Chapter 601: No Time for Tears (2/2)
The Atrekna felt alarm until they saw the torpedoes attempt to enter the upper hyperwave plane and explode. The Lemur ship rolled in place and started shedding parasite craft. Not aimed at the AWM closing in on it, but rather in small sprays toward the oncoming fleets, toward the gas giants.
The Ancient Ones watched closely as the small sprays of parasite craft moved swiftly across the system, ripples of alcubierre systems twisted and warped from the slightly stretched disk into a twisted blade in the front and a rounded back side that seemed to twist and warp space before snapping it back to normal behind them.
They had never seen such a thing.
The Young Ones sneered. Alcubierre systems were easy tech, old tech, easily countered and even used to the attacker's advantage.
**there is no apparent danger it stands to reason the lemur ship will be destroyed for no advantage to the extinct lemurs** An Ancient One stated.
**do not underestimate the lemurs** an Old One stated.
**they have been eliminated from the universe already this is merely the spasms of a corpse** a Young One added.
**there is no tactical reason for the ship to have attacked to our eyes thus the dead eyes of the lemurs have seen something that we have not** an Old One stated.
**you are over-estimating the ability of a dead species to effect the universe perhaps you may be alarmed by the lemur's shadow but we have no such dread** an Ancient One stated. **we faced the Hive Lords and the Herd Lords and we will face the lemurs as well**
**you lost** one Old One stated. **the Hive Lords endure the Herd Lords endure you were defeated and forced from this universe**
**and harvested much of this universe** the Ancient One protested. **this time burning a hyperatomic plane will not save them**
**they do not fear the burnt hyperatomic plane they embrace it as if it was a lover** an Old One stated.
**they are an extinct species** a Young One interjected. **they are of no moment**
**yet they have a ship here** an Old One countered.
**it will make no difference** an Ancient One stated. **we will destroy the ship sweeping away the last of the lemurs from this universe and then we shall destroy the remnants of the Hive Lords the Herd Lords and begin the Great Harvest**
**you grow fearful in your age but are not old enough for wisdom** the Young Ones mocked the Old Ones. **the ship's weapons are of no use, we have developed counter-measures against their most powerful**
With a bright purple flash the torpedoes entered realspace with a splash of dark matter spraying out in a funnel from the entry-point.
only a few thousand miles from the warp bubbles!
The communal mind shuddered as the Old Ones suddenly withdrew.
Before any of the point defense systems could do anything the torpedoes erupted with shields of phasic energy and the onboard graviton engines drove them into the bubble with a single cry that sounded as if it was torn from the throat of an enraged and excited female lemur.
NYAA!
The torpedoes lunged into the bubbles, driven by phasic energy and the phasic imprint left by the strong hands that had loaded them into the launcher.
The Ancient Ones and Young Ones watched in suddenly amazement as the weapons did not explode against the rippling gravity bands, did not just fly through the psychically generated bubble-gates. Instead, they streaked forward, into the bubble, to reappear in the connected system.
In each of the systems the torpedoes jetted from inside the bubble, out into the system, and detonated.
The Atrekna within those systems watched with confusion as the torpedoes exploded mere tens of thousands of kilometers from the bubbles. A shower of chronotrons, dark matter that fizzled, smoked, and evaporated with a scream of rage, and a spike of pure fury, white hot incandescence that was not visible to standard scanners but was easily detectable by psychic sensing arrays.
The Atrekna tensed, but nothing happened.
Back in the original system, the Atrekna ship computed that the strange ship had no chance as it drew within fifteen light seconds. Fifteen light seconds was not enough for a three hundred kilometer long ship to avoid an nCv barrage fired by batteries that were longer than the target ship.
Three batteries, each five hundred miles long, consisting of ten guns a mile, opened fire on the black ship.
The black ship turned, rolling, and slid between the fifty mile gap between the two barrages.
The AWM snarled. It had turned much faster than it had any right to, had accelerated into the fire rather than tried to accelerate past the field of fire.
The black ship opened fire again with the guns and the AWM knew that it would do no good. The AWM felt a slight bit of scorn that the black ship could not modify its tactics when a weapon system was of no use and instead chose to fire the same weapons that had proven ineffective.
Before the AWM could do much more than load the next rounds the rounds fired by the black ship hit home.
Bypassing the heavy battlescreens, bypassing the integrity fields, bypassing the armor, the heavy rounds exploded inside the massive AWM with the energies of Hellspace mixed with the flat energies of a stillborn reality.
The AWM reacted with shock, several of its predictive analysis systems crashing, as the energy liberated inside of its hull blew outward through two hundred miles of armor on both side of the massive war machine. The AWM realized that it had errored in its predictions that the lemur vessel would lack the bare bones systems of an AWM.
It answered with a barrage and again felt an electronic sense of outrage when the huge ship seemed to slide to the side, then rotate, somehow roll over the nCv barrage without the rounds touching the black ship.
The Old Ones, disconnected from the communal mind, watched with interest as the black ship hammered the AWM, one of the newest models, into scrap metal with only two more barrages.
What they were more concerned with was the signal the black ship put out even as it moved to intercept the largest group of AWM driving in-system to clash with the black ship.
The Old Ones were familiar with lemurs, knew the lemurs always had a reason for what they did, even if the reason was not obvious to the Old Ones.
The Cult of the Defiled One viewed the code streaming from the black vessel, pouring a jar of dirt mixed with tiny biting insects over themselves. The pain, the agony of the tiny pinchers biting into sensitive flesh, the sight and sound of lemur code, and they reached deep into the howling rage contained in a small piece of substance W they all held.
The signal was aimed at the planet. It was surrounded by percussive and atonal screeches.
Awaken, take the land, that must be taken, awaken, devour worlds, smite forsaken, rise up from your Enraged sleep, break forth from your grave eternally, I command you to rise, rise, rise, there is room in your grave, awaken awaken rise rise.
Aimed and focused at the planet.
Old Ones who had faced the Mad Lemurs before quietly slipped away on their vessels when the heard the Cult of the Defiled One repeat the message being broadcast to the planet.
It made no sense.
Which meant it was a lemur weapon.
It was new, it was different.
And that meant dangerous.
The Cult of the Defiled One and the Old Ones who had faced lemurs before all slipped out, without only a few exceptions who had agreed to stay behind..
On the planet, the only inhabited planet, eyes that had been closed opened to reveal burning red eyes.
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It was a purple place, violet that stretched on to eternity and into nothingness and only a handspan away. It was a place where the Big Bang had more than failed, had been stillborn.
A place where there was no life would ever be born.
But a place, if one had the will, had the rage, life could exist.
In a fashion.
The things there, watching, waiting, not awake but not asleep, in dreamless eons with fixed and bloody eye.
The signals were seen by eyes that never slept, never dulled, never clouded.
Great engines lit off. Ships oriented on the spray that lit up like a flare in the endless purple less than nothing.
Thirty ships lit their engines.
Thirty ships listened to the code that accompanied the signal.
Thirty ships followed the signal, followed the flare.
In thirty systems a bubble of dark matter appeared, bubbling up in a stress tear in the fabric of space time.
In each system the autonomous war machines moved to investigate.
In each system the dark matter stretched and warped.
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HAVE GREAT FEAR! THE MIGHTY 'MO IS HERE!
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The Atrekna who were devotees of the Cult of the Defiled One knew it was coming. They had heard it before.
If this was not a feint, it was not a distraction, the Cult of the Defiled One knew they would hear it.
They knew the whisper would come.
They did not seek to shield themselves from it, they did not seek to avoid it.
They waited to embrace it.
As the strange black ship changed course and the tiny parasite craft suddenly lit gravatic engines, the devotees heard it and knew that the lemurs had arrived.
this grave has room for you