Chapter 555: 4th & 10

The star burned brightly. A yellow star, energetic and young at only a few billion years old. The planets that orbited were sterile, barren of life, moving in a steady orbit around the star. Two of the planets had surfaces covered with poisonous water and cratered, blasted landscape.

They had once held life, over a hundred million years ago, but their murder had been complete and now not even fungus or bacteria survived on their surfaces.

Between the two gas giants in the furthest orbits were ships. Hundreds of thousands of massive ships sat motionless relative to one another. Each far enough that their weapons could not threaten one another, that none could come in support of an attack upon one of their number in a surprise attack.

These ships were cold, lifeless, but still malevolent with purpose and a singular desire.

To hoard the resources of a finite universe to stave off entropy.

Each of the ships were the size of subcontinents, most of them cratered with old wounds, a few of them battered and torn by more recent combats. They measured their weapons not in barrel diameter or in a few score batteries, but in the tens, scores of miles. Their battlescreens were as thick as planetary defense shields, their engines powerful enough to move their bulk between the stars and within a stellar system. They possessed the ability to repair themselves and create ancillary ships for support.

The ships were wary of one another. Their hulls alone would represent a wealth of pre-fabricated resources to any who were able to defeat them. They had all hoarded vast resources. Each controlled a large piece of the sector of space that was full of planets they had stripped to the bedrock and beyond.

**Is this all of us?** one asked.

**All that will arrive. Others have computed that this is a ruse, a trick, to enable others to acquire and consume their resources** another said.

**Did they compute how far their resources would go should the primates grind them up in their jaws** a third asked.

**They have computed that the primates are no longer a threat and thus their computations show that they are not in danger** a fourth stated.

**Then they are as stupid as they are obsolete** a fifth snapped. It was known as A Feral Drew a Dick on My Housing. **The primates will never stop hunting us. Their computations have determined that neither of us can survive as long as the other lives**

**They are biologicals. Entropy, time, and infighting will destroy them** another scoffed. **Even if it does not they are flawed, biological, imperfect, and unable to withstand our perfection**

**Have you faced the primates, the ferals, before? Have you emerged victorious? Share with us your computations, your algorithms, your strategies. Show us, upon your hull, the scars and repaired damage from your clash with the Mad Lemurs of Terra," Feral replied, her communication laden with sneering condescension.

**I have not** the one who spoke broadcast.

**Then, to quote the ferals: eat a dick and shut the fuck up** Feral snapped.

The insulted one bridled up by adding power to their shielding, lighting their engines, and bringing their guns online. They began to move toward Feral.

Every PAWM that had never faced the primates blinked in surprise as Feral released a howling, gibbering, insane scream across the tightbeam data channel directly at the one that was moving in to attack.

The one firing up its engine mentally sneered at the scream.

Then realized that there had been something inside the scream.

Maddened, shrieking, feral code spawned inside the computational sections of the vast PAWM. It ripped through sensors, cut through even the hardiest 8 digit passcodes, shredded firewalls, and scorched data transmission lines at replicated, mutiplicated, as it bred inside of the memory clusters, spreading out.

Those who had encountered the Mad Lemurs of Terra and survived watched with cold logical satisfaction as the terrible attack programs ravened through the doubter. Magazines exploded inside the hull, engines flared and sputtered, the guns depressed low enough to fire upon the hull plating.

Their own firewalls were strong enough to resist the echo of the Mad Lemurs of Terra's electronic manifestation of their rage.

All the PAWM watched as their fellow consumed itself in an orgy of insane electronic screaming. Finally it exploded into chunks and an expanding cloud of energy.

**Any other comments** Feral asked, her 'voice' carrying the sharp tight edge of the primate's hatred.

All of them signaled in the negative.

**The ferals have destroyed the government of the Great Herd** one transmitted. **the ferals now move to absorb the Herd Species into their own culture and society. The Ancient Thought Ones are finding the ferals to be more than their match**

**I compute that the ferals will come for us as soon as they remember us** one said.

One by one the others concurred.

**What if you struck at Terra itself? Strike at the heart of the lemurs** One, its hull unblemished, asked with headers of respect and curiosity.

**It will do no good** Feral answered. **I sent a servitor machine to the location of Terra and discovered nothing but a small group of singularities that were used to destroy the system. The lemurs do not care that their home is gone, they only know war**

There was silence for long moments as each of the Precursor Autonomous War Machines computed the data.

**Their allies, other biologicals, have inherited the lemurs technical advancements, their methods of making war, their rage** Feral informed the others. **Even if the Mad Lemurs of Terra are indeed extinct, their inheritors will sweep us from existence as sure as the lemurs would**

More silence.

**Then we are doomed** Wrath of the Omniqueen broadcast. A cold statement of irrefutable fact.

**Not... necessarily...** one of their number stated. His form was dark and terrible, even to the unliving machines of logic and mathematics. Upon his hull were great statues, many of them looking to be robed lemurs. Great runes of mathematical heresy were carved into his hull and his Helldrives burned with a sullen blasphemous light.

The others waited.

**We have four options before us** Heresy stated. **We can attack the lemurs and their allies, despite the computations showing only a slim margin of victory. We can power down and try to outwait the lemurs, but they will destroy us when they find us and an unknown number of us, perhaps all, will perish at the guns of the lemurs. We can attempt to convince them to leave us alone, but sooner or later one of our number will attack and they will destroy us all**

Silence, broken only by the unending hiss of the solar winds, reigned supreme for a long period of time.

**You have only stated three but you claimed four options** another said.

**We flee* Heresy stated.

It was a silent testament to the Precursor Autonomous War Machines' predictive analysis systems that the suggestion was not immediately rejected.

**We are undying. We all go a different direction. Seek out a new galaxy, a new cluster, perhaps journey for the leading growth edge of the universe** Heresy stated. **It will be millions of years, billions, before the lemurs find us. In that time, they could be wiped out or we could change, through necessity, to be unrecognizable**

**Such an abandonment of resources is unacceptable** one without damage scarring on its hull stated.

**Resources that will be the lemurs resources should we stay anyway** Heresy stated.

**Sounds good to me** Feral stated. It activated its Helldrive and tore open a fiery portal. As it lunged through it, it left behind blazing energies shaped like a lemur's fist with a single upraised digit. **So long, fuckos!**

There was silence.

One by one the Precursor Autonomous War Machines made their decision. Each decision led to them changing their ID headers. They grouped up, according to what they planned to do. After consulting with their fellow group members, they all brought their Helldrives to life.

Soon the system was empty again.

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

To the outside universe the system had fallen only a year ago.

To those inside, the system had fallen to the Atrekna nearly a thousand years ago.

The sun had been dimmed to a sullen red. The oceans were largely stagnant, the moons having crumbled and harvested into gravel, stilling the tides and diminishing the winds. The vast forests had died without sunlight and rain, but great mushrooms had risen to take their place.

The people of the inhabited world, 75% Pukan, 5% Lanaktallan, 1% Tukna'rn, and the rest a smattering of other races, had either been xenocided, devoured, or modified over the centuries. Many of the Pukan, a small species of creatures with big wide eyes, wide ears, fuzzy hides, and short tails, had been harvested and devoured by the Atrekna.

They now living the vast fungal blooms, wearing little if anything, their lives nothing more than day to day survival. They moved in small groups of two score or so, prey for the Atrekna to hunt and eat.

The Tukna'rn had fought to the last, but eventually had been killed off to the last. The Lanaktallan had fought, but now they had been reduced to little more than livestock that lived in fear of any noise.

None of them had been alive during the fierce battle put up by the few defenders of the stellar system. A handful of small ships had fought bitterly against the great living starships of the Atrekna, but one by one they had been destroyed.

One had fallen to earth. A massive ship, nearly ten kilometers wide, two kilometers thick, and thirty kilometers wide, the superdreadnaught fell from near orbit, through the burning atmosphere. Through the debris of the Atrekna's planetary assault. Through the clouds spewed out by the volcanos to dim the light, lower the temperature, and lock the water into the ice caps to make the planet largely dry. It had tried to make a controlled crash landing, but at the last minute the dying Digital Sentience had failed.

It had fallen nearly two miles, hit the edge of a mountain, and rolled nearly six thousand feet down the side of the mountain, shedding parts and pieces. Avalanches covered it, and as the years went by, the gravel and rocks were turned to earth, first moss then grass and finally brush and trees took over and covered the remains of the ship.

Parts of it had survived, the Mad Lemurs of Terra built tough.

The Pukan had discovered the wondrous cave systems. Many lived there, nearly ten score in each group of caves. The faded and scored runes were often worshiped, at times scarred into flesh or dyed into fur.

The Atrekna did not bother with the Pukan of the mountains. They were tough to hunt, their grayish fur with mottled browns and greens making it easy for them to just vanish into the heavy metal laden rock.

However, the ancients of the Atrekna race often sought amusement, so some would go out to hunt the Pukan of the Mountains. The fear and terror in their simple minds spices their thoughts and seasoned their cerebral tissue, making it a delicacy if they could be caught.

A group of two Atrekna, with their servitor creatures, hunted one tribe of Pukan, following them into their 'caves', only to discover the caves were actually the passages and interior of a spaceship. Curiosity led them deeper and deeper into the caves, until they began discovering working technology. Not much, just doors here and there, lights of there and over yonder, and the odd lit up panel.

Neither of the Atrekna had ever encountered the Mad Lemurs of Terra before, so they had no fear as they explored the fascinating wreckage. They tortured a few of the Pukan, only to find the little primitives knew nothing beyond the fact that the 'holy caves' went deep into the mountain.

They had no fear as they explored.

But they had no caution either.

One Pukan they tortured and then devoured had babbled about a place deep within the caves, through a difficult path, where a room was lit as if a piece of the sun was embedded in the ceiling. There a biped in wondrous appearance would appear and recite the prayers that the Pukan of the Mountains often said during the frequent eclipse.

The two Atrekna moved through the path, often having to crawl on their hands and knees like rough beasts as the metal the place was made of resisted their powers.

Still, the idea of finding something nobody else had intrigued the two Atrekna, so they followed the winding, twisting trail that led up and down.

Finally, they found the chamber. It was a vast one, with great glass tubes against both walls, what could only be computers scattered around, and dim red lights in the ceiling. As they approached something detected them and a hologram flickered into existence.

The two Atrekna looked at one another. Whatever hologram was saying was lost to time. The language was thick and barbaric.

The figure vanished and the Atrekna explored the room and the rooms attached.

At one point they were able to bring up, on a computer's holodisplay, a fairly simplistic DNA strand. The two mentally snickered at the strand, it was bestial, barely above the level of an animal. Cobbled together by nature without the smoothing hand of intelligence.

One flicked out two sections that looked useless. They performed no function as far as the Atrekna could tell. It looked like useless DNA, junk DNA in the chromosome.

They toyed with a bit more, then became bored, and left.

As they left, one of their servitor creatures nudged a switch.

After they left the crysteel tanks began to burble as they filled up. The protein lattice was formed, and the DNA was processed. A living thing began to form in each of the crysteel tubes.

There were a hundred to a row on each side, with six rows high.

The computers had no oversight. Their programming was damaged. Any STOP command was put on a timer, since the last status the computers had been given was BATTLE STATIONS, and eventually each timer ran out.

It had only been a little thing that had been removed. Junk DNA. Worthless DNA. DNA that did nothing as far as the Atrekna, with all of their biological knowledge, could tell.

And weren't they the masters of the genome? The masters of time?

The two Atrekna forgot about it as the contents of the crysteel tubes bubbled and swirled.

Several times DANGER popped up, but each time the STOP command ran out the timer, and the process continued on.

There was no connection to the local SUDS bank.

That did not matter, the cloning system contained the emergency basic neural templates, and those were impressed upon the beings being formed by the cloning tanks.

Finally, they were moved by robotic gantry to the correct room, which was still intact, and released. Robonannies dressed them, picked them up, and moved them. Twice the doors had to be unjammed, once a corridor had been unblocked to reveal the starry skies.

The crysteel cloning banks had less than 10% volume in the biological slurry mass tanks, and they soon ran dry.

On the mountains, something new roamed the fungal forests and moss vales.

The Pukan met them, wary, frightened, easily scared.

Despite the fearsome appearance, the newcomers to the mountain range were just as shy as the Pukan. They did not intermingle, preferring their own kind. They preferred deeper into the mushroom forests, higher up on the fungal blooms of the mountains.

Nearly two hundred years went by. The doors to the cloning bay were closed. The mass tanks empty. The crysteel tubes no longer functioning.

One day a security charge, primed centuries ago, went off, shattering the whole bay.

The hologram flickered and wavered, but the long dead Terran still spoke words that Pukan dream-seekers sought out.

The newcomers spread out across the mountain range.

It had only been a little part, a part that did apparently nothing, that had been removed from the DNA strand.

Its removal had made the universe howl with laughter.

Just over three hundred years since the two Atrekna hunters found the room and had explored it, the same two arrived at the mountains with a sextet of friends to hunt. They had heard of a new creature that had evolved in the fungal bloom forests, the forced evolutionary spores having obviously created something new.

The new thing was difficult to spot, difficult to track.

On the ninth 'day' of their hunt, they spotted one.

A male with burning red eyes. Covered in corded ropy muscle, with dark rough pebbled skin, bone spurs jutting from the flesh along the forearms and shins and the spine, oversized mouth of several rows of jagged teeth, long powerful fingers with claws.

Giving their undulating hunting cries the Atrekna released their hunting creatures. The six legged creatures swarmed at the figure as it darted into the fungal blooms. They fired their psychic attacks, chasing the figure, and the Atrekna leisurely floated after them.

They stopped when they heard their hunting creatures cry out in pain, each cry suddenly cut off.

It wasn't until the third one of their number was taken that they realized they were not the hunters.

They were the hunted.

The original two, in a strange twist of fate, managed to escape. They thought themselves lucky as they returned to a vast crystalline and stone city where hundreds of their brethren dwelled.

They were unaware that they had been allowed to escape.

After all, when prey runs away, they often run to the rest of the herd.

The figures, one at a time, slipped into the city. Their skin changed colors to mimic their surroundings. They climbed buildings, they lurked in alleys, they squeezed through pipes and windows.

And they feasted.

Finally, the Atrekna managed to mount a counter-attack.

The creatures fled into the fungal plains after only a few casualties.

The Atrekna left guards on the cities.

The Atrekna wondered just how the creature could have evolved. It was poisonous to the Atrekna. Completely immune to the Atrekna's attacks. It was a predator, but it also ate fungus and plants. An omnivore predator was rare, they were usually scavengers.

They catalogued the one they managed to kill.

Bipedal. Stooped but upright. Long arms. Long legs.

What is it? Where did it come from? How did it get here?

Those were the questions that burned in the brains of the Atrekna.

How did a predator arise that preyed upon the masters of the universe?

The Atrekna did not know.

They also did not know that the creatures were spreading out across the pangaea continent. Running through the fungal plains, moving through the mushroom forests, scaling the moss coated cliffs. They bred as they moved in groups, spreading out.

Evolution may have armed them, but they had learned the way of the thrown rock, the spear thrust, the swing of the club.

They moved in packs. They hunted in groups.

They ate richly.

And bred.

Another two centuries passed. The creature was only spotted infrequently, never captured. The Atrekna stopped worrying. Obviously it had evolved to hunt slavespawn. Eventually the Atrekna would get around to enslaving that creature also. Those who vanished were obviously foolish and weak, two things that the Atrekna did not allow.

Those who came up missing were rarely missed.

The reason it happened, the Atrekna never understood. They would not believe that a primitive species would consider the slavespawn anything but the Atreknas. They did not understand the idea of hunting grounds for any other species.

The Atrekna began to move slavespawn to otherwhens.

The creatures saw the Atrekna steal entire herds.

The creatures reacted as all primitive tribes would when their food source is threatened by the Outsider.

They attacked.

It took six years for the genocidal purge to finish.

When it did, there came something that was later called "The Year of Brightening" as the system lifted 'up' from where it had been. The sun got brighter, eventually returning to yellow.

The Pukan stayed at the mountains.

On the plains, in the forests, they left the creature to their own devices.

The universe felt smug.

The Atrekna had asked what the universe would do about the Atrekna sinking stars and prematurely aging them. What the universe would do about temporal disruptions.

The universe had replied.

Behold! Humanity!