Chapter 736: The Inheritor's War

Chapter 736: The Inheritor's War

Night had fallen, the hours that had passed had been full of explosions and gunfire.

In the valley, that was brightly lit by white flares that held back the darkness, slavespawn gave shrieks, whistles, and bellows of pain. Any slavespawn that moved too much attracted a burst of heavy machinegun fire.

Twice more combat groups of Atrekna had joined the Conclave sheltering behind the hill, bringing in more troops that had all been wounded and harried by the lemur ambush teams.

Twice an Atrekna had risen to the top of the hill to gaze upon the battlefield.

Twice he had tried to warn them but had been rebuffed from the communal consensus.

Twice a high caliber high velocity projectile weapon had killed the Ancient One who had levitated up to observe the battlefield.

One of them had taken a shot to the lower torso that had dumped its digestive organs out of the hole, long greasy loops of intestine hanging down nearly five feet below its limp feet. It was still drifting in the air, held aloft by phasic powers imbued in the jewelry.

The Old One noted that one of its slippers had fallen off.

The lemurs kept dropping volleys of rockets and barrages on artillery on the Atrekna side of the hill, forcing the Atrekna to expend energy keeping the slavespawn from being torn apart by the heavy shells and cluster rockets. Drones kept buzzing over the hill, or worse, flying on whispering fans, descending to explode, fire microrockets, or shoot projectiles at everything they saw.

There were forty Young One Atrekna using their powers to fuel a phasic construct sheltered the slavespawn and the Atrekna both from the lemur artillery.

I hate fighting lemurs, the Old One thought to himself as he watched a large group of Atrekna, accompanied by small groups of fast, nimble, tough, and fierce slavespawn, approach.

He drifted over and listened in on the communal consensus.

**why are you late** an Ancient One interrogated.

**we pursued the lemur ambush teams** one stated. **we linked up once we were sure the lemurs were gone**

There was silence.

**how many lemurs did you eliminate** another Ancient One asked.

**we saw fourteen dead and one destroyed hover-trundle** an Ancient One from the pursuit teams said.

**the lemurs drag away their dead** another Ancient One stated.

**we estimate we eliminated two hundred and nineteen lemurs and destroyed at least fifty of their vehicles** an Ancient Once proclaimed.

The Young Ones all concurred.

The Old One felt dark amusement bubble up as he watched them and listened to them.

**deploy your slavespawn with the appropriate groups as we determine our next course of action** one of the Ancient Ones of the Conclave ordered.

**why have you not proceeded past this valley** one of the new Ancient Ones demanded. **our target zone is on the other side we must take that zone in order to temporally replicate forces**

**the lemurs defend it most ferociously** a Young One said. **they have stopped our advance**

**fool** the Ancient One swore. **just push past them** it began drifting upward. **I will take measure of this force of lemurs and determine a way

It crested the top of the hill as it spoke, rose another two meters.

Its phasic shields exploded at the same time as the upper peak of its head liquified and sprayed the inside of its own phasic shields.

The body just hung in midair.

**STOP DOING THAT LEMURS** one of the Ancient Ones shrieked.

The Old One just moved away slightly.

They never learn.

-----

Lady Fa'ahmYa'ahd sipped the wine in her wine flute as she smiled at the hologram in front of her. It was shot through with static, Atrekna jamming playing havoc with anything that was not laser communications, along a certain radio-frequency, or along superconductor or fiber optic cable. In it were the icons and pictures of nearly a dozen matrons.

"Kalki's giant flesh hog and clanging warsteel balls, I love my job!" she crowed.

-----

The Old One had drifted to the side, carefully constructing a phasic construct designed to not only conceal him, but give him images from phasic constructs he'd carefully inserted into the battlefield. In the two victories he'd been present for, tactical and strategic data, quickly disseminated, had been crucial to the victory.

He had infiltrated nearly fifty phasic lenses so he could see the battlefield. They had to be wide, unfocused, very diffuse, or a lemur sniper would put a phasic cracker through it, which meant the image was slightly blurry and the sound slightly tinny.

But it was data.

He had watched as the battle raged on. The Atrekna were pouring more and more slavespawn into the one hundred five mile long valley, trying to push the slavespawn across the five miles of distance between the two hills.

The middle and lemur side of the valley was nothing but gobbets of flesh, pools of ichor, and thick sticky mud.

The Atrekna side was nothing more than slavespawn corpses that were still being hit by mortar and artillery rounds, rockets, and anti-matter rounds from rapidfire weapons.

The Old One left his carefully built construct and moved over to where the Conclave was huddled together, surrounded by slavespawn that reared up and pawed at one another with tentacles and bladearms.

**you should not gather up** the Old One stated. **it makes it so that all of you are simply one target instead of spread out so that it takes much more effort and split fire to engage each of you**

The Ancient Ones and the Young Ones sneered, the Old Ones rebuffed his statement silently.

**our strength together is too much for the lemurs to overcome** one of the Old Ones stated. **they cannot overcome our combined power**

**we cannot be positive that you did not allow lemurs to escape** the Old One stated. **the lemurs who performed the ambush could very well be approaching as we speak**

**we killed all of the ambushing lemurs and inflicted nearly a thousand casualties on their forces** an Ancient One sneered.

**the lemurs have not stopped running away from our martial might** a Young One scoffed.

**do not say I did not warn you** the Old One said, drifting away. It wrapped shadows around itself, bending and twisting the shadows until, despite science saying darkness was just the absence of light, it was surrounded by crystalline and alloys of shadow and darkness.

The Conclave sent another wave of slavespawn over the hill and the Old One watched as most were killed on the opposite slope, raked by automatic fire, rockets, and missiles. The lemurs heavily leaned on antimatter rounds and the Old One computed it wasn't much antimatter at all. It took a bit for him to figure out the atomic structure of the antimatter, as standard antimatter did not have the strange bluish snap in it that the lemur rounds did.

It was not the first time in the Old One's experience that the lemurs used something new and different to the Atrekna, while having it completely embedded in their doctrine and equipment.

The Old One felt a summons as the night drew on. It left its data gathering construct and drifted slowly, in an erratic pattern, over to toward the Conclave.

**hurry up** an Ancient One snapped. **we wish to know how our forces obtained victory in System Sigma-Fourteen-Nine during the third expansion of the Spoked Offensive**

The Old One did not respond, just kept moving forward.

It had almost reached the Conclave when everything came apart.

Heavy machineguns opened up, rockets and missiles shrieked out of the forest, and light rifle fire raked the slavespawn and the Conclave's construct.

The lemurs were attacking from the rear!

The Old One reacted almost instantly as tracer rounds whipped by around it. It hardened the shadows, wrapped itself in them. With a flex of his powers he ripped bedrock from the ground to form a barrier a split second before lemur fire began slamming against the twelve foot thickness of rock.

A missile hit the Conclave's construct and Atrekna scattered from it, leaving behind dead and dying Atrekna.

The communal mind was full of panic and confusion as a dozen flares arced up out of the forest, the white actinic glare wiping away the darkness and shadow to expose the battlefield.

They're pinning us between their fire and the hill! the Old One realized. If we retreat over the hill the lemurs on the opposite hill will wipe us out! If we stay, their fire will destroy us.

The Old One acted.

He gathered his power, increased his shielding until the back of his neck burned with pain, tore bedrock from the ground to form a whirling shield of debris in front of him.

The other Atrekna were trying to seek cover, seek safety, to hide behind the slavespawn, most of which had just been rudely awaken by gunfire and missiles.

The Old One did the only thing he could think of as the heavy machineguns in the forest raked fire on the Atrekna lines, tree trunks exploding from the heavy rounds.

He charged.