Chapter Twenty (Leebaw) (1/2)

Leebaw was nothing to anyone.

It was a small world in the ways of the galactic economy, political influence, manufacturing ability, or any other way that the Unified Galactic Systems cared about. Its people were a small people who had barely developed stardrive to get into jumpspace and travel to another planet. That planet had been important, a manufacturing hub for the leading tentacle of the Unified Civilizations.

The little world had gone from dreams of starfaring and exploration and joyous advancement to locked into their little world. Emigration quotas, GalNet bandwidth limits, even exploitation limits within their own system, all were put in place by the Unified Civilized Races Council.

After all, their world had been registered as the property of Ukewa's Packguru Manufacturing nearly three thousand years before the little people of Leebaw had even developed the ability to transmit or listen to radio waves.

The Unified Legal Council had informed the people of Leebaw that if they had intended to assert sovereignty over their own world, perhaps they should have filed a motion to appeal the claim register within a year of it first being filed.

The fact that the people of Leebaw had not even developed gear driven clocks by that point was not any fault of the Council. The people of Leebaw should have thought of that.

And so Leebaw's dreams of being part of, maybe even founding, some kind of interstellar society of equals died in a court of law before they even invented the metal nibbed pen.

They tried protesting the only way they knew how at that point: Violence.

Their attempts were pitiable. They barely lasted a full decade before they were defeated again.

The Unified Races Council ordered to that the people of Leebaw undergo ”therapy” to remove ”violent primitive instincts” through social conditioning.

The little land dwelling amphibians were marched lockstep into camps to taught how to properly venerate Ukewa's Packguru Manufacturing (A subsidiary of Nu'ukluk Entertainment Conglomerate) and follow the commands and regulations of their elders. The little space facility, the Leebawian pride and joy, was razed for 'ecological reasons' and a coal burning power plant put in its place, after all, the Unified Space Council had already had UPM build a much better space port than the crude native one. Bit by bit the people of Leebaw saw their cultural heritage sites wiped away in the name of 'modernization.'

With the destruction of history comes the destruction of cultural identity. After a generation or two they became a loyal worker pod for UPM, spending their meager pay on necessities and a few simple luxuries, as was proper.

Still, some of them harbored resentment in their hearts.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be, was it?

The amphibians, half the size of the four legged, four armed, six eyed, tendriled Overseers known as the Lanaktallan, dug into burrows, squirreled away makeshift weapons, made careful chains of communication. The Leebawians created small units of resistance, each reporting to a leader, who only knew the name of one leader.

They had recreated the resistance cell structure again.

Forced to live outside the shining cities, they suffered often from vertigo after all, they slowly gathered. The Lanaktallan were the ones enamored with the cities, not the Leebawians. The thought was to bring down those high shining towers, bring the Lanaktallan down to the level of the amphibians.

And so the Leebawians prepared and waited.

But that was not why it was dying.

It had become infected.

It started simply. Twinkling points of light appearing out in space. The planetary managers said that the lights were mere tests, nothing for the Leebawians to concern themselves with. Then scanners went down.

A space station began screaming.

Leebaw's GalNet became a place of horror as the infection spread across the solar system.

The Lanaktallan counseled caution and not to be swayed by anti-Unified propaganda even as they boarded their ships to flee the system.

Then sparks appeared in the sky as orbital leisure stations were destroyed, ships were raked with fire and exploded, and everything but the GalNet node was wiped from the night sky.

For three days Leebaw had cringed away from quiet darkness.

Then the voice was broadcast across the world, a brain twisting screech of absolute horror.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE

Mechanical horrors landed at the spaceport. Not with crashes, but landing with care before wading into the starships still in port. The newcomers tore apart the ships and their crews then spread out, moving toward manufacturing facilities. Private spaceships were destroyed in high orbit, their wreckage first scattered then gathered and processed. Cargo vessels were torn apart and processed.

Still sparks blossomed in the night sky. Little pinpricks that lit up and went out. Once in a while there were long streaks in the night that ended in tiny flashing pinpricks.

The Leebaw first viewed the mechanicals as liberators and rushed out to great them.

Only to be murdered en-masse.

The Leebawians all nodded to one another. Of course, it was just another monster from outside. The Cult of the Solitary Burrow were correct. Those who reached out a hand in friendship only had it torn off or had a manacle wrapped around the wrist.

The Leebawians scattered as best they could.

The mechanicals concentrated on the Lanaktallan, herding them into their cities, broadcasting the savage murders suffered by the Lanaktallan. The Leebawians thought that perhaps if they just pretended none of it was going on, the mechanicals would leave them alone.

That pipe-dream ended with shrieks of agony.

The Leebawians learned in the next few turns on their world to avoid any technology higher than fire and sharp sticks. A machine that found any ”Primitive Ones” might chase them and kill a few but largely ignored them after scanning quickly for any technology. A quick thinking Leebawian noted that every one of their people fitted with a cybernetic link was gone, dead, their bodies torn apart. Any group larger than an ancient clutch was destroyed.

The Leebawians mourned for lost dreams. Even being drones for UPM was preferable to being torn from comfortable housing and forced to live in the mud, hunting with sticks for nearly extinct mussels and wildlife, drinking dirty water, and watching the cities slowly burn.

The Leebawians wept.

They just wanted to be not alone. They just wanted to see what was beyond. Just wanted to meet other beings.

But not like this.

Not like this.

Pinpricks appeared the sky again, only these ones did not go out. They got steadily brighter as the Council Cities burned. Sparks came to life and died back down around those burning stars.

The Leebawians looked up, wondering what was happening now, even though a small part of them knew that it wouldn't matter. Whoever it was, their little people would be nothing more than amusement for hunters at worst, slaves and drudges at best.

Hope flickered, then went out.

Leebaw was dying. Not from the slamming impacts of orbital guns, not from the mechanical murderers sweeping across the planet, not because the cities, bright and sparkling, were burning and being turned to horror filled charnel houses.

It was dying as hope died.

Then came the message. From the stars, as fire blossoms, new suns ignited in the night sky close enough that more than once night turned to day for long heartbeats. It vibrated off of every scrap of metal, bellowed from every speaker, howled from every hidden datapad.

WE ARE THE TERRAN CONFEDERACY

WE HAVE COME TO ASSIST

HOLD THE LINE, BROTHERS!

The Leebawians huddled in their burrows, closing their large expressive eyes, and just wished the universe would go away. The message couldn't be meant for them. They were small, insignificant, and the universe viewed them as little more than slaves to their betters to be slain for amusement at will.

But some, who harbored resentment toward UPM, who nursed flickering anger in their souls for the Lanaktallan, began to dig free caches wrapped in EM shielding and buried in iron rich mud. Began dreaming that perhaps, this time, things might be different.

As the little Leebawians watched, streaks slipped down from the orbitals, into atmosphere, and began to speed toward the thickest concentrations of machines. Nuclear fire blossomed, pushed away the smoke of burning bodies, and left behind damaged and destroyed machines. Not the larger ones, of course, those rose from where they had crouched, shaking off smaller ones, and screeched their defiance at the newcomers.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE

The newcomers bellowed back

FREEDOM OR DEATH

The Leebawians huddled down, caught between the two roaring forces. The braver of them lifted their googly eyes to look upon the land, raise their gaze to the sky again.

Massive ships roared down from the sky and the Leebawians felt their thick rubbery skin prickle up in fear. The last two times that had happened the universe had shown them that they were the butt of a cosmic joke. As the Leebawians watched the machines, the new masters of Leebaw, swarmed the massive ships, which responded with counter-fire.

Some ships exploded in mid-air.

More didn't.

Even more rained down from the high orbitals.

The ships didn't bother to slow down to a gentle speed and then slowly levitate down to the earth. These ones came in fast, rockets screaming as they suddenly braked. Radiation poured from the nozzles, scorching the ground, burning away vegetation and turning dirt to plasma hardened rock. The ships slammed down, the sides opened even as gunports continued firing. Parts of the massive ships detached, moving on treads, deploying guns that raked the sky with shrieking munitions. The parts of the ship took up positions around their brood-mother, linking together their fire, adding their own roaring voice to the defiance lashing out at the machines that still swarmed.

From inside the ship came more vehicles, massive bipeds that were made entirely of metal. More weapons were raised, and the machine's assault began to tatter, began to break. The wave of metal was pushed back further and further by the guns. The very sky seemed to catch fire as the newcomers threw their fury into the faces of the machines, unleashing endless wrath into machines without numbers.

Shell by shell, beam after beam, the newcomers drove the machines back. But that wasn't enough for the newcomers, they spread out, like spokes from the hub of the landing craft. Each spoke building another hub, calling down more ships from the sky, repeating it over and over.

Smashing the machines.

The Leebawians dug deep into their burrows, fearful of what horrors the newcomers would inflict on the small Leebawian people. The only step they could see from driving them to scattered primitivism was to wipe their small people from existence.

Then, it happened. As dozens of Leebawian's watched from the safety of the water of the swamp the newcomers, the huge bipeds of metal and fury, approached the machines that kept the younglings in cages for experimentation or just plain sport. Over the last few turnings of the world the machines had moved the younglings from cages to inside the buildings.

The watching Leebawians knew that their younglings would be slaughtered, caught between the murderous machines and the furious newcomers.

They waited for the pounding of artillery and aircraft that always preceded a biped ground assault, flicked their tongues nervously while they waited for the massive tanks to pour cannon fire into the base as they did to break it up for the bipeds.

None of that happened. Instead, the bipedal machines, accompanied at times by four legged ones, slowly moved forward, from cover to cover, firing only at the guns that revealed themselves in the machine's base. They seemed almost non-committal, firing and advancing, firing and retreating, shifting their lines.

To the hidden Leebawians, it made no sense.

The Leebawian's felt a stirring in the current and froze. The currents did not feel like one of the big machines patrolling the rivers and streams of the delta, but like more Leebawian's moving through the water, towing large fish as if they had made a prized catch.

Clicks sounded in the water and the Leebawian's blinked in nervousness. The clicks sounded like Leebawian clicks but made no sense. It was just random sounds.

Curious, one of the Leebawian swam deeper, into the silt filled cloudy water deeper in the river. He held tight to his spear, but had a stolen handgun under his tongue, ready to swallow it if he had to. His echolocation told him that there were dozens of his kind swimming through the cloudy opaque water, pulling huge fish behind them. The fish blood made it impossible to tell which tribe the newcomers were from, clogging the taste-buds, so the Leebawian swam deeper, lighting up the ends of his whiskers in hopes of seeing who was moving through but had not announced themselves.

At the bottom of the river he saw them. His eyes seeing what his senses said were only his kind and some fish.