Chapter 599: Stock Car Race (1/2)

DRONE TASKS 100% COMPLETE

RECALLING DRONES

DRONES RECALLED

INITIATING TERTIARY REACTOR TEST

REACTIONS PASSED

INITIALIZE TERTIARY REACTORS 6-11

REACTORS ONLINE

SYSTEMS CHECK

PRIMARY COMPUTER SYSTEMS - CHECK

SECONDARY COMPUTER SYSTEMS - CHECK

TERTIARY COMPUTER SYSTEMS - CHECK

AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS - CHECK

WEAPON SYSTEMS CHECK

ALL WEAPON SYSTEMS AT 100%

DEFENSE SYSTEMS CHECK

ALL DEFENSIVE SYSTEMS AT 100%

REFIT COMPLETE

SENDING AUTONOMOUS SYSTEM INITIALIZATION PULSE

PULSE RECEIVED

AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS ONLINE

RELEASING PHYSICAL INTERLOCKS

RELEASING SOFTWARE INTERLOCKS

RELEASING PHYSICAL RESTRAINT SYSTEMS

RELEASED

ALL SYSTEMS READY

TASK FINISHED

STEAM BOAT WILLYREADY

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The Atrekna had argued and researched long and hard to discover the secrets of the Feral Species in the New Universe. They had even gone as far as to summon the one who had self-designated itself as Dalvanak, whom they called the Maddened One. Dalvanak had arrived dressed in finery, carrying his Mad Lemur sidearm, surrounded by glass globes full of dirt and primitive insects that slowly orbited him, carried by his psychic powers. Dalvanak had answered questions until one of the Ancient Ones had attempted to chastise Dalvanak for his choice in attire.

Dalvanak had used his psychic powers in a horrible fashion, combining it with his research on the Mad Lemurs. Dalvanak had hurled a glass globe full of simple dirt and tiny red and black insects at the Ancient One, then lashed out with his power, shattering the globe. The tiny insects, all standard insect appearance and barely much larger than the tip of a blade, had covered the Ancient One as the dirt had showered over the powerful ancient being.

The Ancient One had mentally sneered and begun brushing the dirt off itself.

It sneer turned to a grimace. Its grimace into a twisted expression of pain.

It began to scream as the tiny red insects, red bodied with a black abdomen, began biting all over it. The pain was so intense it disrupted the Ancient One's concentration and it plummeted to the ground, landing with a wet splat as its body ruptured from the force of the freefall impact.

Dalvanak had stared at the gathered Atrekna as he used his psychic power to gather back up the soil and the tiny insects, as well as one of the Ancient One's eyes, and imprisoned the terrible creatures inside another glass globe.

Dalvanak had then left.

But the data he had provided in his madness had helped the Atrekna plan.

The allies of the vanished Lemurs were attacking on all fronts. Every time the Atrekna sunk a system into the temporal seas, the Lemurs or their allies were there. They attacked without fear, without hesitation, and had recently chosen to cause the stellar mass to explode rather than cede the systems to the Atrekna.

The Atrekna needed new resources, new methods, new ways of attack and defense.

Dalvanak the Maddened One, with his burning red eyes, had provided data as well as solution.

Use the gravitational imprint of the stellar mass to throw a shadow across jumpspace and that barely discovered and researched area the lemurs called 'hyperspace' as well as interdict Hellspace.

The Atrekna prepared.

Some watched the progress of the Death Bringer on the Primary System, watched it slowly rip and tear its way through defenders and facilities both.

The Atrekna did not have much time to seize another Prime System before the last bastion would fall to the Death Bringer and its terrible weapons.

A target was chosen. On the edge of the ancient Herd Species systems, now largely in the possession of the Great Harvesters, a system was connected to nearly a thousand others. It had living occupants, which would be necessary to bring war machines to full capacity, as well as grown new Atrekna who were more accustomed to the New Universe.

The system was perfect.

Too far away from the Herd Lord's current occupied systems, too far away from the Ferals of the Pact of Madness. Populated. Rich in resources. Four slavespawn habitats had passed by that were still accessible.

The Atrekna selected their most ancient autonomous war machines. Ones that even possessed rudimentary personalities that were large enough to harvest an entire planet. They selected vast Hive Ships and Swarm Ships. They selected nearly a thousand Atrekna, almost a third of them experienced at fighting against the Pact of Madness.

They set their eyes on the system.

It took a great effort, but they moved everything there at once in a shower of exploding chronotrons that were visible, with the right instrumentation, a half-million light years away.

The universe howled with laughter.

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The stellar system was an anomaly.

It had survived the First Precursor War largely untouched. The fourth planet had taken a mass driver hit that had destroyed the civilization, but that had allowed a small lizard to claw its way to dominance in the intervening millions of years. Other than that, the system hardly had anything to do with the three races all slaughtering each other.

It had been sighted by the Lanaktallan when the lizard people had sent out a few signals of ”Hi! We're Here!” but it was too far away to bother with at the time. The Lanaktallan had even ignored the slowship expansion that had allowed the lizard people to take three other systems.

When the lizard people had developed jump drive and encountered the Lanaktallan, they'd immediately seen the benefits of the Unified Civilized Council and joined up.

Nearly a thousand years had gone by before the lizard people began to suspect that there were sinister elements within the Unified Council that may not have had their people's best interest at heart. They had carefully began examining their population metrics and their people and had noticed a slow decline in birth rates, just like every other species, as well as a drop in intellect.

They had been on the edge of accusing the Unified Council of biological manipulation when the Mad Lemurs of Terra and the Lanaktallan, the silly, slow to act, and somewhat dim Lanaktallan, had both leaped at each other with fangs bared and gone fully bug nuts crazy on each other.

The lizard people, who called themselves Phrewickens, had reacted to the tempest of howling violence around them by wiping the blood and gore off their face, getting in their car, and driving home.

If the Lankies and the Lemurs wanted to kill each other, that sounded like they were mammals, with mammal problems, and a mammalian problem didn't involve any sensible Phrewickens.

The Phrenwickens had long believed that keeping out of other people's fights was usually a good idea.

They had not ejected the members of the Unified Civilized Council, instead had reminded them that the Phrewickens considered them citizens and the Phrewicken government had sought to calm the citizenry.

Then the lemurs had all fallen down dead, the Council had surrendered to a giant mantis, and the Phrewickens had breathed a sigh of relief.

The war was over, and they had nothing to worry about.

Then word had come of another species attacking. Something about a long dead race coming back and attacking across the base of the galactic arm spur.

Once again, that sounded like a mammalian problem to the Phrewickens.

Elderly Phrewickens sipped their drinks and shook their heads at how the warm blooded always seemed to be jumping on each other with knives.

Which is why they missed the flicker along the corona of their primary star.

They knew that if they just minded their own business and treated everyone with politeness, nothing would happen to them.

Which is how they missed a slight red-shift in the starry night sky.