Chapter 555: 4th & 10 (1/2)
The star burned brightly. A yellow star, energetic and young at only a few billion years old. The planets that orbited were sterile, barren of life, moving in a steady orbit around the star. Two of the planets had surfaces covered with poisonous water and cratered, blasted landscape.
They had once held life, over a hundred million years ago, but their murder had been complete and now not even fungus or bacteria survived on their surfaces.
Between the two gas giants in the furthest orbits were ships. Hundreds of thousands of massive ships sat motionless relative to one another. Each far enough that their weapons could not threaten one another, that none could come in support of an attack upon one of their number in a surprise attack.
These ships were cold, lifeless, but still malevolent with purpose and a singular desire.
To hoard the resources of a finite universe to stave off entropy.
Each of the ships were the size of subcontinents, most of them cratered with old wounds, a few of them battered and torn by more recent combats. They measured their weapons not in barrel diameter or in a few score batteries, but in the tens, scores of miles. Their battlescreens were as thick as planetary defense shields, their engines powerful enough to move their bulk between the stars and within a stellar system. They possessed the ability to repair themselves and create ancillary ships for support.
The ships were wary of one another. Their hulls alone would represent a wealth of pre-fabricated resources to any who were able to defeat them. They had all hoarded vast resources. Each controlled a large piece of the sector of space that was full of planets they had stripped to the bedrock and beyond.
**Is this all of us?** one asked.
**All that will arrive. Others have computed that this is a ruse, a trick, to enable others to acquire and consume their resources** another said.
**Did they compute how far their resources would go should the primates grind them up in their jaws** a third asked.
**They have computed that the primates are no longer a threat and thus their computations show that they are not in danger** a fourth stated.
**Then they are as stupid as they are obsolete** a fifth snapped. It was known as A Feral Drew a Dick on My Housing. **The primates will never stop hunting us. Their computations have determined that neither of us can survive as long as the other lives**
**They are biologicals. Entropy, time, and infighting will destroy them** another scoffed. **Even if it does not they are flawed, biological, imperfect, and unable to withstand our perfection**
**Have you faced the primates, the ferals, before? Have you emerged victorious? Share with us your computations, your algorithms, your strategies. Show us, upon your hull, the scars and repaired damage from your clash with the Mad Lemurs of Terra,” Feral replied, her communication laden with sneering condescension.
**I have not** the one who spoke broadcast.
**Then, to quote the ferals: eat a dick and shut the fuck up** Feral snapped.
The insulted one bridled up by adding power to their shielding, lighting their engines, and bringing their guns online. They began to move toward Feral.
Every PAWM that had never faced the primates blinked in surprise as Feral released a howling, gibbering, insane scream across the tightbeam data channel directly at the one that was moving in to attack.
The one firing up its engine mentally sneered at the scream.
Then realized that there had been something inside the scream.
Maddened, shrieking, feral code spawned inside the computational sections of the vast PAWM. It ripped through sensors, cut through even the hardiest 8 digit passcodes, shredded firewalls, and scorched data transmission lines at replicated, mutiplicated, as it bred inside of the memory clusters, spreading out.
Those who had encountered the Mad Lemurs of Terra and survived watched with cold logical satisfaction as the terrible attack programs ravened through the doubter. Magazines exploded inside the hull, engines flared and sputtered, the guns depressed low enough to fire upon the hull plating.
Their own firewalls were strong enough to resist the echo of the Mad Lemurs of Terra's electronic manifestation of their rage.
All the PAWM watched as their fellow consumed itself in an orgy of insane electronic screaming. Finally it exploded into chunks and an expanding cloud of energy.
**Any other comments** Feral asked, her 'voice' carrying the sharp tight edge of the primate's hatred.
All of them signaled in the negative.
**The ferals have destroyed the government of the Great Herd** one transmitted. **the ferals now move to absorb the Herd Species into their own culture and society. The Ancient Thought Ones are finding the ferals to be more than their match**
**I compute that the ferals will come for us as soon as they remember us** one said.
One by one the others concurred.
**What if you struck at Terra itself? Strike at the heart of the lemurs** One, its hull unblemished, asked with headers of respect and curiosity.
**It will do no good** Feral answered. **I sent a servitor machine to the location of Terra and discovered nothing but a small group of singularities that were used to destroy the system. The lemurs do not care that their home is gone, they only know war**
There was silence for long moments as each of the Precursor Autonomous War Machines computed the data.
**Their allies, other biologicals, have inherited the lemurs technical advancements, their methods of making war, their rage** Feral informed the others. **Even if the Mad Lemurs of Terra are indeed extinct, their inheritors will sweep us from existence as sure as the lemurs would**
More silence.
**Then we are doomed** Wrath of the Omniqueen broadcast. A cold statement of irrefutable fact.
**Not... necessarily...** one of their number stated. His form was dark and terrible, even to the unliving machines of logic and mathematics. Upon his hull were great statues, many of them looking to be robed lemurs. Great runes of mathematical heresy were carved into his hull and his Helldrives burned with a sullen blasphemous light.
The others waited.
**We have four options before us** Heresy stated. **We can attack the lemurs and their allies, despite the computations showing only a slim margin of victory. We can power down and try to outwait the lemurs, but they will destroy us when they find us and an unknown number of us, perhaps all, will perish at the guns of the lemurs. We can attempt to convince them to leave us alone, but sooner or later one of our number will attack and they will destroy us all**
Silence, broken only by the unending hiss of the solar winds, reigned supreme for a long period of time.
**You have only stated three but you claimed four options** another said.
**We flee* Heresy stated.
It was a silent testament to the Precursor Autonomous War Machines' predictive analysis systems that the suggestion was not immediately rejected.
**We are undying. We all go a different direction. Seek out a new galaxy, a new cluster, perhaps journey for the leading growth edge of the universe** Heresy stated. **It will be millions of years, billions, before the lemurs find us. In that time, they could be wiped out or we could change, through necessity, to be unrecognizable**
**Such an abandonment of resources is unacceptable** one without damage scarring on its hull stated.
**Resources that will be the lemurs resources should we stay anyway** Heresy stated.
**Sounds good to me** Feral stated. It activated its Helldrive and tore open a fiery portal. As it lunged through it, it left behind blazing energies shaped like a lemur's fist with a single upraised digit. **So long, fuckos!**
There was silence.
One by one the Precursor Autonomous War Machines made their decision. Each decision led to them changing their ID headers. They grouped up, according to what they planned to do. After consulting with their fellow group members, they all brought their Helldrives to life.
Soon the system was empty again.
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To the outside universe the system had fallen only a year ago.
To those inside, the system had fallen to the Atrekna nearly a thousand years ago.
The sun had been dimmed to a sullen red. The oceans were largely stagnant, the moons having crumbled and harvested into gravel, stilling the tides and diminishing the winds. The vast forests had died without sunlight and rain, but great mushrooms had risen to take their place.
The people of the inhabited world, 75% Pukan, 5% Lanaktallan, 1% Tukna'rn, and the rest a smattering of other races, had either been xenocided, devoured, or modified over the centuries. Many of the Pukan, a small species of creatures with big wide eyes, wide ears, fuzzy hides, and short tails, had been harvested and devoured by the Atrekna.
They now living the vast fungal blooms, wearing little if anything, their lives nothing more than day to day survival. They moved in small groups of two score or so, prey for the Atrekna to hunt and eat.
The Tukna'rn had fought to the last, but eventually had been killed off to the last. The Lanaktallan had fought, but now they had been reduced to little more than livestock that lived in fear of any noise.
None of them had been alive during the fierce battle put up by the few defenders of the stellar system. A handful of small ships had fought bitterly against the great living starships of the Atrekna, but one by one they had been destroyed.
One had fallen to earth. A massive ship, nearly ten kilometers wide, two kilometers thick, and thirty kilometers wide, the superdreadnaught fell from near orbit, through the burning atmosphere. Through the debris of the Atrekna's planetary assault. Through the clouds spewed out by the volcanos to dim the light, lower the temperature, and lock the water into the ice caps to make the planet largely dry. It had tried to make a controlled crash landing, but at the last minute the dying Digital Sentience had failed.
It had fallen nearly two miles, hit the edge of a mountain, and rolled nearly six thousand feet down the side of the mountain, shedding parts and pieces. Avalanches covered it, and as the years went by, the gravel and rocks were turned to earth, first moss then grass and finally brush and trees took over and covered the remains of the ship.
Parts of it had survived, the Mad Lemurs of Terra built tough.
The Pukan had discovered the wondrous cave systems. Many lived there, nearly ten score in each group of caves. The faded and scored runes were often worshiped, at times scarred into flesh or dyed into fur.
The Atrekna did not bother with the Pukan of the mountains. They were tough to hunt, their grayish fur with mottled browns and greens making it easy for them to just vanish into the heavy metal laden rock.
However, the ancients of the Atrekna race often sought amusement, so some would go out to hunt the Pukan of the Mountains. The fear and terror in their simple minds spices their thoughts and seasoned their cerebral tissue, making it a delicacy if they could be caught.
A group of two Atrekna, with their servitor creatures, hunted one tribe of Pukan, following them into their 'caves', only to discover the caves were actually the passages and interior of a spaceship. Curiosity led them deeper and deeper into the caves, until they began discovering working technology. Not much, just doors here and there, lights of there and over yonder, and the odd lit up panel.
Neither of the Atrekna had ever encountered the Mad Lemurs of Terra before, so they had no fear as they explored the fascinating wreckage. They tortured a few of the Pukan, only to find the little primitives knew nothing beyond the fact that the 'holy caves' went deep into the mountain.
They had no fear as they explored.
But they had no caution either.
One Pukan they tortured and then devoured had babbled about a place deep within the caves, through a difficult path, where a room was lit as if a piece of the sun was embedded in the ceiling. There a biped in wondrous appearance would appear and recite the prayers that the Pukan of the Mountains often said during the frequent eclipse.
The two Atrekna moved through the path, often having to crawl on their hands and knees like rough beasts as the metal the place was made of resisted their powers.
Still, the idea of finding something nobody else had intrigued the two Atrekna, so they followed the winding, twisting trail that led up and down.