Chapter 411 (2/2)
He had been given ancient commands. The Oracle had whispered and sung to him, not others, and in doing so had roused him to cold analytical wakefulness again.
Deep within his hull he had engaged ancient systems. Synthetic tissue was printed off on the rapid speed matter printers, laying down synthetic skeletal structures, layering those structures with artificial muscle fiber, implanting synthetic organs within the muscles. Another section forced positronic pathways to be rapidly formed like coral built over minutes rather than decades. That positronic matrices were loaded into the frames, their thought processes just as cold and logical as Marduk's.
Nanoforges built armor, built weapons, built vehicles. From aerospace superiority craft to assault dropships to tanks and armored personnel carriers, Marduk ordered them built. They were craft of logic, built to purpose. Marduk did not bother smoothing them. Aesthetics were not for him.
He knew that he would be engaging the enemy.
So he was building what he would knew to carry out his mission in the face of the enemy.
He existed to destroy the enemy.
The enemy existed only to be destroyed.
With a roar he exited Hellspace, exiting the other side of the Great Eye, his shields already powered, his guns cleared, his launch bays at ready. He did not proclaim his arrival with anything but the roar of Hellspace energies and the wailing cries of the beings tortured by the fires of Hellspace as they clung to him for a long moment, attempting to pull him back in or be pulled along with him.
He immediately updated his position.
The Maw was unique.
He knew where he was.
Scanners, already deployed despite the fact that Hellspace had warped them, charred them, left them twisted and coated with thick black residue, sought out signals.
His audio receptors heard it first. From the ones on the hull to the ones in the maintenance spaces to the ones at the ancient terminals he no longer allowed others to man, the audio receptors all picked up the same thing.
Screaming.
It did not bother him that the 'sound' had carried in vacuum. He did not bother wasting time on the impossibility of such things. He was Marduk, and he had no reason to believe his sensors were in error.
If sound was carrying through vacuum to his sensors, then, somehow, sound was carrying through vacuum.
That is was screams of terror and agony made sense to Marduk.
The space around the Maw, normally cold and empty, had dozens of Precursor Autonomous War Machines tumbling through it in strange elliptical orbits. He computed the orbits and saw the logic in them once he had combined all of the orbits with the Maw itself.
A pattern.
A cold dark pattern of blasphemy and heresy. Incomplete, but a pattern all the same that he had seen before in the leading edges of a supernova, in the cold warsteel casing of a planet cracker, in the flesh of the Mar-gite, in the ichor spray of a dwellerspawn.
A pattern of insatiable hunger.
The pattern had been analyzed and Marduk wasted no further time on it. He knew the pattern was of the Maw's making. He could feel its hunger, feel its malevolent intellect gleefully taking in the horror and misery of the PAWMs that it had lured into its gullet.
Marduk did not ask how an electronic intelligence, an intelligence of logic and code, could have been made to feel emotions, much less feel fear.
He had been crafted, carefully programmed, by Earthlings during the Age of Paranoia. He had not been coded for ethics, emotions, or even mercy.
But he knew his creators.
His creators had taught the electronic intelligence of the Precursor Autonomic War Machines that same thing that his creators had taught all others who thought themselves the predominate creations of the universe. His creators had taught the PAWM's the lessons that all who faced them learned.
Fear.
Scans came back. Intermittent life signs from some that he matched with biological neural networks forcibly pushed together into a data analysis system. Nothing new, he had seen that before, had seen the research his creators had investigated to create such a thing.
A Rat King was nothing new.
Over half of the PAWM ships had no strategic intelligence array signals. Their hulls were completely cold and dead. Of the remaining, half had no SIA signals but Marduk could detect the signals from PAWM ancillary machines screaming and raving as they attacked one another inside the body of their maker. The last had either screaming SIA's or the SIA's screamed in tune with their ancillary machines.
Marduk observed as a hatch opened and a PAWM the size of a comet emerged. The new craft began to scream, opening fire on its maker as it raved and gibbered.
Marduk could feel the sick slimy pleasure of the MAW as it greedily absorbed the terror and confusion of both the maker and the child.
There
One ship had something more. The bright enraged spark of a Terran.
Marduk shifted course, igniting his engines, moving toward the PAWM battlecraft with stately and unhurried cold grace.
The Oracle, of course, had been right.
As was proper.
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--here-- 281 said, using a laser pointer to guide the others to where he was talking about. --crater on the other side two meters maybe three to outside hull--
030 nodded. He opened the channel.
--We'll cut our way out here-- he said. --Sergeants Caldo Kalkik and Purohit stand guard in case of PAWM assault--
Palgret looked over at the human, who was standing near a wall, slamming his fist into the same spot over and over.
--281 start cutting-- 030 said.
”If nothing else, I would like to see the stars again before I die,” Lieutenant Mu'ucru'u said.
I'd rather not die, Palgret thought to himself. I wonder if we're winning back home?
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Most High Mana'aktoo chewed a stalk of goldleaf as he stared at the holotank showing the planet and the system.
The battle in the system was still raging. As he watched the icon for one of the carriers went from green to strobing yellow, indicating severe damage. It launched parasite craft anyway, a cloud of icons erupting from it.
He wished he knew more about naval tactics. He had learned quite a bit from studying history and military theory in the days before the Precursors arrived. he had learned more watching the battles take place, but there was still plenty he did not know.
He knew enough to know that the Terrans were forcing the Precursors back step by step, even if they somehow were keeping the Precursor machines from escaping into Hellspace.
He had learned that the Terrans did not let the enemy flee at 10% or even 20% casualties. That they followed up retreats, pressed routs, sought to hammer the enemy into pieces, destroy them utterly if possible.
Mana'aktoo had learned that while the Terrans might allow a living enemy capable of engaging in discussion to survive, there would be no quarter, no mercy, for unliving foes or those who would not engage in discussion of surrender or compromise.
The Lanaktallan ruler knew that the Precursors cared only for the destruction of all life and the elimination of all competition.
Which made them the enemy, and Mana'aktoo had learned that as far as the Terrans were concerned, the Enemy only exists to be destroyed.
He sighed and changed the focus of the holotank to the planetary surface.
On the ground he could see that the Terran Forces and Sword Hoof were still heavily engaged in combat, but the number of enemy was decreasing. Not rapidly, not like he would like, but decreasing all the same.
More and more units were undergoing refit, repair, and rearming. Troops were getting rest and medical care. The area under Sword Hoof and Terran control was steadily growing, the area under Precursor control was steadily shrinking.
He wished it could be faster. The number of civilian casualties was still slowly rising. It was trivial, less than a tenth of a percentage point of the population, but Mana'aktoo knew that the number was not just a number.
It represented people. People with hopes, dreams, loved ones, who had depended on him for safety and life.
He reached toward the holotank, intending on asking Most High Kulamo'o and Admiral Schmidt questions, when the tank flashed and put up a notification he had a priority call.
His mother.
Mana'aktoo adjusted his sash and vest, making sure he looked well rested and presentable.
To him, his mother represented all beings beneath his benevolent stewardship.
It would not do to stress her or worry her without cause.
He hit accept.
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”Victory is within sight,” Most High Kulamo'o said, staring at the holotank. ”A few planetary rotations and all that will be left is cleaning up the debris.”
Admiral Schmidt looked at the older Lanaktallan.
”Don't count your victory until you're telling your great grand-children about it,” the Terran Admiral said.
Together they turned their attention back to the holotank.
The battle raged on.