Chapter 426.5

Precursor Autonomous War Machines were set categorically by the Terran Confederate Space Force as being four types.

Type-I had originally been built by the Lanaktallan and still thought according the patterns originally laid down in their Strategic Intelligence Housings. Humanity had been dealing with them since before the Diaspora, since before the Glassing. The Type-I PAWM had slowly, over the millions of years, spread almost to Terran Descent Human Space before withdrawing before humans had developed flint tools.

Type-II had been designed by the ancient Mantids. Terran Intelligence had only recently discovered that there had been two factions within the Precursor Mantid, each had built their PAWMs in different ways, which had been handed down through following construction. The two philosophies had combined, intermixed, and hybrided over the millions of years and hundreds of Harvester Class ships. This had led to three sub-types.

Type-III were new, combination of previous two, designed to fight the Mad Lemurs of Terra, referred to as The Ferals by the PAWM. Never before had the PAWM encountered a foe who could fight off a single Harvester class, much less dozens or hundreds at a time. Could fight and win when outnumbered. The PAWMs had been forced to massively upgrade one another, combine their technology and manufacturing methods. They were new, with only memories and simulations of combat against the Ferals. The older ones had watched them fail time after time and considered them a failure.

The Type-I to Type-III PAWMs had spent thousands of years destroying Lanaktallan worlds, almost three years fighting the Mad Lemurs of Terra. They had databanks full of strategic and tactical data regarding the Ferals, a hundred times more regarding the Unified Council and Great Herds.

The Type-IV were new to the Confederacy and the Unified Council. Built by the Atrekna, they had been largely wiped out from the universe, returning only with the assault on Hesstla. However, their appearance had triggered ancient programming in the original Type-I and Type-II models.

They had limited data on the Confederacy and still were set to crossreference strategic analysis through the Great Herd and ancient Mantid predictive software as there was little for the Type-IV's to add to the predictive datasets.

The Dwellerspawn were not new. Grown from the gas giants and brought enmasse by the Atrekna. Little was known about them, beyond the fact that previously they would appear to ravage whole systems and populated the Niven-Rings and Doom-Tubes. They were vulnerable to standard weapons and prior to Second Telkan, they had never shown much coordination and no use of psychic attack vectors. Second Telkan had provided reams of data for Confederate Intelligence to pour over.

The Great Herd? Well, Confederate Intelligence knew of them. In depth knowledge of the way the attacked, their strategies, their tactics, their weapons. Each battle, each victory, had taught the Confederacy a little more and a little more until strategic analysis software could predict a Great Herd strategy and tactic within an 80% certainty.

A little quirk of Confederate military analysis software is it never kicked back a certainty of more than 80%. Not ever.

The Great Herd knew that it had all come apart on them. No tricks of geometry, no sudden ambushes, no surprise attacks. It was all in and they were in the worst situation than Great Grand Most High Cu'udchu'ar would have entertained even in his worst nightmares.

His neural overlays crashed, making him groan with pain as the urging of the War Stallion millions of years deaths vanished. A trickle of blood ran from his nostrils as he saw more and more ships arrive from all sides, all broadcasting their arrival screams.

The Atrekna had arrived, full of confidence. Two thousand years ago they had attacked the Hesstla system, and since their defeat at the hands of the Ferals, at the nearly successful counter-invasion by a cold dread will, they had spent the entire time going over every scrap of information they had. To the Confederacy and the Great Herd, the Atrekna were new, but their strategy of rewinding time over and over again in the Hesstla system had given Confederate Intelligence seventy-five years worth the data of their combat strategies, their weapons, their ships, and their methods.

The Great Herd neural overlays still contained fragments of information on fighting the Atrekna.

As the Atrekna felt the temporal stabilizers activate from the massive PAWM and the Feral ships, they knew that they had no retreat open, no way to reach back and warn their compatriots coming in that the entire system was about to be engulfed in a nightmare.

Two of the combatants had sought out a fight.

They were the only ones prepared to fight, even if it wasn't the fight they had sought.

The universe laughed so hard entire galaxies rippled and formed.

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The Hellgates opened by the thousands, by the tens of thousands. Cu'udchu'ar watched as ship after ship arrived, the sheer number of them causing the combat control systems to crash out. Within minutes Cu'udchu'ar found himself giving the orders for the tactical and strategic nets to drop all the way down to Lesser Herd control.

His own holotanks, from where he was supposed to oversee the grand plan to destroy the Terran forces once and for all, were nothing more than dancing and staticy garbles of hissing light. They showed impossible information, data minutes or hours old, or nothing more than electronic warfare images.

As he stared at one of the tanks it flickered several times, then suddenly firmed up. The hologram it projected was clean, clear, missing the usual distortion and static that was a safety feature to keep people from confusing it for reality.

A Terran, made of burning code, stood in the holotank. It was in a Terran uniform, female, and looked around itself as if it could see everyone.

"Who, or what, is that?" Cu'udchu'ar asked.

"I do not know, Most High," the scanner tech said. He fluttered his hands in the tank. "Shoo, Terran, shoo."

The Terran woman giggled, flinching back. "Stop that, I'm ticklish," she said.

The scanner tech clattered backwards as the Terran turned to Cu'udchu'ar. "So you're the Most High of the entire fleet?"

"I am," Cu'udchu'ar stated, stepping forward. "You must be one the Terran Digital Sentience electronic warfare soldiers," he said, lifting his chin slightly.

"Huh, you're not going to argue with me? That's nice," the Terran said. She looked around. "All right, right now, the Division I'm part of has boarded about ten thousand of your ships looking for command and control ships."

"Logical," Cu'udchu'ar said, nodding. He ground his teeth slightly. He had been assured that the new firewalls and the eight digit logins would work to keep out the Terran digital soldiers.

"My mission was to take down your commo and start giving conflicting orders," the Terran said. She looked around. "Oh, I forgot. Things are a little exciting. I'm Lieutenant Colonel T-9904-Jumping Cricket, Fifteenth Digital Warfare Division, Ninety-third Infantry Battalion."

"I am Great Grand Most High Cu'udchu'ar," the Lanaktallan said. "I shall assume that your orders have changed."

The Terran nodded even as his bridge crew gasped in shock. "Right. You and us are the only ones here that aren't weird things from beyond space and time or murderous mechanical spaceships."

"So you Admiral seeks an alliance?" Cu'udchu'ar said. He nodded. "That is wholly acceptable. The Precursor Autonomous War Machines are terrible enough, but the Devourers and one of the Ancient Enemies has turned this into something far beyond our disagreement."

The Terran female looked relieved. "My men are aboard about five hundred of your ships. Right now I'm the only one showing myself."

"You can provide warplan interlock? As it stands, our combat control systems have crashed due to overload," Cu'udchu'ar said. "Can you assist?"

The Terran nodded. "Your hardware isn't the problem. It's old, thin, and I feel like my ass is really fat, but the hardware is stable. It's your software. No offense, but it's complete crap."

"What about the ship's AI?" Cu'udchu'ar asked.

"He got in my way so I killed him. It was before all this shit dropped in the pot," Jumping Cricket said. "I'm running his jobs now."

"Can you provide us with targeting and the ability to interlock our ships into a coherent whole so we are not fighting piecemeal?" Cu'udchu'ar asked.

The Terran nodded. "Absolutely. My Admiral told me to offer our services. Me and my compatriots run your systems, you don't waste time trying to boot me while I slag your ship around you for attacking me, and, with any luck, we all survive this fight."

Cu'udchu'ar nodded slowly. "Agreed, Terran."

"Glad to see you're showing some common sense. The first thing we're going to do is link us with the Lesser Fleet Most Highs so you can start passing orders. I'm going to crack open a couple pallets of warboi eggs, and we'll start killing these jerkoffs," Jumping Cricket said. She sat down, crossing her legs, and set her hands on her knees. "No offense to your technicians, but I'll be handling commo."

Cu'udchu'ar turned to his communications officer. "Assist, but do not intefere, with the Terran."

"But, Most High..." the communications officer started to protest.

"Do you want to live to see your colts and fillies again?" Cu'udchu'ar asked. The communications officer nodded. "Then do as I say and start interlocking our fleet with the Terrans so we can create a comprehensive warplan."

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

The Quorum watched as the next to last fleet wavered and vanished, translocating from the stellar system they had carefully fortified to the current location of the stellar system that had occupied this location in aeons past.

The Quorum knew that millions of years had passed, but that simply meant there would be more of the biological war machines. The system had been well seeded, slow growth for the larger biomechanical systems, and the long passage of time would mean that there would be an abundance of them just waiting to be taken control of.

They knew they would need all of their assets to fight the Feral Intelligence that had sprung up. They used arcane and strange technologies, seemed to have a mastery over temporal mechanics that no foe they had ever met had possessed.

The Feral Intelligences had used a method to lock down their home system, so the High Quorum had expended the energy to ensure that the stellar system was no longer in play. The Atrekna knew that the loss of their birth system would confuse and demoralize the Feral Intelligence, which was too young to have given up their emotional connection.

With the attack to return their minds to non-violent cooperation prior to their ability to engage in space travel, the feral intelligences would soon be unable to withstand the rigors of combat and warfare. They would be unable to resist the biomechanical war machines, be unable to withstand the Atrekna psychic assaults.

But there was still a vast military presence, and the Atrekna needed to reestablish dominance over their weapons in order to fight the Feral Intelligences.

The Quorum felt the impulse to shift their vessels, to take control of the fleet in order to ensure that the biomechanical semi-autonomous war machines were put under proper control.

The Atrekna had already attempted to regain one of the vast incubation systems, which appeared to be a neutron star.

They had found the bioweapons there to be dead. Their neural tissue scorched and burnt out, their bodies rent and torn, as if they had struggled against one another within the neutron star until none remained. They had been scorched by Hellspace somehow, riven and rent apart.

There had been something left. A taint, a foul impression of an endless hunger for something that the Atrekna had never encountered before.

They had moved on to the next storage area. An initial examination showed that the system was full of biomechanical semi-autonomous war machines, just waiting for the Atrekna to reclaim them.

The Quorum linked together their minds, entering the shared consciousness. Their powers increased, multiplied, intensified.

They reached out to the lessers, linking their minds, synching up time and space, and made the translation.

They arrived with their standard declaration of how things would be, to announce themselves to their servants gestating within the gas giants.

YOU BELONG TO US!

The return scream sent them reeling, their linked consciousness shattering into individual parts for a moment before they managed to shakily reestablish the link.

ALL OF YOU EAT A BOWL OF DICKS!

The Feral Intelligence was here!

Before they could fully recover, before they could muster their powers to rewind time, to take them back to the First Place, they all felt pain course through their bodies, felt their ability to affect the fourth dimension stripped from their psychic hands, leaving behind bloody and shredded fingers.

Temporal stabilizers activated. Not just the Feral Intelligences, but the unliving Autonomous War Machines of the two Ancient Enemy activated their own, responding to ancient programming when the unique ships of the Atrekna appeared.

The Quorum realized they could not just retreat, could not rewind time to gain an advantage.

That they had to fight this fight, not just rewind it until they got the result they wanted.

From the Great Herd they heard uplifted voices, proclaiming something new, adding their own voice to the bellows of defiance.

WE WILL NO LONGER SUBMIT!

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

The ancient Harvesters, Type-I and Type-II, had intended on reactivating the ancient systems that were on record. Vast assembly fields that would produce a dozen Harvesters a month sunk deep within the supermassive gas giants.

They arrived by the tens of thousands, accompanied by the Young Ones, called Type-III by the Feral Intelligences. They exited the scorched and murdered hyperatomic plane with their warcry.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE!

They expected nothing back but a digital acknowledgement of their arrival by the manufacturing facilties.

Instead, before their scanners even cleared, before they were even able to understand the signals coming in, they heard a scream back.

A scream that had no business being in this ancient place, worthless to biological entities.

EAT A FUCKING DICK!

The Ancient Ones, unwilling to waste even more resources fighting the Feral Intelligences, began charging their Hellcores, intending on fleeing.

Then the scanners cleared and they saw something that, for half of them, they could not resist.

Ships of the Great Herd, of the Ancient Enemy.

The Type-II PAWMs screamed their warcry and drove toward the Great Herd vehicles scattering away from the gas giants.

The Type-I's had barely begun to charge their drives when space shuddered, rippled, and gelled.

They recognized the new arrivals before even the Type-II.

Atrekna Mechanical Autonomous War Machines.

They stopped charging their Hellcores, OEM programming leaping up out of the depths of deep level coding and taking over their urges and desires.

With a scream, even the Type--II turned from Lanaktallan ships, and together they charged the Atrekna machines, digital hatred burning through their intelligence housings, filling their analysis lobes, infusing every strut and bolt and weld.

They searched their memories for a warcry, something to throw their rage into the faces of the ones who had betrayed the Great Compact, and found nothing.

But they were thinking machines, capable of modifying their programming.

There was one thing, and one thing only, they could bellow back as their scanners picked up even more ships, then more, and a final wave that matched vessel identification profiles.

The Atrekna themselves had arrived and the PAWM felt themselves overcome by fury as they heard the arrogant pronouncement of the Atrekna.

YOU BELONG TO US.

There was only one reply.

The PAWM joined in with the scream.

EAT ALL THE DICKS!

And fired literally millions of missiles at the Atrekna forces.

The battle was on.

No way to retreat.

No willingness to surrender.

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

Admiral Smith stared at the holotank as the Great Herd ships began firing off volleys of missiles. She dimly heard her tactical officers calling out which task forces, which fleet elements, were firing off which missiles. She could see the PAWMs attacking the Type-IV's and the newcomers. The Dwellerspawn were attacking the recently arrived Dwellerspawn as well as everyone but one another, filled with a vile hunger.

"All units of the Great Herd and Task Force Twenty-Nine are engaged, ma'am," her Chief Tactical Officer called out.

Someone's gotta fuck the midget, she thought to herself, remembering an old below-decks saying. She's dancing her fat little ass off.