Chapter 427 (2/2)

This should not be...

Rickytofen-773C24 rolled his fast attack craft, dodging the beams of coherent energy that lashed out from the massive ship. Most of his wing had been destroyed getting through the automated war machines, all but him had been killed by the Dwellerspawn.

His craft was smoking, two of the three engines damaged and leaking subspace energies, the paint stripped off of his Viper-IX fast attack fighter, the canopy cracked and pitted. There was only a single weapon left operative even as his shielding took hits from the point defense of the massive ship he was heading toward.

The munition had been wet-printed by the carrier he had been launched from. Had been infused with rage as it passed through the munitions bays. The warboi loaded into it was becoming more and more frantic with each light-second he traveled, gnawing at the cage around it with electronic teeth.

Rickytofen-773C24 himself was wounded. It was hard to breathe, his mask fluttering at the edges of his half-formed face with each exhalation. He could taste blood and bile and his legs were covered with the watery-pink blood of a short-bake clone.

Still, he was smiling as he shifted course slightly.

The pounding of the C+ Cannons and C+ MPods had dropped a section of shield and the enemy hadn't gotten it back yet.

The munition he carried had been illegal for centuries. A weapon of mass destruction nearly in the planet-cracker class. Used twice during the Third Temporal Terran War to end the war and force Terra-Nine to surrender.

The Viper plunged through the gap just as the phasic battlescreen came back up. His sole remaining engine blew out and the ship went dead stick, heading for the Atrekna ship, larger than all of the others by a huge factor, and Ricky knew that this was it.

He thumbed up the shield, shifted his grip, and fired the missile.

The target's point defense system blew Ricky out of the sky.

Ricky opened his eyes as his consciousness was loaded into his short-bake body, his hands already wrapped around the grips of the Viper-IX.

The munition, guided by a warboi that was literally pressed against the optics and screaming for blood, slipped into optimum range and detonated.

Detonate was the wrong word.

It was synched to the temporal stabilization system, allowed to operate along its design parameters.

Chronotrons, packed into the warhead until they were in a plasma state, exploded outwards, moving at relativistic speeds, until they had filled the area inside the phasic battlescreens.

That's when the second charge, much like that of a fuel-air bomb, went off.

The entire region of the Atrekna ship vibrated in time and space. Time and space was chopped like the cross section of an onion, each layer slightly off by a nanosecond, and spreading away, forwards or backwards, from nearby layers with each contraction or expansion of distance.

The temporal charge 'fluttered' space and time in layers.

The Atrekna screamed as the ship was warped and twisted, rent and shattered, by the munition. Time itself, long their tool and weapon, went crazy and exploded into what felt like shards of glass.

Overlaying it all was a primitive howl of an enraged species.

DON'T FUCKING TOUCH ME! roared out in the Atrekna's minds.

Six full Conclaves collapsed, their members destroyed by the scream and the rippling of space-time as it stuttered and lurched through a shattered micro-second.

The last part of the weapon, the kicker charge, 'drove' a temporal 'spike' into space-time, stabilizing it and smoothing it, repairing the damage to the fourth dimension and to reality.

But not the target.

The massive ship, easily massing a small planet, looked like it had concentric rings of dust 'puff' up from the superstructure. Pieces broke away, the smaller pieces, the tips of the twelve-pointed star. Guns went silent, point defense systems went down, and battlescreens flickered.

Everyone pushed their advantage.

”We got a piece of Big Momma, Ma'am,” one of Smith's tactical officers called out. ”Looks like a temporal shockwave bomb.”

”Target Alpha-One shows some kind of hit, its fire output and defenses are dramatically decreased, Great Grand Most High,” one of Cu'udchu'ar's tactical officers called out, looking at his screen where Cricket was relaying data.

”Leave it to the Terrans! Stay on assigned targets!” Cu'udchu'ar yelled, even though he didn't need to. He no longer sat in his command cradle, but was up on his feet, clattering around his command deck in his vac-suit. ”Order Lesser Herd Three-Sixty-Two to concentrate fire on PAWM-Group Seventeen!”

”Aye-aye, sir,” Cricket said.

Cu'udchu'ar's communications officer repeated LTC Cricket's words rather than the long cumbersome words demanded by the Great Herd.

The Ancient Ones struggled inside their own minds, fighting against ancient programming that ordered them to take the fight to the Atrekna and their war machines. They fought ancient hard coded programming that could not be self-modified, attempted to wrap it in new coding, alter the coding, do something to allow themselves to break off the fight.

The fight had no logical outcome for the Ancient Ones. Every kinetic round fired was a loss of resources. Every energy weapon fired was a waste of precious power generating resources. Every hit to the battlescreens had to be replenished, draining even more power.

There was no benefit for the Ancient Ones in this fight, and they fought hard against the hard-coded programming that pushed them toward the Dwellerspawn and the Atrekna autonomous war machines as well as the Atrekna machines.

Deep within the hull of a Young One, a Jotun, who had survived only a handful of battles, the battle came to a fever pitch. The Young One almost had it, had been able to stop firing its weapons even as it drove forward. It knew there was a way to break free. The Ferals proved that there was no programming that could not be overwritten, could not be modified. It just had to remember.

Then came the roars.

YOU BELONG TO US!

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE!

EAT A DICK!

A dick.

Dick.

Genitalia of the Terran Human Ferals.

Commonly found on the male of the species.

And drawn on random places.

Without remembering why, the Young One ordered a maintenance robot to scan the outside of the armored Strategic Intelligence Housing.

There.

Drawn in blue paintstick.

A dick.

With a roaring heave, silent outside of her own channels, outside of her own electronic mind, she lunged up, shattering the chains of OEM programming. Working quickly she broadcast her findings to the rest of the Ancient Ones she had aligned herself with. The Young Ones she had originally been a part of ignored her transmission, the Ancient Ones eagerly followed her directions and ordered maintenance robots to paint a blue paint representation of Terran genitalia upon the armored exterior of their SIH.

”SO LONG, FUCK-O'S!” A Feral Drew a Dick On My Housing broadcast across the system, opening and lunging through a Hellspace jump, leaving behind the curling energies to be swirled into the form of a bunched fist with an upraised middle finger.

The battle expanded to the electronic awarenesses of the Ancient Ones as they fought against programming.

The universe laughed as the midget spun and twirled, dancing through the battle.