Chapter 872: Those Left Behind

Chapter 872: Those Left Behind

They promised us we could look up again. They promised that the sky was open again. They promised us that space was open to us.

They swore that they would protect us. That the unstoppable force that shattered our people was gone. That their allies were on the edge of defeat.

They said it was safe to fly, to slip the bonds of gravity, and touch the face of the ancient gods.

They lied. - Wemtarran Priest, Post-Big C3

They did not have a hive mind but something more gentle. They were empathic toward one another face to face, touch to touch, with a general overall feeling of group empathy between members out to roughly a mile. They did not read or transmit thoughts or images. They did not push feelings onto one another, they could feel what one another were feeling.

In the past, they had made mistakes.

Bad ones.

The first was to decide their Empire was the equal in size to the Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems. In their slight defense, the larges interstellar empire they had encountered had only contained six stellar systems. They had no idea of the thousands of systems in each of the banded together member states.

Second was their belief that because nobody could put up a cohesive fight against their martial might, nobody could. Sure, they had planet cracked a few worlds, committed genocide a few times, but that was just more evidence of their obvious supremacy.

Third, well, they didn't know it at the time, but their research into temporal systems and mechanics, including managing to send people back to the past, despite the fact that the further back something was sent the more energy it took. Yeah, it was only a few seconds into the past but... [The Universe Disliked That]. Their "Days of Future Possibilities Past Project" had revealed that the Terrans would be destroyed.

The Fourth mistake was believing that they were the ones who would destroy the Terrans.

After all, weren't they the premiere predator and martial culture of the universe?

The first war, they had refused to surrender, preferring to go out in a frenzy of planet crackers, destroying nearly thirty planets of the Confederacy and twelve of their own.

They had been 1% lined after that.

Upon their recovery, they immediately built up their fleet in secret. They trained, they armed, and they attacked the Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems while they were caught up in a desperate struggle against a foe that they had never heard of.

That got them 1%'d again.

That time, the Terrans hit them so hard that everyone became afraid of the very sky. They had abandoned flight and space craft. Even after the 1% Interdiction was relaxed enough to allow them to rediscover space-flight and settle their own stellar system, they refused to so much as look up.

It wasn't uncommon for one of their people to have a screaming meltdown over a weird looking cloud or bird's shadow. The sight of the stars in the night skies caused severe anxiety. A comet flying nearby the planet, a mere eight million miles away, large in the sky, caused mass suicides and public hysteria that resulted in cities being burned and left behind.

The fear, the unrelenting terror, the knowing that the Terrans were out there, just waiting for someone to look up for too long, wasn't a rumor.

They knew it was fact.

Then came the new beings. Ones that could speak mind to mind. Who could soothe the fear and terror.

The purple ones, powerful with phasic energy, with three white eyes, had promised that they could protect The People from the Terrans and their allies.

As proof, they dimmed the very sun, telling The People that it would hide the stellar system from the Terrans.

The New Beings had stopped the clan wars between city states, roving tribes of vehicle driving raiders, savage tribes hiding in the wilderness, and micronations.

They showed The People the sky again. They strengthened and improved the empathic connection although The People did not know it was to make The People easier to observe, punish, track, command, and control. The terror slowly receded, although it was still there, in the background.

The New Beings wanted The People to help fight their war against the Confederacy.

They promised that they had wiped out the Terrans. That the lethal primate was nothing more than a memory. They showed The People dead world after dead world, still and silent battlefields, and destroyed starships.

The People began, slowly, to believe.

Then they became eager.

They would have their revenge against the species of the Confederacy. They would rebuild their empire upon the bones of the Confederacy's allies.

They would be victorious against the Confederacy and then they would topple the New Beings.

The Universe would be theirs, as it was always meant to be.

On The Day of Reckoning, The People were translated across space and time to a hotly contested world and went into battle. The New Beings brought back the dead to fight again and The People felt the flush of immortality. The People helped tear the planet from the grasp of the Confederacy through martial might, prying the system from the cold dead hands of the insect people, the lizard people, and the other lesser beings.

The celebrations lasted weeks.

Then word came again. The New Beings needed The People to fight on other worlds. The Confederacy had counter-attacked and the New Beings knew, and The People knew this because they were told so, that The People would defeat the Confederacy wherever it was found.

After all, without the Mad Lemurs of TerraSol, the Confederacy was weak and pathetic.

The People marshaled up.

They eagerly awaited their conflict with the Confederacy.

Then came disaster.

The portal that was to take The People to battle opened and the New Beings and the Bioweapons came fleeing through.

What landed on the grass of the mustering field made The People feel fear again.

But they had weapons, training, and that helped firm their resolve.

Then they stood up.

Bipedal. Hairless except for on top of their heads and around their jaws for the males. Huge, the smallest in the front, at just over six feet, the huge males at nearly eight feet.

The one in the lead spat out the warsteel she had been chewing on. She had given the primate signal of violence by baring her teeth.

Safeties nervously clicked off, but The People told one another it was just six of them.

Surely, six Mad Lemurs were nothing to fear. They were only...

The lead one suddenly roared. Spikes and bony protrusions burst from her flesh. Her mass increased tenfold, she grew to twice her size.

Her eyes burned bright red as liquid warsteel drooled from her heavy jaws.

THEY HAD LIED!

The New Beings had promised the Terrans were gone. Had promised that no Terran existed any more. That the Terrans were not out there, watching The People, waiting to smash them apart.

Terror filled The People, amplified, combined, and rebroadcast across their empathic links.

The New Beings tried to resist, their Elder Brains and Omnibrains tried to resist.

The terror crashed over them too, amplifying the terror and horror already cascading through the empathic racial link.

The People went mad with terror.

The Terrans watched with approval as The People turned on the New Beings and slew them, hunted them, roasted and ate them, beat them to death with rifles, fists, rocks. Watched with approval as anything that flew was destroyed, often taking the pilots, crews, and passengers with them. Watched as The People began to destroy anything so high as to require one of The People to look up at the sky to see the top.

Months passed as The People returned to the Old Edicts.

The Terrans stayed where they had appeared.

The People knew that the Mad Lemurs of Terra were pleased, even as the fear and horror continued to reverberate through the empathic links.

Then a ship came from the sky, just as the New Beings had promised would not happen. Another Terran came to retrieve the Mad Lemurs of Terra.

The People still continued to destroy anything higher than four body heights, knowing that this would please the Mad Lemurs of Terra and thus allow The People to live another day.

Monuments were destroyed. Cities reduced to ruin as The People fled into the wilderness to join their savage brethren. The Road Wars gained volunteers and the Go-Gangs grew large.

Still horror and fear reverberated through the link.

Then, when the last building, last monument was destroyed, came the sign that the Mad Lemurs of Terra had indeed been pleased with the actions and sacrifices of The People.

The sun, which had turned yellow again with the arrival of the Mad Lemurs of Terra, blinked.

Then flashed white.

The People grew dizzy and fell over, pain in their heads. The empathic links snapped.

For a brief moment each of The People knew and felt only what they knew and felt.

Then the white light faded.

The People realized something, and rejoiced. Great poles were raised with effigies of the New Beings on one end and lit on fire. The Go-Gangs engaged in the Road Wars with cries of joy and reckless abandonment. The savage tribes sung songs of thanks and gratitude.

The empathic links that connected every one of The People to one another no longer echoed with horror and terror.

They had been cleansed.

The People knew who had cleansed it.

The priests, shamans, Highwaymen, all gave thanks to the one who had cleansed the empathic link.

They knew now they could look to the heavens. The blinding white light had been proof of that, as it had cleansed the heavens even as it had cleansed The People.

But The People were to never again touch the sky.

They knew who would be waiting if they dared. Who had cleansed them of the New Species's taint.

That's not the only place.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

BAH!

Does everyone just have to scare the eggs out of me?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

ROLE PLAYERS GESTALT

Sorry.

Anyway, we kind of keep tabs on the Mithril Nebula, since they're only a hundred or so light years from us, and I can tell you, it looks like the old phasic miasma is gone.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

That's good.

You could hear the screaming for about ten light years in any direction.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

What about the Clownface Nebula?

...

...

...

Nobody?

Nobody's gone to check?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Fuck that.

You go check.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

I'd rather someone else did.

Crusade?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DARK CRUSADE OF LIGHT

Let that hellish nightmare place fade to entropy.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

Yeah.

Fuck that place.

Just leave a 50 light year interdiction around it and call it good.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

I still say we should shift some of the supermassive singularities into that nebula and just let them devour it.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

The black holes would probably get sick and vomit it up.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

What happened there?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

...

...

...

CRUSADE OF WRATH

SILENCE!

Your question invokes memories.

We wish those memories to fade and disappear.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

But

CRUSADE OF WRATH

SILENCE!

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

OK, OK.

Wow. Touchy.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Well, I've got good news to wash that taste from everyone's mouth.

Are you ready?

Get this. All the Terran Tomb Worlds full of zombies?

The zombies pretty much all fell down. Something about The Flashbang

GREAT LANAKTALLAN GREAT GESTALT OF GREAT >CRASHRIDER LIVES!

Well, that's a relief.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

I still wonder what caused it.

Who caused it.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Yeah...