Chapter 733: The Inheritor's War

Chapter 733: The Inheritor's War

Cry not for your own loss.

Your tears are worth more for nurturing others.

Fear not the coming of your own dark.

Your light shines eternal for those around you.

Let not despair drag you down.

Your friends will come to help you float.

Have not suffering in your heart.

Rage against your oppressors.

Be not the voice of gloom.

Your will shall see greatness done.

Friendship's Lament.

For my best friend, Mister MewMew.

-- Truba'an Limberton, 3rd Grade Poetry Class, post Second Invasion of Hesstla, as submitted by teacher u/gartral to the Hesstlan War Survivor's Poetry Contest (Eighth Place Winner)

Max angled for another shot on the crystalline structures trying to get close to the stellar mass, double checking in his 'peripheral' vision the status of the stellar stabilizers. They were an older model, usually used to give a world a few extra weeks to evacuate, mainly a humanitarian relief model, but it was what he had templates for in his creation engines. They were deep in the stellar mass, slowed down by how thick the plasma was and the gravitational pressure.

But plenty deep.

His targeting systems beeped and he stomped the lever.

Reality around him shattered like a mirror with a brick thrown through it, reflections shining as the pieces rotated slowly, the larger pieces showing reflections of Max in the crash cradle, in a captain's chair, laying on the floor, embedded in the wall as a cyborg. The larger pieces began to shatter into smaller pieces.

The front of his ship suddenly was covered in neon-green flames that had tongues of fire shaped like nude dancing Rigellian females.

The flame suddenly sucked into the ship's hull, leaving the green dancers behind.

The mirror shattered repeatedly, closing in on the crystalline structure.

The Atrekna onboard had moments to try to strengthen the phasic shielding, to add their own psychic power to the huge crystal constructs.

It didn't help.

The round didn't hit square, catching the 'bottom' of the crystalline fortress, ripping away the metal and polished stone in a fan of destruction six miles wide at the start and a mile wide at the far side, the crater ripping two miles deep into the structure.

The ship survived, but the speed dropped.

On the fortress ship, the size of a large island, slavespawn pools and slavespawn storage areas were wiped away, ripped out of the ship's structure or compacted into millimeter thick layers of alloy. The edges of the crater glowed white for a long moment, no air or any other medium to carry away the heat through molecular energy leveling.

Max heard the beeping and could feel the cracked ribs.

Hell of weapon, but the Happy Trader isn't built for it, Max thought, checking the damage control readouts.

The superstring compressor cannon had jumped the tracks, the recoil buffer system had cracked and been smashed to ruin. The keel had warped slightly and deck plates were buckled everywhere around the massive cannon.

Max took it out of the firing queue and began heating up the other one.

He glanced at the scanner readouts of the planets.

Heavy ground fire engaging the Atrekna landing forces. The orbital station around one planet kept appearing and disappearing to his sensors. Orbital defense cannons groundside were pounding on the Atrekna ships, which were firing back.

Both planets were taking a pasting, but it looked to Max like the one broadcasting a Confederate Armed Services ID number was handling the insertions better than the other one.

A flare of atomic detonations on the one with the Confed ID caught his attention. He wasn't sure what caused a rippling burst of spaced 40+ kt atomic detonations, but having seen the horrors the Atrekna could inflict and just how strong their Dwellerspawn was, he was pretty sure someone had just taken out or tried to take out some of the Atrekna heavies.

His systems beeped and he pulled his attention back to the ships in front of him. The 'minefield' of organisms swarming toward him had just reached the missile pods he'd dumped nearly a half hour before.

He watched as they missile pods started going off. They were short range missiles, normally used for point defense and anti-missile systems, all with sprint drives and rapid update targeting systems.

They were a good match for the Atrekna organisms the size of a light corvette.

One second there were tens of thousands of creatures heading for him.

The next the antimatter explosion forged gamma beams started raking them from space as the 'hedgehog' bursts reached out hundreds of miles, ripping through multiple enemies.

Max could almost feel the snarl of hate coming from the crystalline fortress.

Another beeping let him know it was ready.

He stomped the bar, felt himself yanked forward into hyperspace, then dropped out with the roar of "NEVER FEAR! MAX IS HERE!" as his body was hammered by fists.

"Aretoo, you OK?" he asked.

**getting a bloody nose, boss** the eVI said. **hyperspace is starting to really hurt**

"I'm sorry," Max said.

During hyperspace jumps Aretoo would be in a shielded core. They were microjumps, but Max figured it was starting to pile up in microstrokes for the eVI.

**can't be helped, boss,** the eVI answered. **lots of blown hashes, gonna have to replace the workbois and the warbois**

"Understood," Max said. "I'll try to give you at least an hour."

**roger roger**

Max could tell the Atrekna couldn't see him. They were scanning where he had been.

COMPRESSOR CANNON LOADED: FIRE WHEN READY appeared in his vision.

Max nodded to himself.

Not yet

The road was going through a valley, with thick woods on either side. The local vegetation was heavy with metals that the roots had uptook from the industrial runoff centuries before. The scent of the flowers and other vegetation kept agitating the slavespawn, causing their pheromone signals to become confused.

He slowed down as the Quorum, in the middle of the column of slavespawn, rounded a corner.

The road kept going for roughly three miles, then curved again, following the terrain. The hills on either side had drawn slightly closer, only a mile on the left and two miles on the right.

**perform a searching scan for lemurs** he ordered.

**the lemurs are dead** the Quorum sneered.

**and blew apart an Omni Spawn with a rocket launcher attack only a few hours ago** he replied, with a slight psychic slap. **very very dead**

**they run away after attacks** another sneered as the Quorum tried to reestablish itself. **they fear us**

The whole time the Quorum, and the lone Atrekna, drifted along the road. The massive Omni Class Slavespawn, the size of a spaceship, nearly a half-kilometer long, was in the lead.

The lone Atrekna looked behind and saw the Omni Class Attack Spawn in the rear come around the corner, the hundreds of legs scurrying as it was propelled forward.

He glanced at the hills and frowned. For a moment he thought he had seen a few puffs of whitish smoke but they were gone before he could be sure.

**take the slavespawn to combat readiness** the Atrekna ordered.

**it wastes caloric and other nutrients to do so outside of combat** the Quorum sneered. **we have not established feeding grounds yet there are still several hours of travel to the body of water we have chosen to convert to a feeding ground**

The lone Atrekna snarled at them and brought up his personal protections, using precious phasic energy stored in crystals and gems in his fine jewelry.

The Quorum tensed for the lone Atrekna to attack them.

Missiles screamed out of the woods, exploding bare meters from the lead slavespawn, slamming explosively forged penetrators against the lead Omni Class. Other missiles hit armor directly, detonating with the actinic whitish-blue snap of antimatter shape charges. Huge bands of armor snapped free from the muscle fiber tissue beneath even as more missiles hit the same area, converting tissue to steam or rags of flesh.

At the rear more missiles flew out, impacting the rear of the Omni Class slavespawn. The armor was thinner in the smaller bands, the tissue less dense, and the Omni Class gave a great bass bellowing cry of distress as its back end was blown into scraps of flesh and sprays of steaming ichor.

Heavy autocannons and machineguns began firing from the woods. Mortar rounds began screaming as they dropped from the skies, slamming into the ground, in between the slavespawn, even impacting the slavespawn themselves. Rockets flew from the sides, hitting with high accuracy on the more heavily armored slavespawn. Clouds of drones erupted from what was revealed to be holographic bushes, rising up with menacing hums and darting toward the slavespawn.

**AMBUSH** he screamed out to the Quorum even as a burst of machinegun fire hit his phasic shields and exploded with greasy looking yellow and red flames.

The Quorum was reacting with shock, bringing up their own personal defenses and trying to put other members of the Quorum between themselves and the incoming fire.

**where are they**

**i don't see them**

**theres nothing out there**

**lemur lemur lemur**

**where what lemur**

**artillery attack**

**rocket attack**

The Quorum was completely confused, reacting poorly to the ambush.

The Lone Atrekna gripped a warsteel and phasoniun alloy staff, topped with phasic crystals, and overrode the Quorum, ordering the remaining slavespawn to go to combat awareness, pushing their limbic systems to active their battlescreens and their protections.

The slavespawn reacted instantly. Sphincter muscles puckered and opened, pushing out smaller drones and smaller creatures. Blisters ruptured and large clawed creatures landed, screeching, on the ground, dripping with biogel. Flights of airborne slavespawn took off from where they had been sleeping and feeding from their host creature.

The fire suddenly broke off, the drones attacking and another volley of shells landing in the road.

One of the Quorum flipped in midair and fell to the ground, sprawled out.

Another one moved over to it.

**arise** the Ancient One ordered the Young One on the ground.

The Lone Atrekna kept the body of a dead slavespawn between it and the woods, not rising up.

The Ancient One flipped the Young One over.

It looked fine, just a slight stain of purple blood across the chest.

Its feeding tentacles popped and larvae tried to squirm away.

The Ancient One rose up, slowly rotating.

**where are the lemurs** it asked.

**unknown** one of the Old Ones stated.

**send the spawn into the woods flush the lemurs out and kill them** the other Ancient One ordered.

**DO NOT** the Lone Atrekna said.

The surviving Atrekna turned and looked at the lone one.

**elaborate** the Ancient One stated.

**this was a carefully planned ambush do not think the lemurs did not plan for pursuit we should push on reach the body of water as our mission commands** the Lone Atrekna stated.

The two Ancient Ones conferred on a side channel and the Lone Atrekna felt slightly insulted by the snub.

**you escort the slavespawn as you are so afraid of the lemurs and the flora** the Ancient One stated. **we will take part of the slavespawn and half of the Quorum and investigate following the lemurs to their lair and destroying them like the prey species they are**

The Lone Atrekna kept his thoughts to himself.

It took nearly fifteen minutes, finding out the rear Omni Class was too damaged to move rapidly and was leaving a trail of viscera and ichor behind it and that the lead one was dead, for the column to get moving again.

The Lone Atrekna kept his shielding up, despite mocking from the others.

He had fought the lemurs before.

He hadn't liked it then.

He didn't like it now.