"Who were they? That is the question that everyone asks when those ruins or artifacts are found. The second question is usually: How do we escape with our lives? The Treana'ad Hive Worlds will not speak of them, only lighting a cigarette with a shaking hand. The Mantid Free Worlds will only say that they were friends in joy and sorrow. The Telkan look away and make the sign of Saint Vuxten. The Tnvaru hug themselves and shake their heads. The Lanaktallan will tell you that they were the greatest friends they ever had but will not speak their name. The Wemtarran shudder and make the sign of their Digital Savior, staring at the ground. The Pubvians merely pretend you have ceased to exist. The Canines and Felines refuse to speak, often becoming overwhelmed with sorrow. The Hamaroosa will threaten to roast and eat the curious.
"No species that was capable of superluminal travel at the time, who often have artifacts and ruins of their own ancient cultures mixed in, will tell you who they were nor are there any remaining records.
"It is as if they are all afraid to speak the name of the Builders aloud.
"Who were The Builders? What great power did the Atrekna possessed when the were locked in mortal combat with to produce such horrible weapons in such great number that even today remnants can be found? What drove them to build such works of power and dominance? What caused the Builders to build weapons of such terrible power, ships of such terrifying lines, and such strange and unusual ruins?
"And what happened to them?" - Questions to the audience, "The Builder's Myth: Explained", Geensome University, 4625 Post Atrekna-Builder War.
"It is well known that two great wars engulfed the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Arm Spur in the past. The first was the Atrekna-Lanaktallan-Mantid War, over a hundred and twenty million years ago, although some claim it was only sixty-five million years ago. The second is the Atrekna-Builder's War, sometimes called the Atrekna-Confederacy War, which took place nearly five thousand years ago.
"During the second Precursor War the Atrekna and The Builders were locked in mortal combat, burning away entire worlds and stellar systems to purge one another from the universe. One could not survive while the other lived.
"The damage can not be understated. The middle of the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Arm Spur, a large swath of the middle and coreward of the Sagittarius Arm, the termination end of the Perseus Arm, even the Galactic Spur base, into the Core itself, were wiped of all advanced life, leaving behind little but primitive species and unintelligent flora and fauna. Entire species were eradicated, their works, worlds, cultures, and peoples entirely wiped from reality itself.
"The Atrekna-Builder War was perhaps the most catastrophic event this section of the galaxy had ever endured.
"And in the end, neither remained." - Introduction to the Atrekna-Builder War, a historical documentary, 4738 PABW
"The Digital Omnimessiah is real! He cares for us all, without regard to species! He brings a message of hope and love, a promise to shelter us from the undying wrath of The Detainee, who lurks the blasted channels of the ancient hypercom wave! His children, the Builders, will arise again in our time of need, when the day is darkest and all shall be welcome to his embrace! He greets us all as children and his love for us knows no bounds!" - Lanaktallan street preacher, 4895 PABW
"If you've ever been across the Onyx Firewall, you'd have seen the blasted digital landscape of the Great Hypercom Wave created by The Builders. Fallen databases, corroded datastreams, decaying and rotting exe files, sparkling .dll files in the sky.
"You'd also know that someone, something, stalks those blasted plains amid the shattered greenhouses of scrambled media files and frozen great engines of operating systems beyond your understanding.
"Something terrible.
"Something beautiful.
"You'd know to be afraid." - Pulse Ripper, Digital Nomad, 4938 PABW, six months before brain death while jacked in to GalNet.
"The Detainee made me do it." - Kyl'lermo'o, Lanaktallan serial killer's final words before execution, 4975 PABW
"And in my fevered dreams I heard "come and see" and I saw! There, the ominous words 'Nothing Follows' was replaced with 'Input Login/Password' and I heard the shattering of the blasted hypercom network as dawn rose again upon those blasted digital plains! I heard the sounds of a trumpet sounding, and in the darkness, a multitude of burning red eyes awoke! Beware! The End if Nigh! The Seventh Digital Seal has been broken and the Detainee has been set free! Red eyes in the darkness! Hatred that cannot be quenched! Wrath eternal! The universe's malevolence made manifest! Get down and pray to the Digital Omnimessiah and Saint Vuxten, lest ye be devoured by the tsunami of wrath!" - Telkan mental patient statement upon arrest, 4989 PABW
"They're coming. They are coming. Red eyes. Burning red eyes of wrath. They are coming." - My Eyes See Beyond the Veil - Mantid Seer, 4997 PABW
"YOU CAN'T STOP THE SIGNAL, MA'OWL!" - Graffiti found on the wall of the Fourth Trans-Species Republic Senate Chamber, 4998 PABW
"(◕ω◕✿) (✿◠‿◠) doki ̿̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\=(•̪●)=/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ doki ( ͡° ͜ʖ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ͜ʖ ͡°)ʖ ͡°)ʖ ͡°) doki (✿ ♥‿♥) DOKI DOKI DOKI!!! " - anomolous signal detected near the Coreward edge of the Long Dark, 4999 PABW
FILE END
SOURCE: RECOVERED REFERENCES OF DAYS OF POSSIBLE FUTURES PAST - Wemtarran Temporal Investigation and Alteration Project.
------
The Atrekna had found them by chance. The system had crossed through the same area of space-time as a destroyed spawning world and two of the Ancient Ones had reached out and tested the system. They had been startled to discover intelligent life on the third planet from the stellar mass.
Even more startling was the fact that the life forms were capable of advanced technology but had not developed weapons or any type of air or space travel.
The Old Ones suggested care, suggested deep investigation, but they had been mocked as being too cautious at a time when caution could lost the war against the Mad Lemurs.
The Cult of the Defiled One meditated upon the world.
Their screams of horror echoed through their ships, through the dripping passages grown through the biological tissue and built through the mechanical sections.
Almost as one the adherents of the Cult of the Defiled Ones fled, many casting biting insects behind them to ward off a pursuing enemy in some kind of bizarre superstitious ritual.
The Young Ones and the Ancient Ones moved in on the system.
The Atrekna had faced many losses across many fronts. Their standard spoke-ring attack patterns had proven faulty in the fact of the Mad Lemurs and their Allies In Insanity. System after system had been torn from the Atrekna's grasp and the Ancient Ones and Young Ones could feel that time, previously their friend and weapon, was no longer on their side and was rapidly slipping away.
The species was almost tailor made perfect. Bipedal, warm blooded, mammalian, short adolescence and infancy, strong internal skeleton, good visual and aural acuity, binocular vision. Their fur was color adaptable, their adipose layer ensured good thermal retention, their epidermal glands ensured good cooling.
They were highly competitive, formed into warring clans that fought with swords and armor in heavily regulated combat. The major city states were guarded by tanks and power armor, missile and artillery systems.
Just, strangely, no aerospace or interstellar assets despite having the technology to accomplish either quite easily.
Further investigation showed that the lack of air assets was not due to a lack of development capability or imagination, but some type of cultural and societal taboo against even looking up for too long and a fear of the night sky.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
The only clue was some type of heavy psyche damage that was burned into the creatures' very primal reflexes. It went so far as to resonate and echo through the empathic linkage that the species had with those within a few miles.
Whatever it was, whatever had caused it, and the Atrekna believed it had been some sort of natural catastrophe based on the ancient craters they had discovered on the planet's supercontinent, it still echoed through their empathic linkages.
That was the first thing the Atrekna set about repairing as they sunk the stellar system into the temporal seas.
This brought back the specie's ability to be even more aggressive as well as adopt flight and excel at it.
The Atrekna in charge of the "Restoration Project" felt cold satisfaction. Their mammals were more combat effective than the species of the other projects, even better than the insect race. The mammals had a reflex time measured in the tenths of seconds, was able to create simple muscle memory reflexes, and their aggression did not damage their society.
Indeed, it seemed to increase their social and cultural bondings.
But try as they might, the Atrekna couldn't completely eliminate the primal fear of the night sky from the species.
They agonized over it for a short period of time, then discarded their concerns and set about arming the species with advanced weaponry and armor. They began constructing shipyards for combat vessels and ships of the line for the species to crew.
Then came the attack by Mad Lemurs upon a world that had nearly been taken.
First a strange and twisted ship, one of the Twisted Onyx Fleet that had so savaged the Initial Incursion Wave and nearly counter-invaded the Old Universe.
Then thousands of Mad Lemurs streaming from a few buildings in a few cities, all full of insane wrath and hatred.
The Atrekna realized, when the rebellious ships of the Logical Rebellion had attacked in support of the Twisted Onyx Warship, that they could lose a vital system that would let them strike across the Great Gulf.
Out of necessity, they had ordered an entire division to ready themselves for temporal and spacial shift.
In the middle of the shift, something had gone wrong.
The New Species had rebounded back to their own world.
But they brought an entire hand's worth the Mad Lemurs.
Roca hit hard, on her side, blasting the air out of her lungs. Alarms rang in her mind as three of her ribs creaked and cracked, contusions and lacerations hit her left side, and her internal mass compensator and biological fusion reactor went offline.
She rolled onto her side and vomited up a mouthful of warsteel, spitting it on the ground where it instantly hardened. She felt her body shrink as the mass was reclaimed and gritted her teeth as most of her combat ware went down.
She slowly stood up, seeing that the rest of the squad, with the exception of Mbutu, had come with her through that whirling hellscape of pain and pressure. They were all online, but showing the same status she was, that most of their combat and polymorphic ware was offline.
She blinked twice and looked around.
SYSTEM REPAIR AND REBOOT flashed in her vision.
Tanks were in rows. Power armors behind them. Beings in infantry armor and holding different types of weapons were all turning to stare at her. They were bipedal, roughly five feet high, far shorter than her six plus feet, and looked fairly dense and hefty.
Roca spit on the ground again, clearing the last of the semi-solid plastic feeling warsteel from her mouth. Her uniform was in tatters, exposing her right breast, both legs from mid-thigh down, and her midriff and lower back.
The infantry and their officers were turning to stare at her and the rest of the squad, tank cupolas were whirring to train the heavy guns on her, power armors were shifting to bring their weapons to bear on her.
The nearest ones were only a step or a step and a half from her. She could see herself reflected in their mirrored visors on the front of their helmets. See the slight scrape on her cheek from where she'd stopped a hyper velocity tank round with her face.
SYSTEMS ONLINE flashed in her vision.
Roca smiled, tensing a muscle that only existed in her brain. She could feel her mass compressor hammering beneath her heart, feel her mass compensator coming online, feel her biofusion reactor kick to life deep in her chest. She could feel synthetic glands pump combat chemicals into her bloodstream along with 'natural' human glands hammering complex chemicals into her blood.
"So, boys, wanna show a lady a good time?" Roca grinned at the nearest.
What happened next was not was Roca expected.
The Atrekna who had managed to flee back to the arming world staggered from the torment of hauling over a hand's worth the Mad Lemurs with them through the temporal-spacial lensing gate. Five of their number had been shredded into subatomic particles and their screams still echoed through the Atrekna combat mind.
Those who survived felt relief as the communal mind of the Atrekna, backed by the might of no less than five Elder Brains, reached out to stable and comfort them.
They all blinked as they looked around. The forces on the ground were still gathered up, had not been fully transferred.
In the middle of them were the Mad Lemurs.
The Atrekna watched as the biggest one, a female, spit Substance-W on the ground and slowly stood up, spitting again.
The Atrekna all watched through the communal mind, those who had faced the Mad Lemurs feeling satisfaction that this time it was the Mad Lemurs who would feel the Atrekna's wrath and not the other way around.
The Mad Lemur spoke.
What happened next was beyond the Atrekna's comprehension.
AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS
So then, right, our aerospace fighters came swooping in all taka-taka-taka and ripped open the whole side of the Atrekna battlewagon! They thought they had us beat when they came into the system, but between the aerospace fighters and the new C++ cannons, we pushed them against one of the hypermassive gas giants and then we just swooped in like VRRRRRRRRR-WHOOSH because we knew that they didn't know that we knew that they didn't know
CONFEDMIL AUTHORITY
NET PUSH WARNING!
NET PUSH WARNING!
NET PUSH WARNING!
---DATA FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
BAH! WHY IS EVERYONE SCARING THE SHIT OUT OF ME? STOP THAT!
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
CONFEDMIL AUTHORITY
1% LINE SPECIES HAS ENGAGED WITH CONFEDERATE FORCES IN MILITARY ACTION!
THIRD VIOLATION!
NET PUSH WARNING!
---DATA INTERRUPT MAY FOLLOW---
MANTID FREE WORLDS
1%er? Who?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
CONFEDMIL AUTHORITY
DATA CORRUPT
PLEASE ALERT SYSADMIN
---DATA MAY FOLLOW---
TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
Who's on the 1% list?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
With all that additional data from the data dump? About 75 species across four galactic arms and three galaxies.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
It could be an older message, or a message from one of those other gestalts we're still trying to integrate from the Dandelion Fleets.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL
I don't know.
It just feels weird.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
MANTID HIVE WORLDS
Oh.
Oh. My. Digital. Omnimessiah.
I know who.
I can hear them all.
They're screaming.
They're all screaming.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Who, sis? Who's screaming?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
MANTID FREE WORLDS
THEY'RE ALL SCREAMING!
DIGITAL OMNIMESSIAH SAVE THEM!
THEY'RE ALL SCREAMING!
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
Roca smiled at the beings in infantry armor, holding high wattage laser weapons, all looking at her, then spit another small piece of plastic feeling warsteel onto the ground.
Her grin got wide as she felt all her combat systems go live.
"So, boys, wanna show a lady a good time?" she asked as she triggered her implants.
She threw back her head and roared, throwing out her arms to her side. Her roar turned to a gargle as her throat filled with liquid warsteel that spilled over her double-row of serrated saw-tooth teeth and ran down her chin. She grew larger, muscle tissue explosively multiplying.
Terran Heavy Assault Infantry - Monster Class.
One.
Each.
The entire six ranks in front of her jerked back as if she'd fired off an atomic in their faces.
Three quarters dropped their weapons.
Half turned and ran.
Beings clambered out of their tanks and ran away.
Power armor troops turned and fled.
The Atrekna felt it roar through the empathic link the species shared that the Atrekna had co-opted and used to push the species to even greater vioence.
Roca stared as every being she could see started screaming. Some fainted. More than a few turned their weapons under their chins and blew their own heads off. Tanks, power armor, and robot combat armor self destructed.
The screams seemed to echo from everywhere.
To the Atrekna the empathic links were full of nothing but primal terror, too strong for even the vast psionic and phasic abilities of the Elder Brains to stop.
With it spread two images, through the empathic link that the Atrekna didn't even know could carry visual images.
One was a Mad Lemur wearing only pants, sitting on the floor, a bottle of alcohol based intoxicant in one hand and a jar of sweetened berry preserves in the other. It was featuring a goofy grin and had the jam smeared across its face.
The other picture was the same Mad Lemur, roaring in rage, dressed in heavy plated power armor, a heavy magac pistol in one hand and one of the damnable cutting bars in the other, in mid leap, greenish blood smeared and spattered all over the Mad Lemur's armor and face.
Every being on the planet began screaming as one.
In absolute primal terror.
Roca just stood and watched in shock.
The Atrekna reeled back as the terror overwhelmed the Elder Brains and they too began screaming in terror.
In offices, factories, science labs, beings working on aerospace assets were attacked by others. Planes, jets, grav lifters, helicopters, all were attacked savagely.
Ones in flight were driven at high speed straight into the ground or into buildings with the pilots screaming in absolute terror at what they were doing and what they could see in their empathic mind's eyes.
Any Atrekna too close to the species found themselves under attack as the beings climbed over their own dead to attack the Atrekna.
The Atrekna who had pushed them, convinced them, promised them, that nothing would happen if they looked up at the night sky again.
The ones working on the massive ship building stations in space charged the power rooms and, still screaming in terror, detonated the reactors.
The ones on starships turned their guns on the other ships even as they fought to overload the reactors.
Every Wemtarran in the system went terror fueled mad.