Chapter 571: Interlude (1/2)

The stellar system had been 'sunk' into the subspace foam, slowed in time, for almost a year outside of the stellar system. Inside the system, it was far longer. Centuries had passed and the Atrekna had built fleets of bioweapons, warships, and autonomous war machines. When resources ran low they made temporal copies of the old resources to replace them. The sun was turned red as its resource consumption was throttled and the stellar mass lifted to provide resources over and over. Gas giants were mined over and over, being taken from the past as a copy to replace the gas giant mined of everything the Atrekna needed.

[The Universe Disliked That]

From that system they launched attacks on other systems that had crossed the system's path. To an outsider it looked like the Atrekna were attacking planets and systems at random, making planetfall through some type of mat-trans or under stealth. Each system they took, they sunk into the subspace foam, removing it from the greater universe and using temporal shifting to harvest the system.

[The Universe Will Remember That]

The Atrekna were getting established, preparing to use the dozens of systems they rapidly took over as a springboard to take over the entire galactic arm in little more than a century or two. The Atrekna were as excited as beings of nearly pure logic could be. The universe was a vast trove of resources that only they could truly understand. Full of over-excited particles, chronotrons that appeared in a sparkling spray whenever timelines collapsed upon each other, and particles that popped into existence seemingly willy-nilly.

They knew, as it was only logical, that there was nothing that could stand in their way.

True, there were several feral species that could temporarily resist the Atrekna, but time was on the Atrekna's side. While time would weaken those species, the Atrekna would find a way to overcome and then enslave them. To twist their genetics to the use of the Atrekna, even if it was just as a food source for the more useful slavespawn.

The most vexing of the feral species, a highly aggressive primate descended from lemurs, had already been wiped out through archeoreversion. While their allies still held firm to their lemurs doctrine and weapon systems, the Atrekna knew that without the highly aggressive lemurs, the Atrekna would grind down the other species until they were smooth, bring them into the fold as servants.

Like all of the resources, every species belonged to the Atrekna.

[The Universe Disliked That]

With over a hundred systems under their control, systems that were either empty or could not resist them, the Atrekna knew it was time to start expanding again. While less than a year had passed on the outside, centuries of preparation had passed for the Atrekna. Growing more slavespawn, building more war machines. Breeding more Atrekna.

True, the Young Ones were the most anxious to go out and conquer, but the Old Ones and the Ancient Ones could not fault their logical eagerness. The Old Ones and the Ancient Ones understood that the area they had widely been taking over was empty of life and had to be reseeded.

The great war engines of the previous conflict had sterilized world after world, but that had not prevented the Atrekna from reaching back and restoring the planet to the glory of Atrekna occupation.

The Atrekna felt cold logical satisfaction as they began bringing forward Atrekna from the time of the first war against the Hive Lords and the Herd Lords. The Atrekna brought forward were content to see that the Atrekna had returned to the universe to harvest its bounty.

The Atrekna turned their eyes toward the base of the spur and toward the far end of the spur.

The Hive Lords old territory lay to the coreward. Where the Hive Lords had created vast larders to feed the vast appetites of their queens. Toward the spinward areas of the spur was untapped territory that apparently the Hive Lords had built another vast empire.

Despite whatever fictions the other races believed, the Atrekna knew that the Hive Lords would not, could not, coexist with other races when they fed on not only meat, but on thought, just like the Atrekna.

They had destroyed the Hive Lord's Janissary, the Atrekna would destroy the Hive Lords.

The Atrekna began choosing targets, further into what the primitive ferals called ”the Long Dark”, heading spinward. Each system was targeted, sunk into the subspace foam, the sun turned red, and then conquered and harvested repeatedly. At times they came across solitary Ancient Machines that fled, fought to the death, or followed their original programming and bowed to the Atrekna.

The Atrekna began expanding coreward. Choosing uninhabited systems first. Or systems not easily protected. Again, the Atrekna would sink the system 'down' to speed up the passage of time relative to outside the system, turn the stellar mass into a cool red giant, then harvest the system and its inhabitants.

They were rebuffed in places. The loss of Hesstla was particularly grating as something had happened there to make it so it could not be utilized. The Atrekna began scouting carefully, the fact they had to skulk and sneak around grating to them, for systems that were unprotected by the feral fleets.

They had not forgotten that the feral fleets had destroyed the Old Universe as well as the Great Resource Site.

The Young Ones wanted to hurry up, take more worlds, subjugate more species, and the Old Ones and Ancient Ones were content to let them try so they could observe the Young One's failures and analyze them.

The loss of one of their most advanced research stations was grating. They had received some data.

The research teams had captured a live lemur. They watched the video, watched the phasic recordings, watched the temporal recordings.

They watched with cold logical horror as the lemur brought the dead to life, summoned nightmare creatures, and turned the very machinery of the space station against the Atrekna. The Atrekna conferred.

It was not phasic energy, although the lemur had been flush with it. It was some other form of control over matter and energy. A form that allowed the lemur to create biological matter, living creatures, and control mechanical systems.

The Ancient Ones were silent as the Young Ones claimed that the recordings had to be in error. That it had to be some trick. The Atrekna were the masters of space, time, and biological science, not some jumped up lemur with less than two hundred thousand years between massive biological changes.

The Old Ones argued with the Young Ones. Something had destroyed the space station. Something had enabled lemurs to be able to fight the Atrekna face to face. Something had made the lemurs different. Something had destroyed the New Prime System. The Old Ones argued with the Young Ones that the lemurs were dangerous, perhaps beyond the Atrekna's experience.

The Young Ones argued that the Old Ones and the Ancient Ones were being too careful. That following the Plan for Dominance and Survival set down by the Great Elder Thinker Dalvanak was a waste of time and energy.

The Young Ones wanted to be more aggressive. The Ancient Ones wanted to follow the Dalvanak Doctrine. The Old Ones wanted to consolidate their gains.

The Elder Thinker Dalvanak was summoned before a Great Conclave. Nearly a thousand of each of the factions stared down from comfortable seats as the Elder Thinker drifted into the middle of the floor, looking up and around him.

The Young Ones noted with disgust that Dalvanak was maimed. Half of his feeding tentacles had been ripped from his face, leaving behind a disturbing gap as well as twisted scar tissue across his face. It disgusted the Young Ones that Elder Thinker Dalvanak had allowed a lemur to grab his feeding tendrils and tear them away during the first attempt to liberate Hesstla from the ferals and return it to a proper breeding system.

The Ancient Ones, many who had faced the guns and terrible power of the Hive Lord and the Herd Lords, simply noted the disfigurement and moved on, realizing it meant that Dalvanak had faced the lemurs themselves and so knew the taste of their war fury.

The Old Ones respected the Elder Thinker, the architect of the plan that had been successful so far.

Dalvanak lifted his hands, causing some hisses of disgust from the Young Ones as they saw he was missing part of his left hand, and pulled back his hood. More disgust as the scar tissue from where a lemur had grabbed his head to provide leverage, tearing away a bloody hunk of Atrekna flesh along with the feeding tendrils.

He stared at them, dropping his hands to his waist.

More hisses came as the gathered audience realized what they were seeing.

Dalvanak wore the loose iridescent robe that the Atrekna had worn since time immemorial, psuedocloth that enhanced their phasic abilities as well as easily identified them to their fellow Atrekna and their slave creatures. He wore the soft slippers worn by every Atrekna, with the phasic enhancement so it did not lose its grip even on the most slick of surfaces and even enabled the Atrekna to walk across surfaces that were held only by surface tension.

He also wore a belt around his waist.

The belt snarled and growled at everyone who reached toward it to examine it. It was a synthetic woven belt with Substance W attachments on it as well as pouches and containers.

On his hip was an object that none of them recognized. The object growled and snarled.

One Young One touched it with a thread of psychic energy, refusing to be cowed by a mere physical object before his peers.

DON'T FUCKING TOUCH ME, SQUIDWARD! the object roared out.

The Young One convulsed as the roar overwhelmed his psychic defenses. Before he could recover two of his peers stunned his brain and grabbed him, both planning on using him to implant their larvae into.

**Query: Object definition** one of the Old Ones asked.

Dalvanak let his contempt for the gathering color his robe as well as his thoughts as he answered. **M9A17 Magnetic Accelerator Pistol, Confederate Armed Services standard issue**

The very description was dripping with malice.

**Query: Location of Acquisition** another Old One asked.

**Lemur's Cold Dead Hand** Dalvanak answered.

**Query: Origin of phasic and psychic countermeasures**

**Presence of lemur engaged in mortal combat** Dalvanak sneered. **Phasic/Psychic imprinting instinctive for lemur species including phasic/psychic death imprint upon geographical spaces**

**Query: Reason for continued possession over possession of Atrekna personal defense devices**