Chapter 426.5 (1/2)
Precursor Autonomous War Machines were set categorically by the Terran Confederate Space Force as being four types.
Type-I had originally been built by the Lanaktallan and still thought according the patterns originally laid down in their Strategic Intelligence Housings. Humanity had been dealing with them since before the Diaspora, since before the Glassing. The Type-I PAWM had slowly, over the millions of years, spread almost to Terran Descent Human Space before withdrawing before humans had developed flint tools.
Type-II had been designed by the ancient Mantids. Terran Intelligence had only recently discovered that there had been two factions within the Precursor Mantid, each had built their PAWMs in different ways, which had been handed down through following construction. The two philosophies had combined, intermixed, and hybrided over the millions of years and hundreds of Harvester Class ships. This had led to three sub-types.
Type-III were new, combination of previous two, designed to fight the Mad Lemurs of Terra, referred to as The Ferals by the PAWM. Never before had the PAWM encountered a foe who could fight off a single Harvester class, much less dozens or hundreds at a time. Could fight and win when outnumbered. The PAWMs had been forced to massively upgrade one another, combine their technology and manufacturing methods. They were new, with only memories and simulations of combat against the Ferals. The older ones had watched them fail time after time and considered them a failure.
The Type-I to Type-III PAWMs had spent thousands of years destroying Lanaktallan worlds, almost three years fighting the Mad Lemurs of Terra. They had databanks full of strategic and tactical data regarding the Ferals, a hundred times more regarding the Unified Council and Great Herds.
The Type-IV were new to the Confederacy and the Unified Council. Built by the Atrekna, they had been largely wiped out from the universe, returning only with the assault on Hesstla. However, their appearance had triggered ancient programming in the original Type-I and Type-II models.
They had limited data on the Confederacy and still were set to crossreference strategic analysis through the Great Herd and ancient Mantid predictive software as there was little for the Type-IV's to add to the predictive datasets.
The Dwellerspawn were not new. Grown from the gas giants and brought enmasse by the Atrekna. Little was known about them, beyond the fact that previously they would appear to ravage whole systems and populated the Niven-Rings and Doom-Tubes. They were vulnerable to standard weapons and prior to Second Telkan, they had never shown much coordination and no use of psychic attack vectors. Second Telkan had provided reams of data for Confederate Intelligence to pour over.
The Great Herd? Well, Confederate Intelligence knew of them. In depth knowledge of the way the attacked, their strategies, their tactics, their weapons. Each battle, each victory, had taught the Confederacy a little more and a little more until strategic analysis software could predict a Great Herd strategy and tactic within an 80% certainty.
A little quirk of Confederate military analysis software is it never kicked back a certainty of more than 80%. Not ever.
The Great Herd knew that it had all come apart on them. No tricks of geometry, no sudden ambushes, no surprise attacks. It was all in and they were in the worst situation than Great Grand Most High Cu'udchu'ar would have entertained even in his worst nightmares.
His neural overlays crashed, making him groan with pain as the urging of the War Stallion millions of years deaths vanished. A trickle of blood ran from his nostrils as he saw more and more ships arrive from all sides, all broadcasting their arrival screams.
The Atrekna had arrived, full of confidence. Two thousand years ago they had attacked the Hesstla system, and since their defeat at the hands of the Ferals, at the nearly successful counter-invasion by a cold dread will, they had spent the entire time going over every scrap of information they had. To the Confederacy and the Great Herd, the Atrekna were new, but their strategy of rewinding time over and over again in the Hesstla system had given Confederate Intelligence seventy-five years worth the data of their combat strategies, their weapons, their ships, and their methods.
The Great Herd neural overlays still contained fragments of information on fighting the Atrekna.
As the Atrekna felt the temporal stabilizers activate from the massive PAWM and the Feral ships, they knew that they had no retreat open, no way to reach back and warn their compatriots coming in that the entire system was about to be engulfed in a nightmare.
Two of the combatants had sought out a fight.
They were the only ones prepared to fight, even if it wasn't the fight they had sought.
The universe laughed so hard entire galaxies rippled and formed.
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The Hellgates opened by the thousands, by the tens of thousands. Cu'udchu'ar watched as ship after ship arrived, the sheer number of them causing the combat control systems to crash out. Within minutes Cu'udchu'ar found himself giving the orders for the tactical and strategic nets to drop all the way down to Lesser Herd control.
His own holotanks, from where he was supposed to oversee the grand plan to destroy the Terran forces once and for all, were nothing more than dancing and staticy garbles of hissing light. They showed impossible information, data minutes or hours old, or nothing more than electronic warfare images.
As he stared at one of the tanks it flickered several times, then suddenly firmed up. The hologram it projected was clean, clear, missing the usual distortion and static that was a safety feature to keep people from confusing it for reality.
A Terran, made of burning code, stood in the holotank. It was in a Terran uniform, female, and looked around itself as if it could see everyone.
”Who, or what, is that?” Cu'udchu'ar asked.
”I do not know, Most High,” the scanner tech said. He fluttered his hands in the tank. ”Shoo, Terran, shoo.”
The Terran woman giggled, flinching back. ”Stop that, I'm ticklish,” she said.
The scanner tech clattered backwards as the Terran turned to Cu'udchu'ar. ”So you're the Most High of the entire fleet?”
”I am,” Cu'udchu'ar stated, stepping forward. ”You must be one the Terran Digital Sentience electronic warfare soldiers,” he said, lifting his chin slightly.
”Huh, you're not going to argue with me? That's nice,” the Terran said. She looked around. ”All right, right now, the Division I'm part of has boarded about ten thousand of your ships looking for command and control ships.”
”Logical,” Cu'udchu'ar said, nodding. He ground his teeth slightly. He had been assured that the new firewalls and the eight digit logins would work to keep out the Terran digital soldiers.
”My mission was to take down your commo and start giving conflicting orders,” the Terran said. She looked around. ”Oh, I forgot. Things are a little exciting. I'm Lieutenant Colonel T-9904-Jumping Cricket, Fifteenth Digital Warfare Division, Ninety-third Infantry Battalion.”
”I am Great Grand Most High Cu'udchu'ar,” the Lanaktallan said. ”I shall assume that your orders have changed.”
The Terran nodded even as his bridge crew gasped in shock. ”Right. You and us are the only ones here that aren't weird things from beyond space and time or murderous mechanical spaceships.”
”So you Admiral seeks an alliance?” Cu'udchu'ar said. He nodded. ”That is wholly acceptable. The Precursor Autonomous War Machines are terrible enough, but the Devourers and one of the Ancient Enemies has turned this into something far beyond our disagreement.”
The Terran female looked relieved. ”My men are aboard about five hundred of your ships. Right now I'm the only one showing myself.”
”You can provide warplan interlock? As it stands, our combat control systems have crashed due to overload,” Cu'udchu'ar said. ”Can you assist?”
The Terran nodded. ”Your hardware isn't the problem. It's old, thin, and I feel like my ass is really fat, but the hardware is stable. It's your software. No offense, but it's complete crap.”
”What about the ship's AI?” Cu'udchu'ar asked.
”He got in my way so I killed him. It was before all this shit dropped in the pot,” Jumping Cricket said. ”I'm running his jobs now.”
”Can you provide us with targeting and the ability to interlock our ships into a coherent whole so we are not fighting piecemeal?” Cu'udchu'ar asked.
The Terran nodded. ”Absolutely. My Admiral told me to offer our services. Me and my compatriots run your systems, you don't waste time trying to boot me while I slag your ship around you for attacking me, and, with any luck, we all survive this fight.”
Cu'udchu'ar nodded slowly. ”Agreed, Terran.”
”Glad to see you're showing some common sense. The first thing we're going to do is link us with the Lesser Fleet Most Highs so you can start passing orders. I'm going to crack open a couple pallets of warboi eggs, and we'll start killing these jerkoffs,” Jumping Cricket said. She sat down, crossing her legs, and set her hands on her knees. ”No offense to your technicians, but I'll be handling commo.”
Cu'udchu'ar turned to his communications officer. ”Assist, but do not intefere, with the Terran.”
”But, Most High...” the communications officer started to protest.
”Do you want to live to see your colts and fillies again?” Cu'udchu'ar asked. The communications officer nodded. ”Then do as I say and start interlocking our fleet with the Terrans so we can create a comprehensive warplan.”
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The Quorum watched as the next to last fleet wavered and vanished, translocating from the stellar system they had carefully fortified to the current location of the stellar system that had occupied this location in aeons past.
The Quorum knew that millions of years had passed, but that simply meant there would be more of the biological war machines. The system had been well seeded, slow growth for the larger biomechanical systems, and the long passage of time would mean that there would be an abundance of them just waiting to be taken control of.
They knew they would need all of their assets to fight the Feral Intelligence that had sprung up. They used arcane and strange technologies, seemed to have a mastery over temporal mechanics that no foe they had ever met had possessed.
The Feral Intelligences had used a method to lock down their home system, so the High Quorum had expended the energy to ensure that the stellar system was no longer in play. The Atrekna knew that the loss of their birth system would confuse and demoralize the Feral Intelligence, which was too young to have given up their emotional connection.
With the attack to return their minds to non-violent cooperation prior to their ability to engage in space travel, the feral intelligences would soon be unable to withstand the rigors of combat and warfare. They would be unable to resist the biomechanical war machines, be unable to withstand the Atrekna psychic assaults.