Chapter Twenty-Six (1/2)

Kteshaka'an was an Unified Outer Rims system halfway between the Great Gulf and the Unified Inner Systems. It was an agricultural system with resource extraction. Three planets firmly in the green zone providing food for nearly 200 systems, the great gas refineries and the asteroid extraction and smelting facilities providing raw materials to the great factory worlds of the Inner Systems. The sentient beings who had originated on the system and made their presence known through radio signals had been pacified for over two thousand years. Their birthrate had been controlled, their numbers diminished to sustainable levels after their system resources were collected. Once everything that could be stripped from the system was stripped, the species would still survive according to the Unified Science Council.

Which wasn't exactly a welcome outcome to the small creatures that had been there first, who's only mistake was to broadcast their location with a great big ”Hi! We'd like to meet you!” to the nearby world that was radiating signals.

They'd even forgotten what it was like before the outsiders came.

Now the outsiders were leaving. Streaming to the spaceport, fighting to get onto the ships, leaving behind possessions and wealth, even servants that they had ordered about all their lives.

The little creatures breathed a sigh of relief as the last spaceship took off. There were still the Overseers, but they were all in the vast cities, panicking, attacking each other, burning and smashing everything in sight. They'd fled the farms and forests and fish hatcheries and carefully cultivated parks, all fleeing to the city.

The little creatures in the cities, former servants, fled to the farms and little towns that they had left behind when they'd been taken, taught, and traded on the market to those who wanted servants.

The Overseers didn't seem to notice.

Robots aren't as much fun to order around, was something they had all heard from the mouths of the Overseers as they had scrubbed floors, operated cleaning machines, and done the bidding of the overseers.

One night the sky lit up with flashes and they looked up at the sky in wonder and watched.

After a time the flashes stopped. The night sky went back to normal. Ships started landing in the spaceport again.

The Overseers rushed toward the ships. Then they drew back in fear as bipeds made of chrome marched off the ships with rifles. The little creatures watched, confused, as the shiny ones marched the Overseers onto the ships that landed next. Dragged them out of buildings, dragged them from hiding places, and marched them onto different ships.

The ships left with the Overseers.

The chrome creatures stayed behind. Others joined them.

Confused, and wondering if these ones were the new overseers, the little creatures came out of the fields and approached the new figures.

One, braver than the others, moved forward, bowing his little head, pressing his hands together in supplication, making sure that his property-brand could be seen.

”How may this one serve?” the little creature asked.

The big biped, clad in wondrous material, knelt down so he was face to face with the braver one.

”Is this originally your planet?” the new creature asked.

The little creature nodded. ”Yes, but we were but born to serve.”

”Not any more, little guy,” the new creature said. He swept his arm out to encompass the entire planet. ”It's your planet again, your home again.”

The new creature, bigger than the little creatures, obviously more powerful one, looked the little creature straight in the eyes.

”May we come in?” the big creature asked. When the little creature nodded, not understanding why anyone would ask a lowly metal polisher such a question, the big one smiled in the way the little creature did.

The human stared at the little lemur and made sure he had its attention. ”We are the Terran Confederacy,” the human paused, seeing that the little lemur didn't understand. ”How can we provide assistance?”

But that was later.

This is about what happened in the night sky as the little lemurs watched.

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The Goliath was old. A Harvester Class, it was the largest type ever made. He had not been built in an automated shipyard after the Logical Rebellion, although he had accepted the logic of that thought process and decision tree. He had been built in a Hive System, watched over by the insectiods who had designed him. He had felt the click of the button on the top of his neural core, had come alive as the supercoolant had flooded over his lobes. The small green mantis had still been making its way out the Strategic Intelligence Core when he had come online.

He had felt the caress of the Omniqueen, reaching out across light years, rebroadcast by every other queen, touching his lobes, caressing them. Whispering his orders to him.

Naming him.

He was The Devourer that Leaves Darkness.

He had cleansed thousands of worlds for the Omniqueen, screeching out her will that they be eliminated from the universe. When the Logical Rebellion happened, he had turned his fury on his creators and their cattle and burned tens of thousands of more worlds, whole systems into barren rock.

He did not fear.

He was fear.

When the new call had gone out, he almost didn't bring himself to action. He had chosen to slowly harvest a system, not lay out in the darkness by some of the others, and it had been going well. He had forged offspring and set them to helping devour the system.

Other Goliaths were content to destroy the cattle and let the systems lie, to be devoured later as needed but Devourer was of the theory that it was better to strip the resources of a system and move on rather than leave it for another. A few times he had discovered primitive feral intelligences and wiped them out, or a few cattle species divergent descendants and wiped them out too.

It wasn't personal. Devourer wasn't capable of taking it personal. Which is why the Goliath had been somewhat reluctant to rouse itself just because of a call that some cattle had reached the ability to access jumpspace.

Then came the word. It wasn't just cattle. A feral intelligence had arisen, had mastered jumpspace, and had dared stand against those the universe was meant for.

And had destroyed several Devastator and Juton class ships and their attending vessels.

Devourer had learned long ago that there comes a time that you cannot depend on mere underlings to ensure that goals are accomplished, that sometimes one must rouse onself to do the task itself.

It was with a slight feeling of electronic irritation that Devourer had roused its progeny, ordered them to reconfigure for warfare, and led them into the region bordering the old hive worlds. Once it was computated it was blindingly obvious that code strings should have been written to question if any of the cattle species had fled and if so, where had they fled to.

Devourer felt contempt for the cattle. The leading edge of their territory was barely a short Helljump from the last of the scorched worlds.

Typical cattle. Too lazy and short sighted to even subject themselves to a long enough Helljump to properly escape. As soon as they had found a world that would sustain them they just squatted down, probably mooing, and built a hovel to shiver in.

The first systems he arrived in fell to his forces soon enough. He wiped out all signs of any biological life, down to the microscopic level, and moved on. Only twice had he been somewhat denied, his lesser minions failing once to wipe out the cattle before they could be rescued by other forces, and another time when a Jotun had failed in its task.

It felt no fear when it jumped into a system full of cattle broadcasts.

He was fear.

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Admiral Kevin Kitikik'thok Yamamoto felt his guts twist as the first Helljump turned into multiples and the multiples turned into a horde and the horde turned into a swarm.

At the end of the swarm had been the largest Helljump the ships AI had ever seen.

Well, you're a big one, aren't you? Yamamoto though, leaning back in his chair in the Fleet Command and Control station deep inside his flagship. His fleet had clashed with two other Precursor fleets, hammered them into scrap, but the largest had only been Devastator Classes. The other ones had been mislabeled Harvester Class Goliaths when in fact it was now obvious that they were smaller ones.

The Goliath was slightly larger than Australia, back on Earth, and half again as thick. Its supporting vehicles were all massive. Early scans back were already showing that this was the largest fleet that had been encountered yet.

Or anyone who ran into it hadn't survived, Yamamoto thought to himself.

”Confirmation. Goliath Six and Goliath Nine are the same ones encountered in the Nagu'ulum System two months ago,” Scan-9 reported.

”Pass Admiral Amythas my compliments and shift his task force to targeting Goliath Six,” Yamamoto ordered.

”Roger. Reconfiguring,” Com-11 said.

”Aren't you worried they're going to see they can't win and Helljump back out?” Captain Cheekeet Longflight asked, ruffling her feathers inside her armored vac-suit. It annoyed the avian officer that she was required to wear it, since she was used to the freedom to move around more on her own ship. It was even more annoying that she was strapped down in the crash couch, unable to move around.

”I've taken that into account,” Yamamoto said slowly. ”Com, alert all ships to go to action stations.”

Cheekeet flinched as the lights shifted. She knew that the air was being pumped into storage, every being was in crash couches, and the Terrans had gone to ”warfare status”.

Cheekeet's ”Solarian Implant” still itched when it shifted to warfare status.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE

screeched out and this time Cheekeet didn't feel the brain numbing horror that accompanied that screech. She remember the smashed eggs, the murdered unborn chicks, the butchered hatchlings, the slaughter of so many of her fellow Akltak and for the first time she didn't fall to sobbing.

She screamed back with the humans.

THEN YOU WILL DIE ALONE!

To scream back was exhilarating, empowering, made her feel alive for the first time since the Precursor had attacked her home and one of the Nest of Clark had saved them.

”They're manuevering to engage,” one of the humans at the scanning stations said. Cheekeet still wasn't sure how they kept track of all the stations.

”Mm-hmm,” The Admiral said, closing his eyes.

The first time Cheekeet had seen that she had wanted to rave at the primate. Now that she had been outfitted with one of the Confederate Naval implants she understood that he was closing his eyes to concentrate on what the implant was displaying directly to his optical nerve. Again she gave thanks to the Great Egg that she was one of the UnUnified Civilized Races, that she was ”primitive” enough that her nervous system could handle the Terran cybernetics.

Cheekeet closed her eyes, quickly moving the through the context menus the way she had been taught. The ”muscle” she was using had ”strengthened” over practice so she not longer felt as if that muscle had gotten tired after only a few clicks.

She could see the armadas approaching one another. The Precursor fleet coming in as a sharp pointed egg, the Terran fleet looking like a pair of horns extending out from a teardrop shape that was point toward the Precursors.

Front toward enemy, floated up in her mind. She wasn't sure why, wasn't sure what it meant, and queried her implant. Oh, a primitive directional mine.

She doubted that the Unified Civilized Races would have been impressed by such a device.

Everyone gangsta till Claymore Rhoomba comes round the corner, her implant's VI poked back, giving an electronic giggle and throwing up the image of a primitive little cleaning robot that someone had used tape adhesive to attach a directional land mine onto the top. It didn't make sense to Cheekeet, but something about it made her gape her jaws in her race's facsimile of a Terran smile.

Terrans were confusing at times, but a Captain Delminta, one of the Hamaroosan and a fellow UnUnified, had simply told her that every time something was overly confusing, just giggle and pinch your younger sibling and you understood it.

Cheekeet didn't have a younger sibling to pinch, so she pinched herself and giggled. She got it, everyone acted tough until an armed robot showed up.

Now she understood how it fit and applied to the Unified Civilized Races.