"Many believe that when we ask one another 'where were you when you saw the Hasslehoff' that it is some kind of exclusion for those who have not. That we use that to judge those who never saw or rode that rude beast.
"Nay.
"The war was terrible and the Mad Lemurs of Terra fought on a thousand worlds, tens of thousands of worlds, threw hundreds of millions into the fray. To say it is terrible is an understatement, you had to have seen the Hasslehoff to fully embrace and understand the horror.
"The Mad Lemurs of Terra were throwing back everyone who came at them. First the Precursor Autonomous War Machines, then my people, then the Atrekna and their vile Dwellerspawn.
"Nothing slaked their wrath.
"Even in Death, they reached out from the grave, grasping their killers with cold dead hands and whispering to them: This grave has room for you.
"To us, their allies, they reached out. A cold ghost, beautiful and terrible of form, holding out the poisoned fruit of wrathful knowledge. To us, they whispered: Mutually Assured Destruction. You can always take them with you.
"As long as you were willing to go to the lengths they were.
"And what horrible lengths they could be to ensure there was room in the grave." - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff
The Atrekna in the system had spent an inordinate amount of effort to take the system from the Mad Lemurs of Terra's allies. To the Atrekna it was almost as if the madness of the lemurs was infectious, some kind of strange contagion that made perfectly sensible sentient beings nothing more than a husk wrapped around never ending wrath and rage.
The Atrekna had landed with enough force to bring forward temporal copies of the Atrekna who had subdued the system back when it had been wrested from the Hive Lords, planning on utilizing their knowledge of warfare in the Young Universe to enable them to achieve victory with all due speed.
The Ancient Ones reeled back in the face of the screaming wrath that infected every sentient being in the system. Some fled, seeking solace in forgotten spaces that not even the Old Ones knew about. Some stayed, trying to advise the Old Ones and the Young Ones on fighting the feral life of the New Universe. Still others silently watched, keeping their own counsel, as the fighting raged.
The Atrekna had sunk the system as soon as possible in the hopes that it would keep the ferals from bringing in reinforcements, but nothing seemed to stop them. They temporally shifted and copied horde after horde of slavespawn, armada after armada of autonomous war machine spacecraft, army after mechanical army of ground based autonomous war machines.
The feral life of the New Universe did not care. They just kept fighting, kept screaming.
Kept killing.
The Ancient Ones warned the Young Ones to be careful drawing slavespawn from the pools of the past, but the Young Ones, full of knowledge that they were born into the New Universe and so would rightfully inherit it, informed the Ancient Ones that perhaps they would be better served meditating on how they lost their war and to leave the Young Ones to theirs.
A week later the Ancient Ones were proven right when a T-shift of a horde of slavespawn suffered a grave miscalculation. The insectiod creatures who resembled but were not the Hive Lords had crossed the area repeatedly during the fierce fighting in vast hordes numbering in the tens of thousands.
When the Young Ones pulled through a batch of slavespawn they also pulled forward a screaming mass of heavily armed and armored insectiods that immediately set to attacking everything in sight, screaming their war cries.
The Old Ones and the Ancient Ones, who expended much efforts and energy to destroy that unit, flayed the Young Ones alive for their stupidity and wiped out the Young One's genetic lines.
Meanwhile, the 8585th Treana'ad Infantry Horde ran roughshod over a tenth of the massive Pangaea continent. The Young Ones again learned to fear the shriek of the Tasty-Freeze Missile as the Old Ones and the Ancient Ones punished the Young Ones by forcing them to be present on the battlefields.
Worse, word had come back that the Prime System was under heavy assault by a single lemur clad in heavy power armor. Reports of reality instabilities, phasic backlashes, and even stranger things were coming back to those who still had communication with the Prime System.
Many of the Young Ones felt that the Old Ones had made a huge mistake with the archeo-evolutionary reversion of the lemurs. The Ancient Ones had confirmed through meditation, discussion, and examination of evidence that the ferals, known as the Mad Lemurs of Terra, had cunningly prepared for the eventuality of their own demise.
They had released all of their scientific and technological information to their allies. The Ancient Ones had confirmed such a thing in esoteric ways that the Young Ones did not understand. Some Young Ones believed that the Ancient Ones could access the thoughts and memories of the cerebral tissue they consumed, as the Ancient Ones would feast on captured enemies and then meditate.
The Ancient Ones whispered to the Old Ones and the Young Ones that would listen that the Mad Lemurs of Terra had done even worse.
The single Terran on the Prime System that was tearing the planet down around the Atrekna's ears was never meant to be recovered, was never meant to be supported, was never meant to be saved.
It was something known as a "Suicide Mission." A wholly alien concept to the Atrekna, who prized survival after tens of millions of years in the dead universe.
The Ancient Ones believed that the attack had no surgical targets, was not aimed in any way except for to destroy everything in the Prime System that it could. The Mad Lemur was immune to temporal anchoring and replay, was immune to temporal shifting, and responded with a burst of chronotrons that showered out in a glittering spray that was visible across the galactic arm spur in real time.
The Ancient Ones believed that the sole Mad Lemur was little more than a weapon that was something called 'use until destroyed' and pointed at the fact that slavespawn were also used in such a way.
The Young Ones pointed out that the ferals had never before shown such disregard for any members of their species, often going to extreme lengths to support and protect one another.
The Ancient Ones ignored the Young Ones, referring to them as 'the chatter of primitive creatures unaccustomed to thought' in their private meetings.
8585 overrran an Atrekna research station where the Atrekna scientists were attempting to understand lemur biology, to little results. It had been some kind of research facility and industrial facility that made the giant war machines that the lemurs had piloted. Some kind of biological and mechanical fusion with a single pilot for each of the war machines, with a strange power source that the Atrekna had identified as being part of the larger ground based slavespawn.
The huge war machines were nearly a hundred meters tall, outfitted with slavespawn battlescreen projectors, ichor producing organs, and power sources, melded with lemur technology that the Atrekna were struggling to understand due to the differences between the New Universe and the Old Universe.
The 8585 overran the facility and then dug in heavily.
They knew there was no retreat. There was no surrender. There was just grim duty and the fact that each of the Treana'ad that made up the Infantry Horde knew that even though they had died once, they now had the opportunity to line their graves with the bodies of the enemy.
The Atrekna were outraged. The insect creatures had taken multiple Atrekan Young Ones alive, even a handful of Old Ones and a single Ancient Ones.
Their screams could be heard across the planet and the Atrekna knew the insect people were doing unspeakable things to their prisoners.
The Atrekna, from their large city in the middle of the Pangaea continent, ordered all of their military forces to crush the Treana'ad Infantry Horde. They had to be extra careful, as instability in the timeline due to the connection to the Prime World and the havoc the Mad Lemur was wreaking made it difficult to focus properly.
One Quorum of Young Ones accidentally brought up thousands of cyborg Herd Lords, who rampaged across the continent in fire, blood, and atomic devastation to join the insects. Together the Herd Lords and the New Hive pressed the Atrekna back.
The screams from the Atrekna prisoners were strangely muffled, but still audible.
The cyborg Herd Lords and the New Hive troops were slowly pushed back, step by step, toward the research facility until they were only a few hundred paces from the building itself. They dug in even harder, filling the air with point defense and missile defense systems. They moved through tunnels, fired from heavily fortified positions, and sallied forth to flank any serious thrusts.
The Atrekna could see that the New Hive and the Herd Lords were losing, slowly, but their extinction was inevitable.
The screams from the captured Atrekna were muffled, but still began drawing in every slavespawn and autonomous war machine on the planet. The Young Ones in charge of the slavespawn and the AWM forces found that their attempts to drive their forces back were ignored as the forces from all over the planet converged on the research facility on the edge of the vast crystalline metropolis.
The New Hive and the Herd Lords kept fighting. Kept repulsing wave after wave of slavespawn and AWM. The Young Ones and Ancient Ones learned quickly that the Old Ones were right in not getting anywhere near the battlefield.
For too many of the Young Ones and Ancient Ones for the Atrekna's comfort, the last thing they heard was the high pitched shriek of a Tasty-Freeze Missile right before it reduced anything in its path into a fine mist and purple salsa.
The stalemate lasted for nearly a year, back and forth, pushing outward then being forced back, with more and more areas becoming contaminated by ravaging Lemur Ally troops to the point where even the outer system wasn't safe.
A replication of PAWM forces between the 11th and 12th planet resulted in bringing forward copies of the Hive Lord and Herd Lord PAWM in the midst of fighting a handful of crazed lemur ships. The Atrekna were able to destroy the small amount of ships, but at great cost. Worse, the ships had swanned all over the system, making it so that using any temporal flux point in the system ran the risk of trawling forward more Mad Lemurs.
Finally, the New Hive and the cyborg Herd Lords were pushed to within paces of the walls of the research facility and the Atrekna could feel the taste of victory at the tips of their feeding tentacles.
With a clattering and chattering of stripped gears and worn rusty chains, three Substance W doors rolled up into the wall.
The Atrekna felt it.
A trio of screams, intermingled with the screams of the lost Atrekna, overlaid with the enraged howling fury of a denied child.
From the doors thundered three huge warmechs. Nearly a hundred meters tall, one in blue armor with white accents and what looked like tall pylons extending from the shoulders, the second was purple with green highlights and pylons, the third was crimson with accents of orange and yellow with pylons above the shoulders.
All three were carrying heavy six barrel miniguns that were already getting up to speed.
The Atrekna initially rejoiced. Three defenders remained, the New Hive and the cyborg Herd Lords could be ignored by the Atrekna themselves so that the Atrekna could take control of the new weapons.
The Old Ones fled the field at the grinding roar of pure enraged fury mixed in the agonized screams Atrekna and maternal wrath they could feel reaching out from the three massive warmechs. They were mocked as they fled by the Young Ones and many of the Ancient Ones, both factions sure that they could overcome whatever tricks the New Hive and the cyborg Herd Lords could have come up with.
The Young Ones reached out eagerly to gain control of the warmech and snuff out the conscious thought of the pilots.
Instead they found madness. Screaming adolescent fury, despair, agony, and full throated rage poured from the controlling minds. Slavespawn neural signals were full of pain and despair, enslaved by the soul crushing will of the maternal fury that fed off of the agony and horror of the muffled Atrekna signal.
Most of the Young Ones died instantly, more than a third of the Ancient Ones who were still on the field died with them.
More of them died slowly.
The three massive warmechs weren't idle. They leveled the chainguns and began firing, striding forward. Their huge size let them step over the entrenched positions of the New Hive and the cyborg Herd Lords, who cheered even as they fired their weapons. Each impact of the great feet against the ground caused a flash of purple as phasic energy rippled away from the impact. The energy was wrath filled and a cascade of all consuming rage that turned slavespawn into chunky salsa for a hundred meters around each foot.
The three moved steadily toward the city, missiles firing from their heavy chassis even as they began taking hits from the AWM's they shredded with their chainguns. AWMs exploded as 66mm 'fuck you' shells flashed bright actinic white with a purple phasic flash, the warsteel jacket exploding into shrapnel that tore apart machines and slavespawn like they were made of tissue.
The munitions ran out and the massive mechs reached up to the pylon off their right shoulder, which flicked open a blade hilt. Each mech grasped the blade hilt and waded into the fray with foot stomps and a slashing blade.
The red one shoulder checked a massive slavespawn, one of the ones that could even threaten one of the lemur tanks. With an adolescent female lemur scream of absolute rage she fired missiles point blank into the creature before cutting open its face with her blade. She put her hands on either side of the gash and ripped the creature's face plate open before thrusting the blade deep inside.
The blue warmech moved around the battlefield, always where the incoming fire wasn't, the blade flickering out to slash away the life from slavespawn or slice open the side of the AWM. Footstomps crushed slavespawn and machine alike and twice the blue one brought its hands together in front of it, causing a massive wave of phasic energy to erupt from the slapping palms in a rippling cone that shattered phasic enhanced chitin and battlesteel alike.
The purple one, however, hesitated for a long moment, then screamed long and loud. Young Ones and Ancient Ones still on the battlefield found themselves reduced to slurry by the psychic tsunami of pain and rage. Still screaming, the purple one threw itself into combat with abandon, striking out with fists, feet, and the blade.
The New Hive and the cyborg Herd Lords kept up the firepower, hunkering down even as they smashed the incoming tide.
The Old Ones still in the city began slipping away, abandoning the Overmind, abandoning the Young Ones, leaving behind the Ancient Ones too foolish to follow them.
They knew there was nothing more to be learned upon the planet but what painful death felt like.
The three warmechs fought their way into the city, deliberately slamming themselves through elegant crystalline structures, smashing glittering towers, striking down gleaming ramparts and spires. The blue one always kept moving, often luring the surviving slavespawn and machines into destroying the building it darted behind. The red one came in aggressively, twice grabbing slavespawn larger than it and, straining, lifting them over its head to slam them through the crystalline structures of the Atrekna city.
The purple one showed all the subtlety of a battle axe to the face. More than a few times it plunged one hand into the building to grab a fist full of screaming Atrekna to cram the unlucky purple beings into its savage jaws, chewing them up and swallowing them before screaming in rage and throwing itself at its next opponent.
Armor had been ripped away by the city defenses, by the firepower of the slavespawn and the machines, only to reveal what looked like flesh that bled and oozed ichor.
With horror the Atrekna realized where the screaming of Atrekna and slavespawn was coming from.
Their bodies and minds had been fused with lemur machinery to create the massive war machines.
The blue one went down first, crashing down on its back. Slavespawn eagerly rushed forward, ripping at the arms and legs, preventing it from getting up. AWM moved forward, tearing off the armor, ripping at the flesh.
The two others moved away from their fallen brethren at forty-five degree angles, screaming their rage. The purple one reached down, slammed its fist three times against the pavement to expose a hardened shelter. It cut open the roof and began feasting on the Atrekna inside, ignoring the hits to the armor as its jaws crushed the life from Atrekna.
A Quorum drifted down as the cockpit cover was torn free, the Ancient Ones and Young Ones finally getting a close look at one of the Mad Lemurs of Terra.
She was small, petite, mammalian. Her remaining eye were wide and her head seemed slightly large for her body. Her blue hair was mussed and bloody, half of her face was ripped away to expose the skull and muscle beneath the skin. The upper right of her pilot's suit was gone, as was the flesh beneath, revealing bloody ribs and internal organs.
She bared her teeth at them as she lifted up a trigger.
"Tera to neo Tōkyō e no eikō," she said as she pressed the button.
A seventy-five megaton blast erupted from the warmech as the engine exploded.
The feasting mech only rocked slightly as it crammed the last handful of Atrekna into its mouth. The red one kept fighting, changing course back toward the massive spaceport at the far side of the city. As the purple one finally stood up the red one broke into a run, throwing itself through buildings, crushing slavespawn and machines beneath its phasic enhanced stomping feet.
The purple one rushed the center of the city, grabbing a slavespawn and smashing about itself with the slavespawn that was quickly reduced to a tattered corpse.
The red one reached the starport, firing the last of its missiles into the starships that still had not left yet. Explosions bloomed, brimstone fists raised to the sky in the form of boiling red mushroom clouds, and the red mech rushed into the mushroom clouds even as they were still forming. It used its feet, its fist, and the blade to destroy the biomechanical ships even as the Atrekna inside, who had been trying to get the living ships to take off, screamed in suddenly rediscovered terror.
Panicked, the Atrekna activated one of the last remaining orbital facilities. The satellite oriented, deployed its systems, and took aim. A bright circle of light lit up the red mech, which looked up, hefted its blade, and threw it at the same time as the satellite fired its first volley. The blade sped through the atmosphere, turning white hot, and ripped through the satellite, shattering it as it fired a second volley.
Lights reached down from the heavens, slamming into the airfield as orbit to ground munitions slammed into the airfield, delivering kinetic impacts in the hundreds of kilotons. One hit the red mech square in the chest, flinging it back, so that it landed on its back.
The purple one screamed again, charging the center of the city, slamming at everything around it in a berserk rage, stomping anything it came across. One of the massive Ohm Class Dwellerspawn charged the purple mech, following its path of destruction, knocking it to the side staggering. The purple one turned and lunged at the massive Dwellerspawn, its face even with one of the Dwellerspawn's upper eyes. It screamed, purple blood streaming from its jaws as the carrion breath of dead Atrekna washed over the front of the Dwellerspawn. The purple mech grabbed the edges of the massive overlapping plates that made up the armor of the Dwellerspawn, set its feet, and pulled. The plates ripped away with vast sucking/tearing sound and the purple mech ripped its way into the massive Dwellerspawn.
At the airfield the crimson mech lifted on shaking hand, grabbing the density collapsed battlesteel rod sticking from its chest. It grabbed the rod and ripped it away, part of the mech coming with it. The mech stood up slowly and the Atrekna got a look at what was inside it.
Clad in a red pilot's suit was another immature female lemur with long crimson hair. Her eye socket was red ruin from where the kinetic orbital strike rod had literally tapped her face. She was screaming in wrath as she reached up, drew another knife, and set about destroying any spaceships she could reach that had survived the orbital strike due to having their battlescreens deployed.
The red one pushed through the battlescreens of the vessels, kicks shattering armor, punches destroying engines, the blade ripping open the side of vessels. The entire time the female lemur screamed in enraged wrath, her sole remaining eye glowing a bright red and a nimbus of red energy surrounding both her ruined eye and her remaining eye.
One of the ships, the largest one, with the most of the remaining Atrekna trying to flee aboard, fired its nCV cannon.
In atmosphere.
The shockwave flipped the craft over and over. The air resistance stopped the cannon shot less than a hundred meters from the ship as the air fluoresced and turned to plasma.
When the glare subsided, the crimson mech stood still, its right hand over the exposed cockpit.
After a moment of silence the arm dropped away at the mid-biceps, falling to the ground. The cockpit was exposed, the female lemur inside staring out with hateful eyes. Her arm was missing at the shoulder, blood gushing from the wound.
She stared at the ship as it fired up its engines.
With a scream she launched herself at the craft, landing on it, pounding on it, stomping on it. At one point she used the mechs massive jaws to bite an nCV cannon barrel and tear it away.
The second volley hit and the starport vanished in a hellstorm of orbital kinetic strikes as the purple one burst out of the body of the Ohm Class Dwellerspawn, cramming a chunk of meat in its mouth as it kicked its way free of the body.
The purple one stopped for a long moment, then slowly turned to look at the starport field with its sensors.
The red mech was down, on the crushed and shattered remains of the Atrekna battle wagon. It was pierced in a score of places by the long battlesteel rods.
The purple mech just stared.
The crimson mech vanished as its engine detonated and the blast ripped out across the far side of the city. The purple mech got its arm up in time to deflect the majority of the blast, but more armor ripped away to reveal bleeding and bruised flesh.
With a scream the purple mech threw itself forward, into the high spires of the center of the city. It pounded the buildings down with its fists, sounding as if it was crying and screaming at the same time. It heaved up a massive chunk of battlesteel and revealed what lay at the heart of an Atrekna city.
A massive brain made of Atrekna neural tissue and synthetic tissue.
The Overmind lashed out, phasic attacks exploding against the body of the purple mech as it squatted down and reached into the briny pool. It screamed as the purple mech lifted it in both hands
and took a huge bite out of it.
It crouched there, feasting, as time ran out on the powerplant.
The purple and green mech exploded just as it threw its head back and swallowed the last of the Overmind.
The remainder of the city crashed into crystalline dust.
The sun brightened and began to turn bright orange as the dead but brought back members of the 8585th Infantry Horde and the 17th Warsteel Herd Cybernetic War Stallions fought against the last of the Dwellerspawn, who suddenly reverted to animal instincts.
The battle wasn't over.
But the war for the system was drawing to a close.
Inside the research facility, which was full of twisted ruined technology and machines, was a simple logo written on one wall across from steaming cloning banks that no longer functioned. A single sentence that no longer made sense to anyone, if it ever did.
"Get in the fucking mech, Shinji."
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