"I fight where the Digital Omnimessiah tells me, I never ask why," - Hymn of Joan, Pre-Glassing
"Whenever you feel that there is no hope, pray to the Digital Omnimessiah to grant you his grace in death and fight all that harder, for those who fall holding the line against darkness in the name of those who cannot protect themselves are Terra's finest," - Canticles of the Faithful, Terran Martial Orders, 35 Post-Glassing
"Never tell me the odds, Goldenrod," - Jorge Lucas Starkiller, Pre-Glassing
The Lanaktallan former overseer held tightly to her former subordinates - now coworkers- hands with her own, swallowing thickly as the airlock cycled. Mist billowed in, just a decontaminate, but the effect made it seem slightly menacing as figures moved through the mist.
All that could be seen was glowing red eyes through the pale milky mist.
When the mist cleared all five of them gasped in shock.
It was female lemurs, all dressed in some type of non-adaptive camouflage, all carrying chemical propellant projectile weapons. None of them in the slightest bit of space armor or protective gear. They quickly moved through the station.
"They're checking the dead," the scanner tech said softly, watching on a screen as a female lemur moved into a room where a Putimat was slumped over, dead from poison, and put her fingers against the Putimat's neck. She said something the station sensors didn't pick up, shook her head, and they moved on.
"They're dropping relays," the Shavashan worked said softly, tapping his monitor. "Every corner, every intersection, they're slapping those relays on the walls."
"But the lemurs are all dead," the Tukna'rn replied, frowning. He reached up and ran his hand over his shaved and waxed head. "The Terran Xenocide Event wiped them out," he looked at the others. "Perhaps this is the reason the allies of the lemurs have not seemed too concerned about them being xenocided?"
The lady overseer squeezed his hand. "Their allies claim the lemur's drive to survive is legendary. We are witnessing their return. Do not worry, we have one another."
"They're at the control room door," the Shavashan said. "Looks like they're debating on whether or not to cut through it as we locked it."
The lady overseer got up and moved to the door, opening it with a touch of her hand.
"Welcome," she said, smiling. "We are all pleased to meet you."
"Aye," the lead one said, smiling and nodding her head.
The female lemurs behind the leader, their eyes glowing red, all smiled with her.
-----
Commander Jane Marcus Prastini felt a flush of satisfaction when one of the LCD monitors buzzed, flickered, then came online, the palm sized robot climbing out from behind it and up the damaged wall. The LCD screen flickered again and displayed "NO SIGNAL".
Jane checked the limited computer resources. The mainframe was still completely down. She was using the supercomputer arrays that normally handled autonomous combat drone operations for standard fabricator and drone work.
She smiles when she saw "UPLINK SECURE: 2.5Gigapulse Up/4.5 Gp Down" on the drone she managed to get in orbit. The drone was dropping off smaller satellites that all deployed surface scanner arrays, communications panels, and solar charging. They were only the size of a large dog when dropped, but once the panels were deployed, they were nearly a mile in size.
Jane checked the telemetery and saw she was pulling in good data from the sats, showing her that she had a supercontinent and a bunch of islands to defend. That meant she'd need wet-navy assets as well as space navy orbital superiority control assets.
That was all right, she had taken over water planets before.
She couldn't adjust her fab orders yet, she was still running on basic templates. Her clone banks were glitchy, same as they had been the last few drops, especially the weird one.
A glance at the 'Life Clock" showed it flashing errors. Jane shrugged and got back to work.
The first thing she'd need is forward and advance parties to set up logistics bases, forward operations bases, as well as factories.
A drone showed that the population was still panicking in the streets. She had two follow and realized that they had nowhere to go. No shelter.
Her radio was out and she had no non-drone communications ability yet.
"Take, hold, defend," Jane whispered the old mantra. She tabbed through the menus, selected the self-deploying civilian shelters from the menu and ordered the file brought up from survival memory cores, decompressed, and decrypted.
It would take six and a half minutes.
The time made Jane's hands itch, so she passed the time by setting waypoints and preparing for how she would deploy her forces.
The problem with billions of citizens is I need tens of millions of shelters, she mused. Each shelter can house two hundred fifty beings for twenty years with a natural born population doubling of 9.5 years for resource consumption. If I print off two hundred million of them from high speed dedicated assembly lines I'll have them all within...
...she realized that she might not have the time. From decryption to producing the first factory, she needed days.
She might not have it.
The Atrekna used temporal gates to bring in their troops, with temporal replication to bring back troops that had been slaughtered.
A quick check showed her chronotron reserves at only 8%.
She was nineteen minutes from being able to produce temporal stabilizers, disruptors, and 'Timex Flashbang" rounds.
She was nine minutes from the major vehicle fabrication unit being finished.
She was seven minute from the clone banks having their own slurry and energy sources.
She closed her eyes for a long moment.
Normally, she didn't need to do anything more than operate from her armored command housing.
This time, she had a feeling it was going to be different.
She was the planet's only defense.
"When all hope is lost, look to me, for I shall be your lantern in the darkness," she whispered softly to herself.
She leaned forward, absently grabbing a Cherry and Mistletoe Bingo Cola out of the fridge. She wiped her forehead with the cool can as she tapped her way through the menu.
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The option that was a last resort would be fully online in less than eleven minutes.
It would be up to three hours before the command bunker's primary mainframe could be online. Two hours before communication capability could be restored.
The vehicle facility could be upgraded in thirty seconds.
She started typing.
Jane prioritized the commands. When she made the last order, the computer required her to verify her command four times.
It started working.
Six minutes.
She looked around.
She couldn't remember the last time she had been outside the Command and Control Bunker.
Before the Mar-gite War.
She leaned back in the chair at the tone. It wrapped her in a control capsule and she felt the replication drone pull her outside. She put her hand against the inside lining, staring up at the padding.
All too soon she felt the smooth motion that she could barely remember from centuries ago, from dozens, hundreds of drops.
She control capsule suddenly unfolded as the controls went live in front of her. She winced slightly as the neural link punched into the base of her skull and her heart fluttered for a second before getting into synch with the massive fusion engine rumbling beneath her feet.
It smelled like new plastic and fresh leather with the slight ozone tang of electronics that had never been turned on before.
The screens flickered and came to life.
She could see the super-heavy vehicle construction fab unit's doors opening, bathing her in sunlight.
Words appeared in her vision.
MOBILE COMMAND AND CONSTRUCTION UNIT - ONLINE
Commander Jane Marcus Prastini, wrapped in a Jaeger Class mech, stepped out of the fab unit and into the afternoon sun.
-----
Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd was mature enough to admit that she understood very little of what the various female lemurs were showing her on the holo-emitter, although she found it all very exciting. Grav strikers taking off, some loaded with weapons only, others with troops and weapons.
She watched for nearly two hours as grav-strikers with a red cross and a red crescent picked up civilians and took them to where the self-deploying shelters were busy working. Her heart went out to all the poor people who the lemurs sometimes forced into the grav-strikers.
Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd had taken the time to record a message, using her best "everything will be just fine, the dining room is supposed to be on fire" voice, letting people know that the lemurs were there to help them, that the shelters were designed to protect them from the Atrekna, and that the lemurs needed people to get into shelter so they could fight the Atrekna to deny the Atrekna the planet.
It still hurt her hearts to see them cry and wail as if the lemurs were taking them all away for execution.
One of the lemur commanders came up and saluted and Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd pointed at the holo-emitter. "Is there no way to ease their distress?"
The female lemur waited until Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd's words were translated into Treana'ad clicks and then into whatever language she spoke. She thought for a moment, then nodded.
"Aye," she said.
"Please do. I understand that time is a priority and that all resources must be put toward the inevitable fighting for the planet, but please, just a little something to ease their distress in this terrible time," Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd said.
The lemur chewed on its bottom lip for a moment then nodded. "Aye," she said. She turned and started yammering at her subordinates.
Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd went back to watching the different holograms. She reached out and touched the hologram of a crying poppet being held tightly by its mother.
"I know it's hard, dear," she whispered. "I'll try to help you, I really will, but first I have to do my best to ensure you survive."
-----
Max watched as his flushed magazines all tore through space, missiles howling with warboi guidance programs beating their digital faces against the sensors, screaming through code streaming teeth. C+ cannon shells all dropping in and out of realspace only long enough to ensure lock and guidance. Plasma wave phased motion guns hammering out bright blue lances of energy that moved faster than light across interstellar distances.
Three of the C+ cannons went out as cracked barrels split down the sides, a feed mechanism bound up and the traincar sized slug jumped the track and wrecked the starboard recoil compensator. A plasma wave phased motion gun piston jammed and the other the recoil spring shattered when the coolant flooded the chamber. A third of his launching rails, overheated and overstressed, warped and twisted. Two creation engines scorched out, the nanites burning out and going dead. Eight of his twenty torpedo tubes were jammed, either heat warped, grav-rails going out, and feed mechanisms jamming.
Max gritted his teeth, knowing the Alpha Strike had put more stress on his ship, which had never been designed for full bore combat, could take even with the upgrades and modifications.
But the salvo was much more than the Atrekna had believed he could throw.
Max knew that a professional would roll his ships, take the hits on the forward armor and shields, or one the side and roll to spread the hits out.
It's what he would do.
What he wouldn't do is just keep trying to reverse thrust.
The salvo howled in on the Atrekna ships and bioweapon constructs.
Max could almost sense the panic and resignation as the explosions started.
He didn't stay to light the celebration fires just yet. They were moving in on the planets and while even if he did no engine damage to slow their return, they'd be back within striking distance of the two inhabited planets within 60-90 hours.
One of the hypermassive gas giants in the outer system was only a gas giant due to the tremendous pressures. It was two point four light minutes from the resonance zone but six light hours from the nearest inhabited planet and eight light hours from the other one, which was on the other side of the stellar mass.
Max smiled.
Unlike the Atrekna, he could maneuver superluminal inside the system just fine.
He checked the readouts. His torpedoes that he'd stealthed run into critical points of the system were in place.
Missiles and torpedoes were still slamming into the Atrekna formation as he kicked the hyperjump lever. Everything went sideways and he felt like a piece of taffy being stretched for a second, then there was the painful pressure and hard impact of a crash translation.
He was only a few thousand kilometers from the upper edges of the gas giant's atmosphere.
Max had no idea how bad his Alpha Strike had hurt the Atrekna, but he knew it had hurt him bad.
Still, he had one more card to play, one that he knew would make all the difference.
As he maneuvered to dock with the bare bones, skeletal, automated extraction platform he'd dropped hours ago, he reached out and checked the status the torpedo-borne system.
The Atrekna were still scattered, trying to recover from the Alpha Strike, the three task force groups shattered and riven.
Max knew they'd have to regroup.
And when they did, they'd start moving toward their targets. Sixty or so hours and they'd be in range of the planets and the stellar mass.
He smiled, a cold, vicious smile.
They'd also be in range of his ace in the hole.
-----
The Atrekna formation reeled under the relentless pounding of the lemur's guns. Many Young Ones were slain by the phasic kicker charges. Still others died when the ships or sections of ships they were on exploded and vacuum turned them into shredded and frozen chunks of meat.
Biological ships exploded as the missiles hit first, raking and clawing at the battlescreens until they dropped, only about 15% of the missiles slamming into the neutronium shells, shattering armor that had been considered the premier and ultimate armor for millions of years.
Before the Mad Lemurs of Terra had arrived.
The C+ shells bypassed the shields, bypassed armor, and slammed home deep in the hundreds of miles of tissue. Tissue was reduced to subatomic particle foam, not even plasma or gas, just disconnected sub-atomic particle fragments that expanded for a thousandth of a second before collapsing.
The crystalline ships fared a little better, Ancient Ones grabbing a hold on the Young Ones and using them as living projectors to reinforce the shielding, provide integrity shielding, and doing everything they could to deflect the lemur's savage attacks.
Three of the crystalline ships survived, one drifting in space, the engines dead, crewed by the screaming and dying, plumes of frost ejecting from rents in the hull slowly causing it to tumble.
None of them escaped unscathed.
The attack was finally over. It had lasted an eternal nineteen hellish seconds and nearly a quarter of the slavespawn had been driven mad by the barrage.
But the Atrekna felt cold satisfaction.
The lemur ship was gone. There was an expanding cloud of highly energetic particles slowly spreading from where it had been.
The Ancient Ones and Old Ones gathered together the Young Ones that had managed to survive with their sanity intact and together they split the tattered remains of the fleet.
One group would head for the closest habitable world. The second group would approach the stellar mass and resume sinking it and adjusting the temporal flow. The third would bypass both the closest world and the stellar mass to approach the other inhabited world.
The slavespawn took long moments to calm, to bring back under command.
The Atrekna started moving, arranging it so that all three groups would reach their goal at approximately the same time.
Seventy-Seven hours.
Then they'd be in range.
Then, they would take control of the system, as they should have.
You belong to us, they whispered.
Several of the Old Ones made the equivalent of grimaces when they realized they no longer had the power to let the inhabitants of the two planets know that basic fact.
More than a few rolled their eyes when the Ancient Ones and the Young Ones repeated it, this time full of arrogance and surety.
You belong to us.
The die was cast. There was no more fancy manuevering, no lemur to come to the last minute rescue of the population of those two planets. No more insane creature to try to thwart the Atrekna's will.
The planets, the species, the stellar mass, it all belonged to the Atrekna.
It was as inevitable as entropy.
If they had thought to, if they had even been slightly less arrogant, the Atrekna would have heard the universe laughing.