Chapter 632: War In Heaven (2/2)
The crystalline structure the Omnibrains preferred was grown as fast as possible. Each one had to be grown in the gravity well of the planet the Omnibrain would be overseeing. As soon as the Omnibrain was encased in the crystalline matrix, it was able to link into the vast interstellar network.
Which meant more spawn and servitors could be brought forward even faster.
Normally the Omnibrains and Elder Brains dedicated themselves to 'sinking' the stellar system as deep as they could in a timely, safe matter.
During the Spoke Offensive, the system was figuratively 'shoved' down just deep enough to disrupt the Feral's communications systems and make time flow faster inside the system relative to the rest of the universe.
Speaking of universes.
[The Universe Dislike That]
The Atrekna were frustrated. The Spoke Offensive should have ceded control of 3125 worlds to them within a matter of weeks.
Instead, months had gone by and less than half had been seized. Some nodes as high as the first or second node still resisted fiercely as the Ferals refused to acknowledge reality.
Worse, the Atrekna, the Elder Brains, even the Omnibrains had been forced to engage in a pogrom to purge the Cult of the Defiled One from within their ranks. Deviant thought could not be tolerated, but it seemed as if for every adherent of the cult they killed, two more withdrew into the shadows.
On a third spoke node an Omnibrain was infuriated by the fact that not only had someone carved a crude representation of mammalian male genitalia on the wall, but had also scattered dozens of biting insects in the glittering phasically reactive sand around the massive crystalline pillar the Omnibrain was inside of.
The Omnibrain was warning the other Omnibrains across the interstellar network that the Cult of the Defiled One seemed to be spreading geometrically, warning them to be alert and keep watch. That the cult was getting more and more braven, even going so far as to...
The scream of utter and complete primal terror from a spawning world crashed into the network. The howling wail of terror rippling across hundreds of light years, up and down decades of temporal network lines, shattering crystals and prisms for a thousand light years and a dozen centuries.
Even the systems properly sunk into the temporal foam shuddered as the Omnibrains were crushed beneath the terror and despair and horror screaming out from one of the more promising harvest worlds.
The Elder Brains subordinate to the Omnibrains picked up the screams and, adding their own fear, horror, and despair to it, broadcast it into the network.
A full fifth of the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Arm Spur shimmered with screams of pure terror as it consumed the Omnibrain Interstellar Psychic Network.
[The Universe Will Remember That]
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The nanoforge for the TC's gun gave a loud crack, smoke and steam billowing out as burnt chrome liquid rippled with milky streaks poured out from it and onto the back of the cupola of the hovertank. Ekret snarled and went through the last of the belt as he raked another Prismfly from the air.
He opened his mouth to order 1-1-9 to ramming speed when he heard it.
Screaming.
So loud it could be heard over the roar of the hoverfans, over the clashing din of in-your-face modern kinetic combat, over even the screams of the Dwellerspawn. His helmet clamped painfully down as his his psychic shielding went to maximum power, sparks jumping off the surface of his helmet.
Dozens of leadership caste Atrekna appeared in mid-air, their camouflage dropping as they clawed at their own faces, tore away their own feeding tentacles, ripped their own eyes from the sockets.
”Boss! Boss! Look!” Bouncy yelled over the static filled link.
Ahead of 1-1-9 a massive creature appeared. Standing nearly as tall as his tank on twelves spindly legs, it had a huge abdomen, a thick armored thorax, a tiny head. On the back was a biologically extruded crysteel dome inlaid with runes filled with phasic-reactive metals.
Inside the dome a half dozen Atrekna screamed and tore at themselves.
Point defense systems from the remaining tanks of 1-1 HHC raked the Atrekna in the air even as Ekret reached down to his survival pack, grabbed a hilt with one hand and a grip with the other, and kicked the elevator to max lift at high speed.
He rose up out of the tank as he lifted up the flare gun. He triggered it as the crysteel dome shattered and a trio of Atrekna burst from the flaming purple ball of phasic energy. A massive gate flickered into existence as the screaming Atrekna across the battlefield abandoned their efforts to shift in more troops, fleeing from the recently opened gate.
Ekret pointed his Foilage Cutting Bar Mark Two at the Atrekna.
”Sargeant Sselsseen, drive me closer, I'll kill them with my chainsword!” Ekret bellowed.
Sselsseen, Ekret's driver, put every last iota of power into the fans and 1-1-9 screamed as it lunged forward toward the gate.
Cheapshot and Haslettek muscled one of the last rounds into the main gun. The warsteel tip of the round gleamed in the red lights as the phasic jacket enhanced nuclear penetrator was loaded into the breach of the main gun.
Ekret fired the flare gun twice more then threw it away, gripping his cutting bar in both hands as the tank swept just beneath a dozen Atrekna who were fleeing for the gate just in front of 1-1-9. The motor roared as it went to max cutting speed, sparks flying off the ripping chain as it clattered around the bar.
Ekret stepped out on top the cupola as he swung, laying about him as the tank drove straight through the mass of Atrekna. Purple blood sprayed, Atrekna screamed, and the chainsword howled as Ekret hacked through any Atrekna he could reach.
”SHOT OUT!” Cheapshot yelled.
The main gun roared and a bright line connected the gateway with the end of the cracked barrel even as fire gouted from the widening crack.
Ekret chopped a crown wearing Atrekna twice, the second blow ripping it in half.
He turned and one of the Atrekna reached into a pocket on their robes, yanked their hand out, and threw tiny biting insects into Ekret's face. Ekret swung around himself blindly, feeling the chainsword grab and tear, even as he pawed at his eyes to clear the tiny biting and stinging insects.
The one that threw the insects vanished, for a split second looking like it was entirely made out of lines of twisted and vibrating strings.
The gate suddenly winked out.
The Atekna, as one, began fleeing. The Dwellerspawn followed, their minds too consumed with fear and horror.
”PRESS THE ATTACK!” Ekret roared out, pointing with his smoking and gore covered chainsword at the fleeing Atrekna.
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The Omnibrain struggled to push away the primal terror even as gateways opened up in the massive Chamber of Thought. Atrekna, screaming, flooded into the chamber from a hundred worlds, all of them tearing at their robes, their own flesh, trying to rip the agonizing terror from their minds with their fingers.
One gate, the Omnibrain could see a Feral tank, with an armored figure standing on the top, ripping at fleeing Atrekna with a sword as bright green star cluster flares drifted through the sky behind the tank.
Insanely, the Omnibrain could see the numbers ”1-1-9” written on the hull.
The end of the cracked and smoking barrel flashed.
The round, a nuclear penetrator that used lasers to compress an atomic explosion into a directed slug of ravening protomatter, jacketed and infused with raw screaming lemur phasic energy...
...wrapped in hatred...
...streaked into the chamber and hit the crystalline structure that the Omnibrain was encased in, where it floated in thick briny cerebral fluid.
It detonated.
The crystalline structure, which should have been proof even against the hardiest psychic attack, even against the strongest physical attack, shattered beneath the compressed 2.25 megaton blast and the ravening hatred infusing the round.
The Omnibrain vanished in a hellstorm.
Not before it had a split second to feel terror of its own.
Terror that was picked up and rebroadcast by the other Omnibrains who had just gone through evidence that they too could die.
It rippled out again.
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Undrat saw the ground explode a mere five miles away as the ground rumbled and shook beneath his feet. A fist of thermonuclear fire clawed up into the sky even as the bedrock boiled and cracked beneath Undrat's feet.
The Dwellerspawn around him broke and began streaming away.
The Atrekna screamed louder.
Undrat heard it over the command channel.
”All units! All units! ATTACK!”
Smiling with bloodied teeth, Undrat tightened his grip on the firing grip, his thumb tight on the phasic enhancement button, and strode forward into the onrushing debris cloud.
It was good to be him.
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Aboard hundreds of ship the members of the Cult of the Defiled One fled the worlds they had been on. Their ships of twisted flesh and contorted metal accellerated wildly, all just heading away from the catastrophe.
Aboard each ship the Atrekna ripped away their finery and rainments, lifting up jars of soil and pouring biting and stinging tiny insects down their backs, over their heads, onto their chests. The pain was immense, consuming, but they still reached over to pour the insects over the neural tissue dedicated to astrogation even as they shocked the neural tissue into giving them coordinates and astrogation data.
The tortured neural tissue screamed out the data.
The ships of the Cult of the Defiled One turned to thin strings shivered and vibrating and twisting, streaked, and vanished.
Across the universe stars and nebula spun into existence at the howling laughter of a malevolent universe.
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Atop his command center, General P'Kank raised his right hand with the drone/flare gun and triggered it three times. With his left hand he waved the Corps banner.
”RALLY, MEN! RALLY TO ME!” he called out.
The tide in the Atrekna Spoked Offensive turned.
[The Universe Liked That]