There had not been many references to it in the data that the Unified Council could discover, but right before the Great Herd dispatched their might to crush the upstart Confederacy, the data was found.
The Pubvians.
According to the data, they were a herbivore species, three legs, two arms, a head. They primarily ate vegetation, were a three-sex species, and were largely peaceful. However, they were part of the Confederacy and the data the Lanaktallan managed to acquire showed the location of their homeworld.
The Great Herd knew that the Pubvians wouldn't need planet cracked. They had seats on the Confederate Senate but had not seated any members as far as the Lanaktallans could tell. Their seats and boxes were wreathed in black cloth, obviously to show that they refused to take part. A show of force and an occupation would be good enough to tear the Pubvians away from the Confederacy and possibly provide a new neo-sapient servitor species and a jumping point fro the Great Herd to colonize what was left of Confederacy Space.
Still, the Lanaktallan knew the system would be defended. They were part of the Confederacy, and the Confederacy seemed to almost fetishize weaponry.
The Corporate Fleet that dropped into the system had over a hundred thousand ships, ten thousand of them troop ships.
The Grand Most High of the 238a34 Task Force had suffered headaches, joint aches, the entire trip to the world. Of course, he'd spend a year in jumpspace, and the medical doctors aboard his ship had told him that his growth was possibly from such long exposure to jumpspace.
He ordered his scanner technician and his sensor techs to do a sweep of the EM wavelengths before he ordered his ship inward into the system. The rest of the Corporate Fleet roared forward, each eager to be the first on the planets, the first to take over the system, to be the Task Force that forced the Pubvians to surrender.
The Grand Most High frowned when his scanner technicians and sensor technicians reported that, aside from the stellar mass, there was no electromagnetic emissions. No artificial signals.
The system was quiet, except for the typical natural sounds a stellar system put out.
The Grand Most High ordered a gravatic scan thrown up on the main screen.
Yellow star. Fifteen planets, five of them gas giants. Two in the red zone toward the planet, one in the yellow zone toward the planet, two in the green zone, two in the yellow zone opposite, then the rest. Five gas giants with rings.
No moons. No satellites.
No signals.
The ships of the Corporate Fleet that headed for the gas giants reported nothing.
The Grand Most High ordered his troops to get in their armored vac-suits and get to battle stations.
This felt... wrong somehow.
He ordered his ships to head toward the outermost planet and to go slow.
No resistance so far.
The Grand Most High had been part of a Corporate Fleet that seen the lemurs utterly smash apart a Precursor AWM fleet of thirty harvesters and their supporting vessels, then rip apart a Corporate Fleet that outnumbered them 10:1.
If the Confederacy was truly here, the Corporate Fleet should have been engaged already. The Confederate ships, even those that weren't part of Space Force, had horrific ranges and punishing weaponry.
He knew for a fact, had seen it with his own eyes, that the Terrans could hit targets light hours away.
Where are they? he wondered as his ship drew closer to the barren outer planet, which had a thick ring around it.
"Bring our active sensors up. I want a scan of that planet," the Grand Most High said.
"It was quick-scanned. No energy readings, no shields," his sensor tech said. "It was bypassed by the Task Forces who were supposed to attack it."
"There's something wrong here," the Grand Most High said. "If this was Confederate Space we would already be under attack. If this was in actuality a Confederate species home system, half of our ships would be wreckage by now."
"They cannot resist us," his navigator said in the dead tones of a badly programmed computer speech synthesizer. "The Great Herd has never known defeat. All who attempt to stand before the Great Herd are trampled by its righteous hooves."
"I know, I know, faithful one," the Grand Most High said, feeling a stirring of an unfamiliar emotion. The ones who spoke like that reminded him of when he was a young colt and his little sister had been born dead. Like something he didn't know about until it was gone had been taken from him.
Many of them, most of them, no longer responded to their own names. A few, a handful, had proclaimed that they had different names than what was in the database, but most just went about their duties while occasionally spouting off rhetoric.
"Long range active scans coming back now," the scanning tech said.
"Anything?" the Grand Most High asked.
"Oh. Um, yeah," the scanning tech said. He reached up and pressed his upper palms against his side eyes. "Sorry, my head hurts."
"Just do your best," the Grand Most High said.
"A lot of the debris is metallic in nature," the scanning tech said. "There's plenty of debris of the material that makes up normal orbital debris rings, usually dust from moons that failed or left behind by comets or ejected from comet strikes."
"What kind of metallic debris?" the Grand Most High asked.
"Launching a drone," the sensor tech said.
"Beginning evasive stealth maneuvers," the navigator said.
There was silence for a long time, while the ship slowly changed position using minimal drive power and being careful not to light off their gravitic systems. Just reactionless drives that could be heavily shielded.
"Grand Most High, you're going to want to see this," the sensor tech said.
"The Grand Most High sees all," the point defense officer intoned from where the Grand Most High had tasked him to watching an empty plas cup on a chair instead of manning his normal station.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"Yes, yes I do, faithful one," the Grand Most High replied almost automatically. "Put it up on the main screen."
The screen changed from the system itself and the progress of the Corporate and Military Fleets moving inward to the debris field around the outermost planet. Normally just dust and rocks, a ring was little more than an object of appreciation and visually appealing, no threat or interest to a ship with debris fields.
Onscreen was a space ship.
Or rather, parts of space ships.
All of the hulks were dead in space.
No energy readings. No lights. No signals.
Just dead drifting hunks of metal.
A corpse in an armored vac-suit drifted into the picture and the drone focused on it. The faceplate was smashed, but the leathery vacuum dehydrated face was obviously Terran. The cybernetic eyes were dark and cold.
The probe moved in on the ship, sweeping by the crushed and shattered prow of a dead ship.
RNV Roy Batty was on the prow.
It had taken multiple hits, the armor cratered, pitted, slagged, torn open to expose the internal spaces. The probe focused on a gun battery with a lemur still strapped in, his dead hands on the controls, a large chunk of metal through the lemur's chest, pinning it to the seat.
"Something bad happened here," the sensor tech said quietly.
"I concur. Take the drone to the surface of the planet," the Grand Most High said. He turned to the navigator. "Take us upwards, still stay in full stealth."
The ship moved slowly through the darkness. Further in the stellar system the ships were landing on the planets, all of which had put up no resistance. The Task Forces assigned to the planets outside of the yellow zone were ignoring their targets and focusing on the planets in the green and yellow zones, all in a hurry to be the ones who forced the Pubvians to surrender.
The Grand Most High, he was feeling an odd feeling. It reminded him of when he had seen an elderly Lanaktallan pass out behind the wheel of a hovercar and slid toward the crowd. Not when it hit the crowd, not when he was positive it would hit, but when the car started swerving, before the elderly being had slumped.
A Terran would have told him it was dread.
The probe swept down, skimming across the surface. There was a lot of dust, a lot of crystallized frozen elements.
And a lot of craters.
One of the craters revealed machinery in the depths that was dark and unmoving. Some of the craters were surrounded by mangled and destroyed machinery and buildings. He could see lumps around the smaller craters and knew, somehow, that vehicles were under those lumps.
The probe suddenly swooped in on something.
It looked like nothing at first, but it had caught the probe's rather dim VI's attention.
"Is that a Terran?" the missile defense officer asked.
"It looks like it," the sensor tech said.
As it got closer it came into focus better. The probe put up size estimates based on shadows and laser ranging and the Grand Most High felt relief fill him.
The arm was nearly seventy-five feet high. It was a warmech. One of the giant warmechs the Terrans were so fond of.
"Get in closer," the Grand Most High said.
The drone was starting to move away when it got the order. It swooped back in, going over the warmech's structure. It's grav-engine, too small to be detected at any distance further than a mile, stirring the dust around.
"That's not the warmechs we've seen," the weapon's officer said.
"Thus falls all who face the Great Herd," the assistant engineering officer said from where he was sitting in front of a console, making sure that the round dot in the middle of the screen was there at all times.
"It looks... older," the Grand Most High said softly.
The Terran strapped into the seat had massive slashes across his chest, opening up his armored mech piloting suit to vacuum. The probe lingered over it, showing that the human had suffered explosive decompression of his internal organs. He also had something in his hand. Not his right hand, that had a pistol. Something in his off hand.
"Get closer," the Grand Most High ordered.
The thing in the lemur's hand came into focus.
The Grand Most High didn't recognize it.
The War Stallion mental engrams did.
A warrior caste Mantid's head, half of it shot away.
Reflexes kicked in and the navigator reacted to the surprise appearance of a Mantid warrior causing him to throw the ship into full reverse.
"CALM! CALM, MY BROTHERS!" the Grand Most High roared out.
The ship came to a stop.
The probe had moved on, moving to the hand of the giant warmech.
There was a crushed warrior mantid's in the fist, crushed black mantids with it. All of them dessicated from the mess the warmech's hand had made out of it.
Signals started coming back from the Military and Corporate Fleet. The Executor Fleet had come in while the Grand Most High was investigating the airless strange planet.
The planets in the green zone and the yellow zone had all been pummeled by orbital weapons, huge areas of plasma glass were everywhere. There were no cities intact, all of them were wreckage. The atmosphere, however, was clear of debris, clear of smoke.
The Executors ordered the craft to land. The soldiers to move out.
The Grand Most High snorted.
There was nothing left here. He could tell. Nothing had been here in ages.
"Incoming transmission from Executor Task Force 183f32 for you, Grand Most High," the communications officer said.
"Put it on my private screen," the Grand Most High said.
The image resolved into the black head of another Grand Most High.
"Why have you not entered the system? Your task force, according to my records, was slated to attack the second planet in the green zone," the other Grand Most High said.
"Data and intelligence gained upon arrival did not match," the Grand Most High said. "I have been attempting to gather data."
"And have you?" the Executor Grand Most High asked.
The Corporate Grand Most High was silent a moment.
"Hail to the Great Herd for their glory," the Corporate Grand Most High said.
"HAIL TO THE GREAT HERD!" six of his bridge crew yelled.
The Executor Grand Most High sighed and rubbed his face as some of his own bridge crew repeated it, which made the Corporate Grand Most High's bridge crew repeat it. It went back and forth until the Corporate Grand Most High hit mute to the count of twenty.
He opened the channel again.
"You too?" he asked.
"Yes. I as well," the Executor said.
"View this," the Corporate Grand Most High said, sending the data to the other's ship.
"I wish to bring in a few others. I will relate your data to them, but they too," the Executor said.
"They too as well as us?" the Grand Most High asked.
"They too," the Executor said. He looked down, then frowned. "That is... that is a dead Mantid."
"Killed by a Terran warmech pilot," the Grand Most High said.
"There is nothing for us here. The data was in error," the Executor said. He winced. "We will wait here."
"Grand Most High, my probe has discovered something!" the scanner tech said.
"Repeat it to my screen, brother," the Executor said. "I will transmit it to our brothers."
The Grand Most High nodded and patched the Executor in on the feed.
It was a battlefield. Largely covered by dust. Fighting emplacements had been hit by orbital strikes. Aerospace craft had crashed. Terran tanks of old designs mixed in with Mantid tanks that the Grand Most High could recognize. Damaged artillery pieces.
All of the reactors were cold and dead.
"Whatever happened here, happened a long time ago," The Executor said.
The Grand Most High heard another's voice. "Why would they leave a seat on their Senate for a species that no longer exists?"
"Respect," the Executor said. "They Mantid must have genocided this species, and that species must have been important to the Terrans."
The Grand Most High nodded. It made sense now that he had heard the explanation.
"The Mantid attack upon the Terrans was eight thousand years ago," another voice said.
"There is nothing for us here," The Executor said. "Get ready, we will jump out of the system and meet at these coordinates. You will wait for me there, brothers."
The Corporate Most High nodded his head. "As you will it."
"I will remain behind, see if there are any more of our brothers hiding within the rank and file," he nodded at the Corporate Grand Most High. "You seem to have good instincts, brother."
"I thank you," the Grand Most High said.
"You and your crew shall stay behind with me. I wish you to examine the worlds, attempt to understand what happened here," the Executor said. "Record it."
"May I ask why, brother?" the Grand Most High asked.
"To show the Council their folly," the Executor said. He closed all six eyes for a moment. "We were lucky, brother. This system is cold and dead, murdered long ago in the heat of battle."
"I will say a prayer for the Pubvians, brother," the Corporate Grand Most High said.
"A prayer for the warrior's rest should be fitting, brother," the Executor said. "Let us set about our tasks."
The Grand Most High ordered the ships of his Task Force to jump out to new coordinates. He stayed back with the Executor as the Executor moved forward, searching out for any brothers who, they too, were hidden within the masses of the empty ones.
He slowly scanned each world for nearly a week.
He found nothing but dust and death.