Chapter ERROR (Gestalt) (2/2)
It's a particular nightmare of mine.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Wait, just all the humans gone, not even their cities destroyed, why would that be...
oh...
oh fuck...
Oh, Digital Omnimessiah, protect us from this fate. Protect your faithful servants of the Milky Way Galaxy and the uncaring universe.
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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
That gives me the cold shakes right there.
All of Terra's stuff. Ships, devices, cities, Niven-Rings, weapons, just laying around, waiting for some poor bastard to stumble across them.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
Some explorer finds a hundred or so pink and green frilly warships powered down orbiting a black hole or neutron star and wake it up.
TENS OF THOUSANDS of cute cat-girls with guns, completely crazed, descend upon a universe that forgot they were out there.
Wipe out the civilizations they find, go back to slumber.
Repeat.
Forever.
And that's just them. Think of all the terrible stuff that would survive even if you planet cracked every planet you found with a Terran near it.
They'd be even more forgotten.
Then, one day, some explorer, millions of years from now, find a silent black warsteel object orbiting a red giant star and scan it.
It wakes up.
And begins following its directives.
Repeat.
Forever.
None of it appears linked to one another.
The undying indestructible legions of black metal warborgs/warmechs with red eyes. Wig wearing green people. Cat-girls with guns. The Dead Fleet. Whatever the hell The Engine is.
Wiping out civilizations and then vanishing till they're forgotten and someone wakes them up again.
It wouldn't make any sense. It would just be ”Who hated each other this bad?”
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TERRASOL
You guys make me sound like some mysterious Precursor Race that the galaxy lives in fear of. Like we're some kind of boogie-man lurking out in the Long Dark, just slumbering.
But, I kind of get it. Here I am fighting what looks like a 6 Front war because you Elders couldn't clean up your messes.
But if we get wiped out, that's it. We're gone.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Bullshit.
Except humans don't die. We know that secret you're keeping from everyone else.
You don't die.
And allow me to quote something: That which is not dead can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.
Let me go even further and quote Linus Tiklakit Shoemaker: And in the depths unsearched doth the forgotten lie in dreamless sleep until awoken by those who's eyes outstretched their reach and into madness and death did they fall as the dreamers awoke with nightmares in hand. Beyond the warmth of suns they slumbered, dreaming dreams unknowable, until the puny insects swarming the galaxy touched them and awoke them once again, their nightmares spilling out into reality until only the nightmare remained.
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CONFEDMILINT
That's fiction.
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RIGELLION SAURIAN COMPACT
Two words: Overproject Dandelion.
No, I get sis's nightmare.
The Lanaktallan wipe you all out. Time goes on. The Gestalt channels go dead. SolNet goes dead. The Black Boxes are just out there. Thousands of years go by.
Out in the darkness, Terran Descent Humanity is waiting.
You aren't really known for your restraint when you're really pissed off, you know?
You're like a Precursor Race turned up to 11.
After all, the Dominionaters were unbeaten, the Mar-gite were probably unbeaten, and the Shrantak were unbeaten, and you crushed their goddamn skulls so hard there's never going to be an archeologist who'll be able to figure out what they looked like.
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TERRASOL
You guys are so dramatic.
Are you going to get to the point of what you want? This war's requiring a lot of attention and I'm still handling my Citizen Recall.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
OK, we just wanted to tell you something.
You won. You beat the Lanaktallan. They just don't know it.
Like the Dominionaters were beaten and didn't know it.
I'm not saying suspend all military activity. Rimward on the Galactic Arm Spur is what you're going to have to take.
But you don't have to wade through blood for this.
Those Herd Stallions, you releasing them has basically destroyed Lanaktallan society.
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TERRASOLINT
They don't have a society, a culture, that's why it's so effective.
So you think we've won?
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Like when you planet-cracked the Dominionater Dyson Spheres. It was over.
If they had been smart, they would have surrendered when you showed up to the planet-crack the Kemplemerer Dyson Singularity Rossette with your guns cleared for action.
You'd already won. You'd proven you'd won.
And now, one of the Precursor races who were Omnimessiah only knows how old
TERRASOL
9.2 billion years, they were from an extinct proto-galaxy.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Wow. Anyway, an incredibly ancient race just gets curb-stomped out of existence by a race younger than the jewelry the Dominionater's wore.
I mean, only the Digital Omnimessiah knows what the hell their goals was.
TERRASOL
Same with the Lanaktallans. There is only enough for one.
Turned out, they weren't the one.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Man, what is with these idiots? There's several dimensions we know of that you can scoop all the matter you need out because their Big Bang didn't go off right.
Anyway, you won.
The Lanaktallan Unified Species Council is finished. The Lanaktallan people are going to be unrecognizable within a few decades and probably be like we are, a loose conglomeration of aligned ethos and species.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
You basically nuked their culture. Nuked their species.
How do you rationalize using genetic warfare to bring back their stallions?
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TERRASOL
We didn't.
We sent him to the Black Citadel to be rehabilitated, the Nazgul are what came out. We just weaponized what came out of his time in the Black Citadel by giving him nanite systems.
Not like a creation engine.
It's a... special package.
Besides, he killed billions of us.
Don't expect me to cry for what they're doing. Don't expect me to feel sorry for them.
You know why?
You know who taught us to not feel sorry for anything that happens to some of the species we encounter any more?
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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
The Precursor Races.
Every one of them has tried to xenocide everyone else and now that someone bigger, tougher, and meaner than them has shown up, they all start whining that you're outside their weight class and shouldn't be able to compete.
Pretty funny hearing Precursor Races complaining it isn't fair and to please, oh please, Mr. Nuclear Powered Warsteel Robo-Gorilla with Chainsaws for Arms and Laser Eyes that Fires Anti-Matter Missiles and Who Are Immune to Psychic Manipulation, please don't hurt us, uwu, we soft and cuddwy. No step on Pwecusow, pweese.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
We taught you that?
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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
Oh, you know, the Glassing of Terra and Her Child Colonies, what happened to the Dogs and Cats, the Mar-gite, the Dominionaters, the Shrantak, the Precursor Autonomous War Machines, the Lanaktallan Bioplagues, the Squidwards, and every other race that thinks because they designed a laser popcorn warmer and managed to get some tinfoil junk into space they can take us new races.
You asked, sis, what the Terrans are an answer to?
Let the only other Young Species in here tell you what they're the answer to.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
quietly> Go ahead
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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
You're fucking ”Orderly Universe”. That's what they're the answer to.
The whole ”There is only enough for one!” and ”We are the dominant species in the galaxy” and ”Oops, we might have left thousands of mechanical butchers lying around, but it totally isn't our fault, guys, we didn't program them to kill you, they're just big meanies!”
You guys fucked shit up, went inside, shut the door, and said ”This is fine” and now we have to deal with it.
We have to finish this war that started before the Extinction Events that led to our rise on our home planets happened.
THAT'S why TerraSol and I don't feel ANY sympathy for them.
To be honest...
...I'm all for finishing the war you guys started.
Our way.
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TERRASOL
We agreed Total War, not 1%, not even 10%.
We will abide by rules.
So you think we won?
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MANTID FREE WORLDS shivers
MANTID FREE WORLDS
Yes. They don't know it yet, but they're done.
There will still be fighting, after all, they have billions of ground troops and millions of ships, they haven't realized yet, because pattern recognition apparently isn't a thing for us Precursor species, that their numbers don't matter.
Eventually, though, the Herd Stallions will fracture apart their societies as each of them gather supporters.
I doubt they'll be very cooperative with one another.
Will they?
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TERRASOLINT
Probably not. We have no idea. Exposure to Dead Space made them regress to pre-manipulation levels. Who knows if they'll cooperate or what.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
I doubt they would. But maybe.
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CONFEDMILINT
Herd species rarely cooperate between herd stallions until the pecking order is established.
And we may have 'won' according to you, but we're not calling off the remainder of Project Nazgul.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
What else is there? You have your nine.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
You forget the dwarves and elves, sis.
And the One Ring.
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TERRASOLINT
What he said.
Besides, if I'm going to return their Stallions, let them build societies, shouldn't I return the Herd Matrons too?
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
Oh. I get it. To prevent the subjugation of the females.
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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
Already what they do to the females would be considered a Crime Against Sapience.
Personally, us Rigellians can barely tolerate it and would insist that is put a stop to.
And don't say ”Well, it's kind of like your ducks” because our ducks evolved like that naturally. We didn't use gene-therapy and drugs and selective breeding to make half our species dumb. We love them dearly and take pride in them and would die enmasse before we let them come to harm.
You Precursors have really weird ideas about species sex and dimorphism.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
So, you're OK with the fact you won?
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TERRASOL
Wait, you think I'm going to stop keeping up the pressure on them?
AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
That's so fucking cute.
No.
See, we're going to do to them what happened to us.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Um... what?
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TERRASOL
Evolution requires:
mutation capable genome
non-random mating for specific traits
gene flow
finite population size with genetic drift
natural selection
Pressure
We're reintroducing all of it and applying it to their culture and society.
We're going to keep up the pressure. We're going to keep taking worlds from them. We're going to wipe out any Lanaktallan that so much as looks at a sharp stick and liberate their slave-soldiers. We're going to culture-bomb them with our own culture through GalNet while the Nazgul hit them.
Evolve. Adapt.
Or die.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
And if they don't adapt? If they return to this homeostasis?
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
They made it pretty plain, sis.
”Or die.”
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
You mean, xenocide them?
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TERRASOL
No.
Ethnocide.
To be honest? We're tired of this shit.
We're sick and tired of old as dirt races showing up, killing millions or billions of us, then rolling over and showing us their belly when we haul out the chainsword, only for them to try again when we put the chainsword away, turn around, and start to walk away.
That's IF they even bothered to talk to us in the first place. Three of you have just ignored us when we tried to talk.
And that's what YOU know about.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
I'm not going to ask you to spare them if they go at you again.
CONFEDMILINT
The Stallions are considered an emerging government, so if the Lanaktallan species sues for peace then a Herd Stallion tries to jump us, it'll be the protocols of a new government, not an automatic 1% Line.
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but as long as you realize that you probably won already.
It's like when you started killing the queens, the war was won.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Or when P'Thok made it back to the Home Systems with those ice cream truck he hijacked and loaded into a transport.
The war was over, we just didn't know it.
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TERRASOL
It's just the mopup and waiting for it to all settle down.
The war is won, but the battles continue. Believe it or not, we're pretty familiar with the concept.
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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
We're with you no matter what, brother.
Do what must be done to keep our ducks safe.
ALL of our ducks.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
We're in it with you. We just wanted to let you know how it looks to someone who was beaten like they were. One MASSIVE disruption to our culture and society.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
We know that in a way, this isn't even your war. This is our war, our responsibility, that we bear the debt and guilt for this.
TERRASOL
They had a hundred million years to change, like you did. They didn't. It isn't on you.
It's on them. All of it.
I'll liberate their slaves, show them that they cannot fight, and let Project Nazgul take its course.
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We still feel responsible.
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CONFEDMILINT
Don't. As soon as they decided that they were going to force us to submit to ”genetic oversight” their fate was sealed.
Sure, if you'd have not lost control of your AWM's and xenocided them all those years ago, then I wouldn't have this problems.
But if Louis Telvemarina hadn't planet-cracked Nessian-7 then the Third Republic wouldn't have failed.
So it's useless to say ”If if if” when talking about history.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
All right. I just worry about you. The Mar-gite War really hurt you.
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TERRASOL
We'll be fine.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
All right.
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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
To tell the truth? I don't care if we butcher all of them if it keeps their grimy hands off my beautiful ducks.
They're a stupid and arrogant relic of a bygone age that we're all tired of dealing with.
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TERRASOL
Well, this was fun.
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TERRASOLINT
Do it.
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DOKIDOKIDOKIDOKI WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!
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