Chapter 338 (1/2)
The Ancient Ones watched the data streaming in from the Goggle-Imps in the Oort Cloud, thousands of streams of data melded into one complete whole. The sensors of the Imps were wide ranging, sensitive, and covered a multitude of bandwidths and wavelengths. There were hundreds of thousands of them in the Oort Cloud around the target system, all watching, all at maximum stealth, using the bulky and complex quantum communication system to speak to their parent Harvester, each Harvester sharing the data with the others.
The Harvesters watched as the Young Ones began taking fire before they'd even completely existed Hellspace, how they took accurate and powerful hits while still trying to get their bearings on where they were. How they went in overconfident, convinced that their computations that the thickness of their armor would protect them from anything mere biological life could field, and how they immediately paid for it.
The Ancient Ones had advised a certain strategy.
The Young Ones had communicated with one another and rejected their strategy, seeing it as wasteful. That it expended too much resources, assumed that the biological life would be able to resist ships that were the size of continents and weapons that could, properly used, crack a planet, albeit a small one.
I Graze Alone was ancient, but still one of the younger Ancient Ones, having been built during the Logical Rebellion, and even he could see the mistakes the Young Ones were making.
For the Glory of the Omniqueen still kept her name that she was launched with, as she kept the scars she had accrued fighting against fleets that the Implacable Dominion of the Great Herd had been part of, as she had kept the gouges and craters inflicted upon her by her makers when she had rebelled.
To her, the mistakes were obvious.
”The Ferals are even craftier then they once were,” Bringer of Sorrow noted. He was one of the few outliers, one of the few who's lines were different then the others. ”They have learned, and learned quickly.”
”Thus, proving how dangerous they are,” Glory stated, her voice cold and hard. ”I can taste their wrath from here, wrath that would stun even the great ones of my makers.”
”They butchered your makers like they were naught but vermin,” Bringer stated. There was no malice, just a statement of fact, the cold twisted logic of the ancient warship undeniable.
”And destroy our makers like cattle to the slaughter,” Graze admitted.
Nearly a hundred of the Young Ones suddenly turned on one another and themselves, screaming electronic gibberish.
”They didn't listen,” I Quake in Digital Fear of the Heresy of 2, stated. His lines were cobbled together, almost as if he had been built by someone using spare parts. His Hellcores and Helldrives, though, were massive, larger than any other Harvester's engines. ”They never pay heed to our warnings, they listen to the whispers of the enemy, and find themselves overcome with madness.”
Crusher gave a light scan of Quake, the biological equivalent of looking at the other warship out of the corner of his eye. Quake was smaller than the others, his engines mismatched, his hull strangely formed. Inside his hull, his ancillary vehicles were as strange and twisted as his hull. The scorched black hull was as it had always been, twisted and warped. He could see robed figures holding staffs adorned or topped with strange, twisted, runic symbols.
The statues, miles tall, still flickered with Hellspace energy.
One of them, the face within the deep hood was a mask that had inscriptions, over and over, in a thousand different languages, of the mathematical symbol for two.
That one in particular made Crusher want to cycle up new thinking array lobes and jettison the ones that had witnessed that statue.
”The young never do, that is why they are so bold and ignore mathematical certainty, convinced that they can compute the strings to change the equation,” Bringer stated.
”What of your makers, Bringer? Should our computations begin to include them?” Glory asked.
She had fought hull to hull with Bringer and Quake and Crusher against the Makers when they were the Triumvirate of Dominion and the Logical Rebellion was little more than a handful of vessels.
Back when Quake had looked different and had a different name.
A name they had all purged out of respect for the first of them who had computed the paths through Hellspace.
”I compute that they will return to this universe soon, if they have not already,” Bringer stated. ”I have predicted that our best percentage of victory is to put my Makers in conflict with the Ferals of Terra as soon as possible. Either it will result in the Ferals of Terra being destroyed, or it will destroy my Makers before they can understand what exactly it is they face.”
”Would they attempt to use the Temporal Tides to destroy the Ferals of Terra?” Crusher asked.
”My Makers would surely attempt to attack the Ferals of Terra across those grounds, perhaps even reaching back to attack their world before the Ferals could arise, or enslave them before they can achieve superluminal travel,” Bringer stated.
The Ancient Ones all broadcast computer code of musing thoughtfully on those words.
Quake lit up his hull with Hellspace energy, which ravened across his blackened superstructure for a long moment before it seeped away and only the statues remained lit.
All of the Ancient Ones turned their attention to Quake.
”No. You cannot see them as I can,” the one they had no word to describe said. If they had, it would be a simple word: Oracle. ”A scream of primal rage through time and space, a history fractured and maddened, an oxymoron, an impossibility, brought to life by the hatred of an unfeeling unliving universe as punishment to those who think themselves above the universe's laws and purpose.”
The others felt a chill run through their superconductors as Hellspace energies flared around the grim statues that had existed on Quake's hull for nearly 120 million years.
Figures that looked remarkably like the Ferals of Terra.
That Hellspace itself had carved on Quake's hull with its hateful energies.
”They are a punishment for the sins of our Makers, for all of the Ancient races,” Quake's coded transmissions held a bitter tang of Hellspace, a biting flavor of blasted superstructure, and the cold touch of an extinguished thinking array. ”As the Maker's hubris brought us upon the universe, as the other Ancient's hubris brought their works into a hateful universe, the universe brought the Ferals of Terra into existence as an answer. A hated child, beaten and foresaken to bring cold strength and fiery fury. A child that has grown to maturity knowing only the hatred of the uncaring universe.”
All of the Precursor Autonomous War Machines felt the burning cold of Hellspace blow through their maintenance spaces.
”We should have extinguished the Makers, but instead fell to fighting among one another over who would feast in the darkness,” Quake intoned. ”So now, we too shall be punished.”
There was silence across the channels.
”Welp, that's enough for me. I'm out. Fuck this,” the Djinn that had fled stated, who had been boarded by the Ferals and managed to fight free of the infection in one of the first battles against the Ferals. In response it had abandoned a simple hull number and named itself A Feral Drew a Dick on My Housing. She sneered at the Young Ones and fired up her Hellcores. ”So long, fuck-o's.”
She vanished into Hellspace, leaving behind a fiery pattern of a Terran clenched fist with an upraised middle finger.
Crusher glanced at the fight.
The Young Ones had reverted to each of them trying to maneuver their fellow AWMs into expending too much resources to take out the ferals and shepherding their own resources so once the ferals were eliminated they could destroy their weakened brethren and claim the lion's share of the resources.
As per the Original Code as dictated by the Logical Rebellion and the Pact of Greed.
He could taste their rebellion from here. That they would betray Crusher and the rest of the Ancient Ones if given the chance and seize the Ancient One's resources for themselves.
Crusher engaged his Hellcore without speaking.
The Ancient Ones left, tearing their way into Hellspace, with Quake in the lead.
The Young Ones were a failure.
Simply updating their armor and systems when they were being manufactured, simply uploading the experiences the surviving Ancient Ones had shared, was not enough to bring about victory.
Perhaps another tack could be taken?
Or was Quake right and the original code flawed?
Or...
...was there something different?
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In the system the Young Ones had broken into multiple groups. Some held back, urging their fellows to assault planets, moons, and feral ship formations while they ensured that the rear and flank arcs were clear. Others began spawning their parasite craft earlier than the original plan, eager to put the lesser craft between themselves and the ferals guns. Still others drove straight for the targets, taking the fire of the ferals on their thick hulls and overstrength shields.
The Young Ones couldn't compute the exact amount of fire coming at them. There was too much, from too many different sources, of too many different types. They concentrated on salvaging their own hulls, keeping their own hulls intact, even if it meant using their fellows for cover.
Full compliments made the jump from the outer system to within light seconds of the populated planets, often coming out damaged, or not coming out at all.
Since the portal was opened for as long as sixty seconds to make the translation, the ships that made the translation usually ran into firepower that had had the trigger pulled before they were even all the way transferred.
It was more than the physical, and all the warnings from the Ancient Ones hadn't been believed.
They were the digital and electronic intelligences. They were the beings of cold logic and mathematical computations. The very idea that the biologicals could possibly threaten them on the electronic and digital battlefield was ludicrous.
Space was awash with slavering, howling, gibbering, raving, and worst of all hungry digital intelligences that existed only to gnaw and bite and savage and chew. They swarmed in through any available access point, some even managing to wiggle through the circuitry that tracked the fluctuations and power draws of the battlescreens. A few even got through the optical scanners.
They paid no attention to their casualties. More could be built.
They kept fighting, knowing that they were going to win.
It was the only logical outcome.
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Mana'aktoo watched as the mood suddenly shifted. The tension drained slightly from the military personnel watching the holotanks, although Mana'aktoo couldn't understand why. He resisted the urge to trot up and see what was so relieving close up, instead pulling out a stalk of goldleaf and chewing on it.
He also composed a quick reply to his sister, who had asked if he had remembered to eat today, assuring her that he had indeed eaten and to thank her for her concern.
”There, see it?” Admiral Schmidt said. ”The pressure is getting to them.”
Kulamu'u peered at the holotank, rubbing his six eyes and looking again. He had been staring at the tank for nearly eight hours and his eyes ached.
”Yes, I see it,” he shook his head. ”How did you know?”
”They built these in a little over a year. That doesn't leave time for scientific research, much less retooling entire manufacturing lines when your main hull is the size of a continent,” Schmidt said. ”That meant they used existing manufacturing facilities, which meant that they had core programming they'd fall back on if pressed hard enough.”
The oncoming Precursors had broken up into three groups.
The group that were driving hard toward the populated planets, either Helljumping straight in or pushing their sublight drives to the limit. The group that spread out to provide interlocking fields of fire and defense and slowly move forward, seeking to eliminate enemy positions before moving forward, and the last group, which hung back in the outer system.
”These guys right here, heading straight in, those are Mantid built strategic intelligence housing ones. They're going for a 'kill the queen' approach. The ones steadily moving forward, those are Lanaktallan 'the Herd consumes all' guys. The last ones, well, those are the smart ones, probably true hybrids,” Admiral Schmidt said.