Chapter 255: (Hesstla) (2/2)

ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC flashed on their visors a breath before the 80mm Hellbore fired, Stampy spinning his wheels to keep in place against the heavy recoil. His barrel was steaming as the snowflakes kept falling.

The 125kt blast hit a massive vessel incoming, a hole edged with white hot melting battlesteel the only apparent damage for a split second before the midship area exploded as the 125kt blast liberated all its energy deep inside the Precursor machine that was the size of a small city. The blastwave reached out almost a mile, hammering on the Precursor machines around the blast with shockwave driven atmosphere.

Ralvex saw the order on his faceplate and took two steps back, swinging his weapon down, letting off the firing stud but holding onto the firing grip to keep the barrels rotating so they'd cool. The massive Precursor vehicle, a cousin to the one that had taken his arm and he had killed with his chainsword at the very end, recoiling slightly as the autocannon shells began exploding across its face.

The Telkan Choir's voices were uplifting, calming to Ralvex even as he snarled and kept the autocannon on target. Tiny-Tim joined in, adding his twin linked guns to the fire, missiles, still wet looking, rolling into the launcher and firing immediately.

The heavy autocannon found something and the Precursor vehicle exploded, showering armor across the slushy battlefield.

He switched to a new target.

Twenty minutes, and still the battle was under control.

-------------

The gathered Precursors stared at the psychic representation of the planet below. All twenty landing areas were heavily defended, much more heavier than previously. Despite repeated attacks, repeated landings, repeated campaigns, if anything the enemy's strength grew rather than depleted.

They reached out and interlinked with those who the victory over the spaceborne forces was tasked to.

They found the minds disturbed, having difficulty maintaining control of their subordinate ships as bellowing ships of terrible form and power were entering realspace from the cold dimension that teleportation moved through on the opposite side of reality from the hyperplane scorched and riven by the Great War.

Both sets of commanders reached out to the Conclave aboard the flagship, requesting assistance.

The forces on the ground were tearing apart the landing forces, inflicting over 80% casualties on the landing forces. Even the Greater Ones were torn apart by nuclear weapons wielding directed atomic explosions that seemed to be somehow formed into a shape charge designed to defeat armor.

The starships, the Fleet that had fought for so many decades, did not have their strength lessened as they should have. The ships had slowly grown to nearly twice their original size, with a third again more weapons than they had started with. Now another fleet had joined, one that mixed cold analytical hatred with raging furious wrath.

The Conclave, staggering from the psychic pulsing scream from the wormhole in the split second before it had collapsed, was desperate. It ran the risk of losing in both space and on the planet. Without control of space, they could not adjust the stellar mass, and if they could not adjust the stellar mass, the stellar system would not serve as such a preferable launching point for the invasion of the sector.

The species below, that fought so hard, so furiously, still had a weakness.

They were a space faring species. All space faring species had the same weakness.

Only cooperative species achieved space flight, all others destroyed themselves.

Warfare had to be relearned from the Unification Cycle all space faring species must have accomplished, an event that put an end to warfare.

The Conclave reached out, down to the planet, out to the starships.

Their power was damaged without the support from beyond the wormhole, but they still had the power to reach out, through the psychic threads of reality, to the minds of the defending species.

The Conclave reacted with startlement.

Mantid were on the planet, on board the ships. The servitor races of the Mantid race.

Things suddenly made sense.

The other sparks, not the vaguely sleepy that teemed on the planet in the hundreds of millions, not the ones that tasted slightly of the Mantid, as alike as two spheres crafted by two different masters, but the screaming raging sparks.

They were a new weapon of the hated Mantid.

That made things even easier.

The Conclave reached out, reached into the ever rushing stream of the universe. They all linked their strength, linked their power, searching the rushing flow, reaching back.

There.

There it was.

Where the Mantid's new servitor race's history crossed with the event that the Precursors were looking for, what the Conclave searched for.

It was closer to the surface of the universe than the Conclave had expected, but it was still easy to reach. It was too strong, too ingrained, to reach back and turn that back.

But they could do something to the minds of those fighting them.

The Conclave gathered its power, tapped the great crystals, carefully grown, cut, and carved to supplement their strength, and reached out, enduring the pain, and ensured their victory by touching the Mantid's new servants.

Over half of them died, killed by the howling enraged madness of the Mantid's servant's minds.

But they did it.

They devolved the thought Mantid's servants.

Wound back their method of thought, the structure of their brains, to the greatest vulnerable point in a species history.

To just prior than spaceflight.

---------------

Ralvex realized something had changed when the firepower suddenly stopped around him. The Precursors had landed and were pressing the attacks.

--oh no-- 525 said. --no no no no--

”Wha...” Ralvex started to say.

PSYCHIC PSYCHIC PSYCHIC flashed on his visor and his mouth suddenly flooded with the taste of electric strawberries, his teeth tingling.

He looked around and frowned, still keeping up his firepower on the Precursors.

The humans were stopped stock still for a moment.

The Precursor machines pressed the attack.

”Shit,” Ralvex grated out.

--------------

The Conclave felt the sudden stillness in the Enemy's mind and knew it was a brain not wired for war, not wired for violence, undoubtably twisted by the Mantid Speakers and pushed into fighting by them, reacting with shock to the thunder of battle around them.

The Conclave ordered both the land and space force commanders to press the attack.

Pre-spaceflight species, when confronted by violence, often shut down.

Victory was certain, the Conclave knew this.

--------------

The psychic attack rippled out, sliding through the pinholes in space-time back to the initial arrival of both the Precursors and the Terrans.

On the back of the neck of the Terrans were three green LED lights that burned beneath the skin.

The psychic attack touched the Terrans.

One of the LED's went amber.