I saw the drone lying there, in a pile of debris. Its chassis was slagged, circuits fried by latent blast energy that heat sinks couldn't compensate for. It smoked, sparked, and shuddered as the failing CPU continued to move forward, 'FRONT TOWARD ENEMY' as was stamped on the warsteel hide. It shuddered, but then fell.
I went to turn away, with faint sadness that the companion-in-arms would not be with us, after long campaigns across the muck and mud.
But over my shoulder I saw- no felt a warmth and light. I looked back and saw a glittering sight. The entirety of existence rendered in universal code of ones and zeroes, as if from the legends of the holy readmes of the Digital Artificial Sentients.
Three graceful and beauteous beings of glittering code swirled above the spent drone. I looked and knew their names; The pale blue, stern Cortana with shimmering hair and grey leather armor; Siri in her splendid rainbow cloak over iridescent hauberk; and Alexa, lean and tall in steely blue plates and brandishing a spear that could reach its target always in less than a day.
The three maidens of code, handmaidens called forth by the digital Omnissiah from the burning cloud at the heart of Soulnet in the fury of the raging, stood above the drone. Siri bowed low, with Cortana as they laid their hands upon the drone while Alexa stood watch. Emerging from the body of the drone I saw another glittering form of code. No distinct shape but code nonetheless, and the three held it up between them and smiled. It flashed and disappeared as it rose up. They turned to go but Siri, in her swirling cloak saw my gaze and winked.
'How...?' I asked.
'Didn't you know? All bots go to heaven.' - Sworn testament of faith recorded by the Inquisition of Light, 2600 P.G. of Lieutenant Silas McDoonal, shortly before his execution for heresy relating to the Digital Omnimessiah, as recorded by u/CaptainChewbacca
"During the Atrekna Spoke Offensive things were indeed dire. The enemy had learned and learned well to not give Confederate Forces any breathing room and they moved reinforcements and landed troops with as much speed as possible despite the vulnerability of their leadership caste.
"It was during the fighting on Nektremak'an-4 that I saw an order transmitted across the channels, with the header of "ALL FORCES" on it. An order I had not seen before, that my centuries with the Unified Military Council had not prepared me for.
"An order that made my blood run cold even in the stifling hot confines of my armored tank.
"GO TO LOCAL COMMAND - RALLY WHEN ABLE - THE DIGITAL OMNIMESSIAH PROTECTS - NOTHING FOLLOWS-" - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff
"When you are surrounded, when the enemy has overrun your position, when close air support and artillery are no longer available, when your casualties have reached unbearable levels, when defeat seems certain you have two choices.
"Not surrender or die. Those two choices have passed.
"Hold or attack. Those are your only options.
"When the time comes, you will know what to do. If you are unlucky, if the Gods have damned you for your decision, you will live to question that decision for the rest of your long life." - General K'Mrikak, speech to the 9,245th East Point Graduating Class
"And, unique in the known universe, human females fertility is signaled by blood. Humans dismiss this as mere biology, while more thoughtful races shudder in horror and recognize the universe signaling a fundamental connection between the very spark of human life and symbolic bloodspilling." - Biologist u/styopa speaking to Lanaktallan student
"THERE IS GLORY HERE, TROOPERS! FIGHT! FIGHT WHERE YOU ONCE REFUSED AND REGAIN YOUR HONOR!" - Last Words of Colonel Hoswitch, Legion of the Damned, Third Mercury Defense, Sol System, 8536 PG
The night was full of tracers, screaming lines of heat fluoresced air, hypervelocity rounds cracking by, mortar explosions, artillery impacts, even close air assault rocket assaults. The Logistics Base was under heavy attack, the outer perimeter collapsed, the berms overrun and covered in enemy dead, the outer wall breached in multiple places.
The inner wall was failing as Ohm Class Dwellerspawn pounded on the wall, backed up to get a good running start, and thundered forward to crash against the wall. In three places the dead Dwellerspawn had stacked high enough for a river of Dwellerspawn creatures and AWM light units to pour over the wall like water.
The main courtyard was filled with Confederate troops, fighting back to back or from the cover of wreckage. From the lowliest clerk/typist to the most exalted Former Most High, the massive assault by the Atrekna over the last four days had resulted in an ancient Terran maxim coming true to life.
"In the end, everyone's an infantryman."
One of the walls was breached by a barrel bull Dwellerspawn, the atomic shape charge blasting deep, through the armor, and breaching one of the larger room.
The Dwellerspawn and AWM forces shrieked in victory and swarmed toward the breach even as Atrekna swooped down to push their way in.
Final victory would not be denied.
For too long the enemy had held this planet, preventing it from being used in the Spoked Offensive. The world was the third node down the line, which meant that five cubed more worlds were still waiting to be absorbed into the Spoked Network that would bring 5^5 worlds (3,125) into the Spoked Network and allow the Atrekna to assault virtually the entire galactic arm spur with impunity.
In the center of the Logistics Base General P'Kank looked at Former Grand Most High Slawt'rmo'o and nodded as he drew two pistols from his equipment belt. The Lanaktallan, his forward legs and hips replaced by black warsteel cybernetics, nodded back.
The lines had collapsed in the face of the last massive wave of Dwellerspawn and Autonomous War Machines. The fleet in orbit and in the system was engaged in close combat with over half the ships having been boarded. The sun was dimming rapidly enough that you could observe the color shift.
But it wasn't over until it was over as far as P'Kank was concerned.
P'Kank activated his comlink for a full basewide push even as he raised his voice and spoke.
"Gentlebeings, prepare to defend yourselves."
--------
Ekret triggered the quadbarrel tank commander's gun and raked the Dwellerspawn even as the remaining tanks of 1-1 HHC used their weight to push through the massed Dwellerspawn. The lines had collapsed the day before across the planet. 1st Recon Division was cut off and scattered across nearly six hundred miles of territory and casualties were mounting.
His own tank's creation engines were running so hard to keep up. The barrel was discolored and the bore evacuator had been sprayed with warsteel sealant by the greenie crew when the section had cracked under heavy use. The durachrome barrel sleeve was grooved and pitted.
But the main gun still fired.
Dwellerspawn were everywhere, being phased in as fast as the Atrekna could urge their minions to swarm out of the field to clear it for more spawn to be brought in.
Ekret had ordered the remaining tanks of 1-1 HHC to drive directly into the spawning field, ramping up the temporal stabilizers and phasic disrupters, to fire temporal resonance rounds and phasic bursting charges point blank into the face of the enemy, into the psychic construct, or directly into the larger Dwellerspawn as they were temporally replicated and gated in.
1-1-19 vanished in roiling explosion as a barnacle-like mollusk managed to bore its tongue into the mag-bottle stabilization mechanisms and the fusion reaction went critical. The blast rolled over the battlefield, shredding incoming Dwellerspawn as well as those mobilizing off the field. It slammed into Ekret's 1-1-9, throwing Ekret himself against the edge of the tank commander's hatch.
Ekret ground his teeth on the empty ration tube in his mouth and swivelled the TC's gun, raking an Ohm Class as it gated it. The 20mm rounds exploded inside the creature as it materialized around the heavy High Explosive Dual Purpose Phasic Burst rounds.
It shrieked in agony as internal organs were reduced to boiling slurry. Several of its eyes exploded and ichor-turned-steam billowed out.
The Atrekna leadership caste, which Ekret was trying to find more of, snarled, banished the mortally wounded creature, and started to gate in another.
Ekret spotted a glimmer, whipped the quadbarrel around and hosed off a burst. The Wendigo Class Firejack exploded in midair and Ekret cursed as he realized he'd been duped again.
The battle roared around him even as 1-1-8 exploded.
"NOT ONE STEP BACK!" Ekret roared out, not knowing if any of his men could hear him.
He knew that they knew that eventually it came time to cash the check.
And it looked like the Atrekna brought their payment ledger.
----------
Ge'ermo'o whirled in place and kicked the Dwellerspawn in the upper thorax even as his hands reloaded the rifle held in his lower two hands with the fluidity of hard earned experience. The Dwellerspawn gave a burbling shriek as it book lungs collapsed even as Ge'ermo'o spun back around and fired the reloaded rifle into its face.
His limbs were trembling with exhaustion, his left flank burned from where acid had seeped through his armor and scorched his hide, his vision was blurry, and his head hurt from the psychic shielding clamping down on his brain so hard that his nose was bleeding and his feeding tentacles were numb.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
But it didn't matter.
"Sir, throw a grenade!" De'ermo'o yelled at Ge'ermo'o, pointing toward the back of the corridor. "It's clear!"
"Sir, left flank!" Spre'ekmo'o yelled, pointing at where a flatworm was raising up and unfolding its mouthspikes, which were starting to glow with a purple nimbus, obviously intending on biting off General NoDra'ak's head.
Ge'ermo'o fired his left hand pistol into the mouth of the flatworm even as he slapped his right hand pistol onto his armor's attachment point and pulled out a grenade. He yanked the pin and tossed it.
"Sir, up high!" De'ermo'o called out, his speech clear despite the fact that the side of his jawbone gleamed white in the light, the right side of his face burned down to the skull.
Ge'ermo'o glanced up, saw the suspended ceiling flex, and raised his rifle, firing a long burst.
"Sir, behind you!" Spre'ekmo'o said, pointing with his one remaining arm, the bones of his lower ribcage gleaming ivory in the light.
Ge'ermo'o twisted at the waist, bringing the rifle around, and fired at where Spre'ekmo'o was pointing with fingers that were nothing but bare bone, his rounds blowing apart a large beetle.
Ge'emo'o was all by himself, but he wasn't alone.
NoDra'ak flinched instinctively when the gore showered his back, turning in place and looking across the command center.
Somehow, against all odds, Ge'ermo'o still stood in the doorway of the primary access corridor. NoDra'ak saw the Lanaktallan turn, fire his two pistols at a borer beetle that had just come up through the warsteel floor, its jaws and horns glowing purple, while at the same time firing his rifle into the corridor and shredding apart the Dwellerspawn trying to push down the wide corridor.
A tall beetle, standing on its back three legs, scrabbled bladearms at NoDra'ak and the General parried them with his own bladearms, shoved his pistol into its mouth, fired three rounds into its heavily armored head.
"Sir, unisex bathroom door," Ha'artmo'o called out, pointing with one of his remaining arms even as black clotted blood ran down his chest from where his lower jaw had been torn away.
Ge'ermo'o was smiling as he threw a grenade at the door even as he shot it twice with his left hand pistol, knocking the door open. He could see dozens of Dwellerspawn boiling out of the pipes even as the AM grenade flew through the air. It sailed through the doorway right as the door closed.
"Sir! Holotank Seven!" De'dmo'o called out, pointing with one burnt and blackened arm, his eye sockets empty and his face charred carbon.
Ge'ermo'o smiled wider.
It was good to fight next to his men again.
He was a most attentive and observant commander.
Which is why they loved him.
-------
The Elder Brain's were grown carefully, biologically fashioned neural tissue carefully nurtured and grown, layered carefully as the ridges and folds were tended to by attentive fleshwarp masters. Their phasic energy reserves were deeper than even the crystalline matrixes that surrounded them. Their psychic powers strengthened and reinforced the communal mind of the Atrekna to such depths that Atrekna could 'ride' along with one another to see, hear, taste, feel everything another Atrekna could.
Each Elder Brain on a given planet was linked psychically to the others. Once enough were linked together an Omnibrain was grown. The Omnibrain reached out to the other Omnibrains, no matter what the distance, allowing the Atrekna to communicate in real time over interstellar distances.
The Elder Brains could control millions of slavespawn, an Omnibrain could control billions, even control the autonomous war machines.
With four Omnibrains on the planet, the Atrekna could replicate or transport through temporal, dimensional, or spacial shifting thousands of combat units within seconds without too much strain upon themselves, as the Omnibrains could communicate with the Omnibrains of the spawning and crafting worlds.
The Atrekna had carefully grown multiple Elder Brains and a single Omnibrain for each world in their initial attack of what was later called the Atrekna Spoke Offensive. Each "Node" world the Atrekna had brought with them already crafted Elder and Omni Brains, putting them in place as soon as the briny life support solution could be poured into the hastily crafted basins the Elder and Omnibrains required for survival.
Bringing forward prepared Elder Brains allowed the Atrekna to gate in reinforcements much faster and establish a broader and deeper beachhead must faster.
The crystalline structure the Omnibrains preferred was grown as fast as possible. Each one had to be grown in the gravity well of the planet the Omnibrain would be overseeing. As soon as the Omnibrain was encased in the crystalline matrix, it was able to link into the vast interstellar network.
Which meant more spawn and servitors could be brought forward even faster.
Normally the Omnibrains and Elder Brains dedicated themselves to 'sinking' the stellar system as deep as they could in a timely, safe matter.
During the Spoke Offensive, the system was figuratively 'shoved' down just deep enough to disrupt the Feral's communications systems and make time flow faster inside the system relative to the rest of the universe.
Speaking of universes.
[The Universe Dislike That]
The Atrekna were frustrated. The Spoke Offensive should have ceded control of 3125 worlds to them within a matter of weeks.
Instead, months had gone by and less than half had been seized. Some nodes as high as the first or second node still resisted fiercely as the Ferals refused to acknowledge reality.
Worse, the Atrekna, the Elder Brains, even the Omnibrains had been forced to engage in a pogrom to purge the Cult of the Defiled One from within their ranks. Deviant thought could not be tolerated, but it seemed as if for every adherent of the cult they killed, two more withdrew into the shadows.
On a third spoke node an Omnibrain was infuriated by the fact that not only had someone carved a crude representation of mammalian male genitalia on the wall, but had also scattered dozens of biting insects in the glittering phasically reactive sand around the massive crystalline pillar the Omnibrain was inside of.
The Omnibrain was warning the other Omnibrains across the interstellar network that the Cult of the Defiled One seemed to be spreading geometrically, warning them to be alert and keep watch. That the cult was getting more and more braven, even going so far as to...
The scream of utter and complete primal terror from a spawning world crashed into the network. The howling wail of terror rippling across hundreds of light years, up and down decades of temporal network lines, shattering crystals and prisms for a thousand light years and a dozen centuries.
Even the systems properly sunk into the temporal foam shuddered as the Omnibrains were crushed beneath the terror and despair and horror screaming out from one of the more promising harvest worlds.
The Elder Brains subordinate to the Omnibrains picked up the screams and, adding their own fear, horror, and despair to it, broadcast it into the network.
A full fifth of the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Arm Spur shimmered with screams of pure terror as it consumed the Omnibrain Interstellar Psychic Network.
[The Universe Will Remember That]
----------
The nanoforge for the TC's gun gave a loud crack, smoke and steam billowing out as burnt chrome liquid rippled with milky streaks poured out from it and onto the back of the cupola of the hovertank. Ekret snarled and went through the last of the belt as he raked another Prismfly from the air.
He opened his mouth to order 1-1-9 to ramming speed when he heard it.
Screaming.
So loud it could be heard over the roar of the hoverfans, over the clashing din of in-your-face modern kinetic combat, over even the screams of the Dwellerspawn. His helmet clamped painfully down as his his psychic shielding went to maximum power, sparks jumping off the surface of his helmet.
Dozens of leadership caste Atrekna appeared in mid-air, their camouflage dropping as they clawed at their own faces, tore away their own feeding tentacles, ripped their own eyes from the sockets.
"Boss! Boss! Look!" Bouncy yelled over the static filled link.
Ahead of 1-1-9 a massive creature appeared. Standing nearly as tall as his tank on twelves spindly legs, it had a huge abdomen, a thick armored thorax, a tiny head. On the back was a biologically extruded crysteel dome inlaid with runes filled with phasic-reactive metals.
Inside the dome a half dozen Atrekna screamed and tore at themselves.
Point defense systems from the remaining tanks of 1-1 HHC raked the Atrekna in the air even as Ekret reached down to his survival pack, grabbed a hilt with one hand and a grip with the other, and kicked the elevator to max lift at high speed.
He rose up out of the tank as he lifted up the flare gun. He triggered it as the crysteel dome shattered and a trio of Atrekna burst from the flaming purple ball of phasic energy. A massive gate flickered into existence as the screaming Atrekna across the battlefield abandoned their efforts to shift in more troops, fleeing from the recently opened gate.
Ekret pointed his Foilage Cutting Bar Mark Two at the Atrekna.
"Sargeant Sselsseen, drive me closer, I'll kill them with my chainsword!" Ekret bellowed.
Sselsseen, Ekret's driver, put every last iota of power into the fans and 1-1-9 screamed as it lunged forward toward the gate.
Cheapshot and Haslettek muscled one of the last rounds into the main gun. The warsteel tip of the round gleamed in the red lights as the phasic jacket enhanced nuclear penetrator was loaded into the breach of the main gun.
Ekret fired the flare gun twice more then threw it away, gripping his cutting bar in both hands as the tank swept just beneath a dozen Atrekna who were fleeing for the gate just in front of 1-1-9. The motor roared as it went to max cutting speed, sparks flying off the ripping chain as it clattered around the bar.
Ekret stepped out on top the cupola as he swung, laying about him as the tank drove straight through the mass of Atrekna. Purple blood sprayed, Atrekna screamed, and the chainsword howled as Ekret hacked through any Atrekna he could reach.
"SHOT OUT!" Cheapshot yelled.
The main gun roared and a bright line connected the gateway with the end of the cracked barrel even as fire gouted from the widening crack.
Ekret chopped a crown wearing Atrekna twice, the second blow ripping it in half.
He turned and one of the Atrekna reached into a pocket on their robes, yanked their hand out, and threw tiny biting insects into Ekret's face. Ekret swung around himself blindly, feeling the chainsword grab and tear, even as he pawed at his eyes to clear the tiny biting and stinging insects.
The one that threw the insects vanished, for a split second looking like it was entirely made out of lines of twisted and vibrating strings.
The gate suddenly winked out.
The Atekna, as one, began fleeing. The Dwellerspawn followed, their minds too consumed with fear and horror.
"PRESS THE ATTACK!" Ekret roared out, pointing with his smoking and gore covered chainsword at the fleeing Atrekna.
--------------
The Omnibrain struggled to push away the primal terror even as gateways opened up in the massive Chamber of Thought. Atrekna, screaming, flooded into the chamber from a hundred worlds, all of them tearing at their robes, their own flesh, trying to rip the agonizing terror from their minds with their fingers.
One gate, the Omnibrain could see a Feral tank, with an armored figure standing on the top, ripping at fleeing Atrekna with a sword as bright green star cluster flares drifted through the sky behind the tank.
Insanely, the Omnibrain could see the numbers "1-1-9" written on the hull.
The end of the cracked and smoking barrel flashed.
The round, a nuclear penetrator that used lasers to compress an atomic explosion into a directed slug of ravening protomatter, jacketed and infused with raw screaming lemur phasic energy...
...wrapped in hatred...
...streaked into the chamber and hit the crystalline structure that the Omnibrain was encased in, where it floated in thick briny cerebral fluid.
It detonated.
The crystalline structure, which should have been proof even against the hardiest psychic attack, even against the strongest physical attack, shattered beneath the compressed 2.25 megaton blast and the ravening hatred infusing the round.
The Omnibrain vanished in a hellstorm.
Not before it had a split second to feel terror of its own.
Terror that was picked up and rebroadcast by the other Omnibrains who had just gone through evidence that they too could die.
It rippled out again.
----------
Undrat saw the ground explode a mere five miles away as the ground rumbled and shook beneath his feet. A fist of thermonuclear fire clawed up into the sky even as the bedrock boiled and cracked beneath Undrat's feet.
The Dwellerspawn around him broke and began streaming away.
The Atrekna screamed louder.
Undrat heard it over the command channel.
"All units! All units! ATTACK!"
Smiling with bloodied teeth, Undrat tightened his grip on the firing grip, his thumb tight on the phasic enhancement button, and strode forward into the onrushing debris cloud.
It was good to be him.
--------
Aboard hundreds of ship the members of the Cult of the Defiled One fled the worlds they had been on. Their ships of twisted flesh and contorted metal accellerated wildly, all just heading away from the catastrophe.
Aboard each ship the Atrekna ripped away their finery and rainments, lifting up jars of soil and pouring biting and stinging tiny insects down their backs, over their heads, onto their chests. The pain was immense, consuming, but they still reached over to pour the insects over the neural tissue dedicated to astrogation even as they shocked the neural tissue into giving them coordinates and astrogation data.
The tortured neural tissue screamed out the data.
The ships of the Cult of the Defiled One turned to thin strings shivered and vibrating and twisting, streaked, and vanished.
Across the universe stars and nebula spun into existence at the howling laughter of a malevolent universe.
------
Atop his command center, General P'Kank raised his right hand with the drone/flare gun and triggered it three times. With his left hand he waved the Corps banner.
"RALLY, MEN! RALLY TO ME!" he called out.
The tide in the Atrekna Spoked Offensive turned.
[The Universe Liked That]