods, but the promise of the resource was too big of a lure to resist.

All of them were confident in their ability to manage any battle that took place, the last two considering any battle to be unlikely.

The universe laughed harder.

The law of averages, just plain common sense, would rule that each possible combatant would arrive at a different time, have a chance to prepare, have a chance to deploy their plotting and plans, with the first to arrive having the longest.

One of the combatants preferred fourth dimensional warfare.

Time, in the laymans terms.

Two of the combatants had experience with temporal warfare and countermeasures.

The third did, but had forgotten about it in the long march of time.

One of the combatants engaged in temporal warfare the same way the others engaged in ground warfare. To them, it was merely another battlefield, one they were the masters of.

So they used it extensively.

The universe disliked that.

All four fleets left at different times, travelling or not travelling for different amounts of time.

For one, it was a long journey in hyperspace. They dropped deep in with a roar to bleed off extraneous energy and warn/threaten everyone in the system.

For the other, it was a long series of jumpspace transitions. They came into the system by the tens of thousands without any fanfare. They arrived first and rapidly spread out to take positions.

For the third, it was a single eternal second of a Helljump, with hundreds of Hellgate portals opening up to disgorge a single vessel the size of a continent all over the system.

The last had been there at one time, the system they were using as a jumpoff point had intersected with the target system in the aeons past. They simply arrived in silence and uttered a single phrase.

They all arrived nearly at the same time.

The universe howled with laughter.

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Cu'udchu'ar had been assigned the Great Grand Most High of the Great Herd Armada Unstoppable Dominion nearly two months prior. At any other time he would have considered it to be the greatest accomplishment of his life.

To be put in charge of three hundred twenty eight million ships was more than any one Lanaktallan had commanded in known history.

Even with the fact he was to be pitted against the mad lemurs of Terra he would have felt nothing but pride and awe at the sheer weight of metal he commanded. More even than the attacks on the Terran Confederacy homeworlds.

Every ship that could be shaken loose, even if it meant denuding a system of protection, had been added to his monstrous fleet.

A month ago he had submitted, as had everyone else in the fleet, to neural pathway enhancement, which promised to fill his brain with even more knowledge of space combat.

The helmet had settled on his head and then he'd felt nothing but agony. When he had woken up he felt as if there were two of himself inside his head. He knew tactics, strategy, everything he would need to fight the mad lemurs of Terra in space.

But there were other things too. Strange things.

The feeling that this was all wrong. That there was something wrong.

He had the memories of a great war stallion of the past, but those memories told him that all of his ships, all of his billions of men, were wrong.

That there was something wrong with it all.

And his head hurt.

All the time.

Still, he put it out of his mind as the Great Herd Armada left jumpspace, a safe two light seconds back from the resonance zone. Any ship that tried to jump into a system inside the resonance zone was either rebuffed or torn to shreds by gravitational force.

It took nearly an hour for the data to come back.

No ships had been lost.

He sighed in relief, ignored the feeling something was wrong, and ordered the Great Herd Armada to break into Lesser Herds. Each of the Lesser Herds would conceal themselves in the gas giants, blend in with the twisting and active asteroid belts, and go to full stealth.

His own ship, the Dominion of Implacable Onslaught, headed deeper into the system to hide in one of the gas giant moons of the supermassive gas giant.

The Terrans would arrive. He knew they would. He had been told they would.

But why did it all feel off, feel wrong?

He was unaware that he spoke as the ship headed for the gas giant.

"Hail the Great Herd."

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

Twenty-Ninth Fleet was the largest in the Terran Confederate Space Force Navy. Nearly five times the size of any other fleet, it had been bolstered by the addition of Von Nuemann Logistics System vessels as well as additions from other members of the Confederacy.

The Cybernetic Fleet of the 8th Electronic had joined, as had the Digital Sentience Warfare Fleet. Even the biological fleets of the BASS had joined. There were Mantid and Treana'ad vessels, a Pubvian Battle Division, even a small Telkan Task Force and an Akltak Combat Flight.

It wasn't as large as the fleet that had entered the "Mar-gite Occupied Zone" several centuries back, but it was damn close.

Admiral (Upper Decks) Samantha Johnathon Kwagarkak Smith had been a Naval commander for three hundred years, had decades of experience when it came to full fleet operations. She was experienced in everything from ground combat oversight to material transport convoys.

When the 29th Fleet dropped into the system, just outside the resonance zone, it took nearly a half hour for the computers to analyze the stress patterns of the entire system's gravitational forces.

"Geez, what a mess," was the common analysis.

"Think they're here yet?" Commander Levi Klikakiti asked, nervously lighting another cigarette.

"Without a doubt. They're hiding. Run a scan high enough to blister paint, concentrate on those gas giants and the asteroid belts," Admiral Smith ordered.

"Scans show enough drive trails that you could probably see them with the unaided eye," a scan-tech noted.

"How recent?" Admiral Smith asked.

"Days, at the most," the scan-tech said.

"Alert all Task Force elements. We're jumping to the preset rally points. Everyone stays cleared for action, shields up, weapons hot," Admiral Smith ordered. "Jump when ready."

She listened as each task force made their jumps further in system.

She felt the odd thrum in her bone marrow of the FTL engines prepping a short hyperjump when the scanning tech turned around.

"WEAPONS FIRE!" they called out.

Admiral Smith opened her mouth to cancel the jump when everything stretched out into an eternal split second.

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

Cu'udchu'ar stood on the deck of his command center, deep within the armored core of the great dreadnaught, watching the holotanks as his ship began to sink deeper into the gas giant. He, like most of the Great Herd Armada ships, had only been in the upper atmosphere.

The roar of HEAVY METAL IS HERE had warned his fleet, and now he was sinking down to where the gas would be too thick to allow the Terran scanners to discover his massive fleet waiting.

The pressure increased and part of him, the alien part of him that had been pressed into his brain by the helmet, began being alarmed by what he was seeing for the atmosphere.

Something about the hydrocarbon levels.

Phosphorous.

Carbon dioxide.

Hydrogen dioxide.

Dihydrogen oxide

Dihydrogen dioxide

Carbon monoxide

Sulphuric dioxide

One of the ships deeper in the gas giant's atmosphere suddenly quit broadcasting. For a second it had squealed a datastream full of massive damage, as if the armored hull had suddenly succumbed to the pressures of the gas giant.

Battlesteel hulls were rated for enough pressure that the ship should have been able to reach the edge of the gas-liquid boundary. The ship had been no deeper than halfway there when it suddenly stopped transmitting.

Another ship stopped. And another.

"MOST HIGH!" one of the commo technicians called out, pulling Cu'udchu'ar's attention to the holotank they were in front of.

It was showing the external camera feeds from one of the smaller vessels.

Out of the gas uncoiled a dozen thick long tentacles. Ribbed flesh, heavy suckers, thick barbs of chitin extending out of the middle of the suckers. The tentacles reached out, obviously grabbing the ships.

The tentacles flexed and the feed cut out.

"ALL SHIPS! GET OUT OF THE ATMOSPHERE!" Cu'udchu'ar yelled out. "Activate point defense, battlescreens to full!"

The implanted part of him recognized those tentacles, recognized what was happened.

"ATREKNA AMBUSH!" he bellowed out.

The ships of the Great Herd Armada reversed course, heading for space, battlescreens coming up and point defense systems going to rapid fire.

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

The ships of 29th Task Force streaked back into existence with the bellow of "HEAVY METAL IS HERE" to bleed off some of the hyperspace energies.

"Talk to me!" Admiral Smith yelled at the scan-tech.

"Multiple Lanaktallan vessels are leaving the gas giants. We've got weapons fire in the asteroid belt and inside the gas giants," he called out. "Unsure of what they are engaging."

"Signal from CSFNV Henry Green," a commo tech called out.

"Put them through," Admiral Smith said, turning to one of her datascreens in time to see the commander of the combat force appear on her screen.

"We've got dwellerspawn everywhere. Coming out of every gas giant, all through the asteroid belt," he said. "Big ones. The really big ones," he said. The lights behind him were dim and red and the video had the crystal clear quality of a bridge under vacuum. "They've been growing here for eons."

Smith nodded. "Scrap the plans, protect your ships. I'm working on it right now," she said. She cut the signal, turning to the commo tech. "All ships, go to divisional command. Get me the rest of my tactical section together."

If I jump out, I lose the chance to cripple the Lanaktallan space force. If I don't, I risk going at it with Dwellerspawn, the big ones, she thought, staring at the tactical screen. We've got light minutes in between the fleet elements, it'll take me time to get the scans and recon probe data back, and in that time everything can go even further tits up.

"STATUS CHANGE!" another tactical officer called out. "FIVE! TEN! FIFTY! MANY MANY MANY HELLJUMP PORTALS!"

"STATUS CHANGE!" a second called out. "UNKNOWN SHIPS APPEARING ON SCANS! TWO HUNDRED AND COUNTING!"

Smith pushed back the urge to panic and brought up the data on her screens.

The ones helljumping in were PAWM. Big ones too. They were already shedding ancillary craft.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE! roared out as she gave them a once over. A mixture of Type I, Type II, and Type III.

The second set that was just appearing by the hundreds were the ones that Space Force had fought in the Hesstla System, the Type-IV PAWM. Additionally there were dozens of craft that looked more grown than built.

YOU BELONG TO US!

The back of her teeth suddenly tingled and burned with the taste of tinfoil. Her vision tunneled down for a second and a pain lanced through her head just behind her eyes.

"Temporal stabilizer emergency system just activated, Ma'am," someone called out as Smith blinked rapidly, wishing she could rub her eyes.

"Order the fleet to go to max power on the temporal stabilizers," she ordered.

"Temporal resonance stabilization field signatures from the PAWM fleet!" someone else called out.

"Ignore the Lankys unless they fire on us! Target the PAWM and the Dwellerspawn!" Admiral Smith ordered. "Brigade Fire Plans or better! LET 'EM HAVE IT!"

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

Cu'udchu'ar stared in shock as the Terran fleet went from locking up his ships with targeting systems to switching to the Atrekna and the PAWM.

The thousands of Helljumps had taken him by surprise, and before he could even come to grips with that, with thousands of Precursor capital and resource stripping vessels, more ships began to appear.

The ships looked as if they had been grown on a sea floor, created to imitate aquatic creature. Curled shells, long gauzy solar sails that looked like wings, all of them ejecting swarms of smaller craft. Mixed in were massive creatures, all of which were vomiting up smaller creatures.

The creatures inside the gas giants were starting to emerge, chasing the Lanaktallan fleets. Two of the smaller gas giant moons looked as if they had sprouted tens of thousands of tentacles as miles long graspers reached out toward the fleeing vessels.

"Shift targeting from the Terrans to the Precursors and the Atrekna!" Cu'udchu'ar ordered. "Ignore the lemurs unless they attack us! Lesser Herds, run your warplans, get them updated!"

His head was starting to pound.

"Crank up the psychic shielding till we get bloody noses!" he roared out.

YOU BELONG TO US! roared out in his mind.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE! came the opposing scream.

ALL OF YOU EAT A DICK! Cu'udchu'ar heard the mad lemurs of Terra scream back.

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The system was a mess. Twisting and winding gravitational bands. No solid planetary bodies.

But the gas giants were important.

They contained the necessary chemicals and elements for life.

And for a hundred million years they had nurtured the life seeded in them.

Awoken by the arrival of the Lanaktallan Great Herd Armada entering the gas giants, the feral Dwellerspawn eagerly pursued what they viewed as a meal out of the gas giants. They felt the attempt by the Atrekna to seize control of their thought processes and, assisted by a hundred million years of evolution, rejected it.

The feral dwellerspawn looked at the Atrekna and the dwellerspawn accompanying them and licked their chops. The psychic energy glowed like a flare on a dark night to the feral dwellerspawn's senses.

The broke off chasing the cold metal ships of the Lanaktallan and charged toward their makers.

The universe, cold and malevolent, howled with laughter.