Chapter 360: (Memoir) (2/2)

Half of the civilian population was dead with my comrades.

It was night when we heard the terrible news.

Terran Confederate Space Force was coming.

They announced themselves with HEAVY METAL INCOMING and I remember feeling despair. My tank was damaged from fighting the Precursors, most of the infantry was dead, and our air support had been swept from the sky like so many birds.

The bellow of HEAVY METAL IS HERE sounded like the death knell of the world.

Instead of attacking us the lemurs attacked the Precursors, acting as if the Lanaktallan war machine was not even present. No vessel that did not attack them was attacked. Those foolish enough to attack were wiped from the skies.

Then we saw it. It looked like stars falling. Drop cradles carrying tanks. Drop pods full of infantry. Aerospace fighters sweeping into the atmosphere to bring the fight to the Precursors.

I was present when the great General A'armo'o received notification that the Terran tank commander, General Trucker, wished to speak with him. I escorted the General, who was then known as Great Grand Armor Most High.

It was then I saw my first Terran.

More machine than lemur. Glowing red eyes. Large in stature and bulk. Cybernetics and adaptive camouflage. I have no words to describe the lemur commander. He was authority and competence made manifest.

I envied his men.

Our tanks were battered, damaged, beaten upon.

His were too, but it seemed almost as if it was the natural order of the universe that the lemur's tanks would be damaged.

I watched as General A'armo'o spoke to the lemur, shocked at how formal the lemurs were.

I would learn, in the following weeks, that formality was a thin veneer over their savagery and fearsomeness in combat.

--Excerpt from: We were the Lanaktallan of the Atomic Hooves, a memoir.