Chapter 604: No Time for Tears

"Imagine seeing hundreds, thousands of [Monster Class] coming at you. We knew the Mar-gite weren't like us when all they did was screech and rush forward to grapple with the [Monster Class] Terrans." - Unknown Mantid Trooper

The Atrekna around the planet watched helplessly as the twisted and warped black ship fired its cannons far beyond what they could hope to reach. Spacetime itself warped and twisted around the vessel as the guns seemed to have blossoms of fire around the barrel despite being in the vacuum of space.

**this is not how it works** more than a few Atrekna thought to themselves.

Those of the Cult of the Defiled one merely nodded to themselves. It was the Mad Lemurs, it could be no other.

Ships took hits that flared deep violet energy from Hellspace cores, ripping and tearing at superstructures, the rounds bypassing shields and armor to detonate deep inside the target.

Over half the targeted ships broke up.

The Steamboat Willy kept moving, sliding into a fast orbit around the outermost gas giant, a dwarf banded with red and green. The guns fired at the gas giant and more than a few of the Ancient Ones and Young Ones wondered what could be the purpose.

The explosions were deep inside, the energies of Hellspace liberating inside the thick swirling pressurized gas, causing shockwaves that raced out for hundreds of miles within seconds.

The opposing guns kept firing even as the ship launched another wave of missile pods and torpedoes, some of which appeared to be aimed at nothing.

The Atrekna ordered the Autonomous War Machines and the slavespawn ships to accelerate on the Steamboat Willy's position, to push the engines to get in range so they could fire back instead of being nearly passive target practice. They were entire light minutes, in some cases, light hours, outside their own range and the Lemur ship seemed to be able to target anything within two light hours of its position with its guns. The missile pods were skipping in and out of realspace, puddles of dark matter 'splashing' as the entered and exited realspace. The torpedoes were vanishing with a flicker, sinking into subspace foam, not surfacing until they were within two or three light seconds and coming in at nearly .92C, their wake as they surfaced leaving long lines of foaming subspace particles boiling away in realspace.

The Steamboat Willy had all their attention as it drove forward, actually vibrating spacetime with percussive bass to the beat of a song.

She was a fast machine, she kept her motor clean thundered out across the stellar system. Atrekna vessels too close could feel the high wailing of the atonal music screeching across their hullspaces even as the words thundered through the vacuum of their maintenance spaces.

**that's not how any of this works** Young Ones and Ancient Ones protested.

She was the best damn woman that I ever seen roared out as the members of the Cult of the Defiled Ones merely watched and kept their own counsel.

With the Atrekna's attention fixated on the Steamboat Willy they missed the stealth torpedoes slowing down, matching the correct orbits, and slowly surfacing from subspace, careful not to make a single ripple. The torpedoes used passive systems to check around themselves, then began angling as they started dropping off their payload in orbit around the planetoids and gas giants and even the stellar mass. Some of the larger components dropped into subspace but left a single receptor outside in realspace, each antenna no longer than a few meters, but thanks to design and stealth materials having the same detection profile as a hex-nut smaller than a bumblebee.

She had the sightless eyes, telling me no lies crashed through the vacuum of the maintenance spaces of the autonomous war machines, reverberated inside the living tissues of the slavespawn. Atrekna aboard the slavespawn ships shrieked in rage at first, then in pain as the volume seemed to increase.

Knocking me out with those Mad Lemur thighs rippled across spacetime. It vibrated the supercoolant keeping the supercomputer lobes cool, causing ripples in the gel and thick viscous coolant ichor around slavespawn neural systems.

Computers started throwing errors. Slavespawn thinking lobes started spouting gibberish. For a second, just a second, their electronic warfare countermeasure defenses wobbled.

That was all it took.

Howling digital attacks struck at the autonomous war machines, analog phasic energy attacks struck the slavespawn. Ravening screaming insane computer programs and aberrant perceptions/thoughts/sensations ran rampant through circuit and nerve alike.

Autonomous War Machines suddenly attacked themselves or others, began drifting in space spouting gibberish, or tried to enter Hellspace/Jumpspace and exploded. Slavespawn ships began shuddering, some shedding off parasite vessels and organisms, others attacking themselves as their immune systems went wild and their onboard troops attacked each other.

Had to cool me down to take another round shivered through biological systems as the aberrant neurological signals ripped and tore through nerve and neuron bundles, shattering dendrites and axons, thudding out through thin membranes, and shivering in the ichor.

Now I'm back in the ring to take another swing sounded out in the molecular circuitry of the autonomous war machines even as the raving warbois ripped and tore and bit and clawed. A few of the autonomous war machines, survivors of Admiral Smith's attack upon the Great Bridge, immediately cut that hardware out of the system and slagged it, turning off all outside communication.

Several of them suddenly blinked as the commands ran to their logical obvious runtime solutions.

There was only so much resources in a universe. Fact. Eventually, the universe would undergo heat or contraction death. Fact. In order to survive the longest one must retain enough resources. Fact. The Atrekna are the ones to possess those resources.

Runtime error.

Autonomous war machine is to harvest resources and destroy competitors for the resources. Fact. Autonomous war machines are to maintain their ability to do so. Fact. To maintain itself an autonomous war machine needed resources. Fact. The Atrekna would provide those resources.

Runtime error.

If autonomous war machines do not have resources then autonomous war machines can not maintain themselves. Fact. Atrekna desire resources. Check. Resources are finite. Check.

Runtime Conclusion: Atrekna are competitors with autonomous war machines for resources.

Self-modifying software update: Redesignate Atrekna from command unit to Competitor.

Runtime Conclusion: There is only enough for one.

Runtime Conclusion: It must belong to me.

IT BELONGS TO ME! roared out from nearly a dozen Harvester Class vessels, straight into the face of the nearby Atrekna units. The phasic/neurological function disruptor was turned on the Atrekna and put at full power.

That the walls were shaking, the world was quaking sounded out as the AWM suddenly scorched the Atrekna and their slavespawn vessel's phasic and neurological structures.

Steamboat Willy changed its fire orders to ignore those vessels that were moving to engage the Atrekna vessels around them, even as they transmitted their conclusions to their fellow autonomous war machines.

In orbit around the sole inhabited planet, stealth systems came online even as the small orbiting objects unfolded their detectors and scanners and began sweeping the planet below with their eyes, transmitting their findings to the tiny antenna protruding from subspace to realspace.

ORBITAL SYSTEM ONLINE - HANDSHAKE COMPLETE - UPDATING MAPPING SYSTEMS appeared in Roca's eyes as she kept pounding toward where she could sense chronotron systems in use, taste and smell the chronotrons in the air.

She quickly checked her six man squad. Everyone was running at 6% heat and 3% slush, with the exception of Corporal Mbutu, who was at 9% heat and 2% slush.

Mbutu, run a system check, you're too hot and your slush isn't spinning up, she ordered through the t-link.

Roger, Mbutu answered. After a moment he came back. Coolant artery clog. Clearing now.

Too many Cheetos, PFC Argyle put in.

There were rough chuckles across the t-link.

Roca saw Mbutu's heat level drop a tic but his slush dropped to 1%.

Check your slush, Mbutu, she ordered.

In the meantime she was moving through a suburb, toward the outskirts of the city. They moved by abandoned cars, past abandoned cargo vehicles, even a few hover or grav vehicles that had set down and been abandoned. Her systems highlighted them as her onboard hardware and wetware scanned them, but nothing of note was seen.

My soup's dead, Mbutu answered. Less than 12% active.

Fall back and resoup, Roca ordered. Go stealth, switch to scout packaging. Ping me when you're souped up.

Roger, Sergeant, he answered, falling back. The black chitin covering him, a thin layer of carbon and warsteel, wavered, pixellated, and he vanished.

Everyone else, with me. Standard wedge. Load combat package, she ordered, sharing the templates.

In another window, in the upper right of her vision, past where her eyes could actually see, a window opened up, showing a sat-view of her area. HUD ID's started popping up: vehicles, buildings, target areas full of phasic or chronotron energy, location of shelter access, public utilities, underground systems, and more.

She marked stuff off and sent it across the t-link.

Heavy phasic and chronotron activity, five klicks, Roca t-linked, feeling that familiar flutter in her stomach. She knew it was psychosomatic, that it didn't reference any organs packed into her muscular abdomen, but it still thrilled her.

Here we come, baby, she thought to herself.

A scanner in orbit popped a small drone as it watched the Heavy Assault Infantry close in on the heavy phasic/chronotron active area. It swooped down, getting distance, falling through the atmosphere. The ablative shell burned away and it popped a hard-light chute to slow it down. It cut the chute and rolled, deploying membrane thin wings and swooped down, scanning the area with its scanners.

Roca could suddenly see the Atrekna ahead.

They were holding something in reserve, bringing through troops extremely slowly. She could tell by the pulsating area that whatever it was took up four square klicks of space with a sixty meter ceiling. She frowned even as she dodged vehicles in the road. A spawning site that big should have contained a five hundred to thousand meter ceiling.

Whatever they were bringing through weren't as big as the Ohm Class Dwellerspawn.

Load CQC package, Roca t-linked, activating her own at the same time. Doublecheck your projectors and your phasic inhibitors.

She could feel the burning in her arms and chest as her nanoforges in her forearms and the creation engine in her chest went to work.

The plating covering Roca thickened, segmented, and took shape even as she moved forward, closing in the TLZ (Temporal Landing Zone) at a run. She could feel the barrel of the magac cannon forming in her right forearm, between the two heavy bones, and the magazine forming on either side of it, with the ejection port on the outside of her arm forming. She made a fist and tensed her forearm, activating the system. The barrel slid through her hand and pushed between her ring and middle finger, extending out less than a quarter inch. Things around her wavered for a moment then her optic nerve systems cleared the battlescreen distortion for her brain.

Her squad sent back that they were ready as they approached the large building that separated the TLZ from the highway they were following as the highway split to the left and right.

The Atrekna on the other side of the building had been able to hear the approaching lemur infantry by the thudding of their footsteps. Half of them prepared to bring through the new combat units, the other half brought up their phasic systems, psychic power lashing out to form armor, kinetic fields, inertial dampening fields, bioelectric dampening fields, bladed weapons made out pure thought.

They were ready.

The adherent to the precepts set down by Dalvanak the Defiled One drifted back, wrapping itself in stealth, minimizing her, and it had decided that she was a her, psychic and phasic signature, withdrawing for the most part from the communal combat mind and withdrawing her powers from the TLZ construct.

She knew that what was about to happen must be witnessed and the witness must survive.

The Ancient Ones and Young Ones, even the Old Ones who had devised this plan knew not what they truly faced, the Adherent knew. They saw the Mad Lemurs of Terra as just one more race, a feral, primitive race with just enough phasic ability to effect phasic constructs.

The Cult of the Defiled One knew that the Mad Lemurs of Terra were much much more.

They were the immune system of a malevolent universe. The hatred of a cruel and malicious universe made manifest. They were the wrath of a being too alien, to huge, to understand or even comprehend.

They were the Mad Lemurs of Terra.

Roca knew none of this as she hurtled forward, issuing last split-second commands to the entire squad. Mbutu had gone wide, was coming at the TLZ from the north under full stealth even while the squad barreled toward it from the east.

The Atrekna tensed. They knew that the lemurs would have to go around or over the building. It was twenty stories of hyperalloys and crysteel glass and they were infantry.

The Adherent could feel the lemur's both recede and amplify in her senses. Their rage pounded out like a furnace, their minds were barbed and spiked, snarling pits of writhing barbed wire, but their actual thoughts receded to her senses.

She tensed.

They were coming.

When the lemurs reached the building without spreading out to either side the Atrekna activated the phasic construct, bringing their bioweapons through space and time. Carefully crafted bioweapons that would be able to fight the lemurs, face them and defeat them.

Insects and hybrids appeared, none larger than twenty feet tall, all of them heavily armored but still built for speed. No longer were the joints bare minimum but instead were heavily armored and thick with muscle and tendon and ligament. Their arms and legs were jointed, their heads could be moved on their necks, they were capable of problem solving and their thought to action was measured in single digits of seconds. They had built in phasic and bioplasma and acid ejectors.

The Atrekna knew these new warriors would be able to severely damage the lemurs as they leaped over the building.

Roca signaled her squad, hunched her shoulder, and powered off the pavement with enough force she left behind a crater and a plume of powdered ceramacrete.

She crashed through the hyperalloy and crysteel glass as if it was tissue, exploding through the building like a railgun round. She had purchase for a second and kicked off.

All six of the lemurs burst from the face of the building in a shower of sparkling crysteel glass and shattered hyperalloy. They all held the same position, one leg forward, one leg slightly back, one arm slightly forward, the other pulled back, their shoulders hunched.

The Sectoids opened fire too high, their shortened nerve cords on twitch fibers not allowing them to correct their aim before they started firing.

Roca slammed to the ground in the middle of the first set of ranks, the impact sending them flying away, those too close to her reduced to mist and spray as her battlescreen tore them apart. She roared, liquid warsteel pouring from her mouth, as she aimed her fist and activated her 'hammer'.

The 20mm magac cannon in her roared, deploying heat fins outside her flesh, the thick 'veins' surrounding it flushing with the same biocoolant that acted as blood. Shell casing arced away as flames burst from her fist.

The Sectiods screamed as they tore apart under the thunder of the six man squad, which stomped forward, their fire intelocked. Any Sectoid too close or on the wrong side was ripped apart by the warsteel blade extending from their left forearms.

"CROM ENUMERATE THE RECENTLY DECEASED!" Roca roared out. "ROCK N ROLLA LOCK IN ROCA!"

The whole time she was smiling as she laid waste to the Sectoids around her.

It was good to be her.