Chapter 633: The Spoked Offensive (2/2)
The Harvester growled to itself as it realized it had missed by over ten thousand miles, wasting all of its effort on a dancing false image. Two of the Harvesters with it put forth that the single ship was a waste of expenditures, that the Atrekna perhaps may want to conserve resources better.
The Harvester contemplated their message for a moment, then turned its attention back to the invading ship.
-*-RECOMPUTE FIRING SOLUTIONS-*- the massive Harvester ordered.
The little craft slid by the invisible line.
Before the Harvesters division mates could reply Hell found them.
The girls kicked the starter switch, stomping it even as they pumped the 'gas' pedal. The engines roared to life, the circular disks at the front of the planes 'roared' into existence. Sirens kicked on, blaring loudly enough to make the dust and rock in the rings dance and shiver.
As one the planes over the hulls of each of the Autonomous War Machines banked and went nose down one after the other.
The Harvesters heard the sound, felt the vibration somehow rumbling on their hulls, heard the siren echoing in the silent internal maintenance spaces.
The girls, looking nearly 'straight down' screamed in ecstasy as their targets came into view, their ships plunging thousands of meters in as many seconds. They triggered the nose guns, firing deadspace mined antimatter loaded with the fierce savage hateful glee that filled each of the girls till it shown in their eyes.
**THIS UNIT IS UNDER ATTACK** the autonomous war machiens all screamed at once.
The attack craft pulled up hard, the frames creaking, the wings dropping down and the guidewires attaching the ends and middle of the wings to the fuselage singing in the vacuum with the high tight tones of stressed metal.
Half the autonomous war machines attempted to determine how sound was carrying in a vacuum. Others didn't bother, merely began looking around wildly for whatever warship was engaging them even as the tiny craft raked the miles thick armored hull of the AWMs with their guns.
The rounds were not just cratering the armor. More than a few of them vanished into elsewhere, reappearing with a splash of dark matter deep inside the AWM, then exploded with the bright flare of antimatter and a scream of phasic rage.
Targeted points slid up and the gunners stared at the marked lenses they held tightly between their thighs, a few scrubbing the frost off of it quickly. The hull slid by and when the gunners saw the right combination of markers they yanked the lever back once then pushed it forward.
From the bottom fell heavy bombs, a third as long and half as wide as the fuselage of the planes. The fins glowed as the grav systems created 'drag' on the back, the tip glowed as the systems created 'pull' on the tip, orienting the bombs nose down and driving down toward the hull of the ship, still keeping their 'side' momentum.
Right before the bombs would hit the hull they vanished in a ripple of dark matter that 'splashed' from the entry point, evaporating into sparkles of light and glitter.
The bombs reappeared inside the hull, driving through one or two internal bulkheads.
Almost sixty percent found their targets.
Magazines. Assembly point reactor storage. Drive cores.
The planes had banked hard, dropping low to the AWM hull, racing for the edge of the massive ships. Two of the gunnery girls stuck their hands out past the fuselage, middle finger extended, as they raced across the massive hull.
One AWM, an ancient Harvester brought forward through temporal replication, got a quick glimpse of one of the fast tiny craft.
One of the female lemurs had stood up, turning so she was facing away from the scanner. As the Harvester watched, as the heavy bombs detonated deep inside its hull, the female lemur bent forward at the waist, pulled down her tights, and raised her skirt, displaying her bare buttocks at the scanner. She had ”NYAH!” written in crude letters on the flesh of her glutes in blue paint stick.
For some reason it didn't understand, the AWM felt intensely insulted.
Thennis watched as the fruit fly ambush wreaked havoc on the Harvesters and their attendants, turning her attention back to the thicker flotilla. The melee had grown savage, with the two newcomers attacking point blank, Atrekna ships fighting Atrekna ships, and some just fleeing.
The Atrekna manned ships had broken away from the autonomous flotilla, still being swarmed by more fruit flies as even more streamed toward them.
Admiral Thennis suddenly knew that the rounds fired long hours before had reached the deployment point and she pointed her baton at the stellar mass.
”LET THERE BE LIGHT!” she shrieked.
Deep inside the stellar mass the torpedoes fired off their charges or activated their warheads.
The temporal and stellar mass stabilizers activated even as the temporal resonance charges went off.
The sun flickered for a moment.
The Atrekna stared in horror as the sun went from a dim purplish to a bright yellow in seconds.
The Hellspace and hyperspace interdiction systems failed as the temporal resonance charge's blast wave washed over them.
Thennis's smile was a terrible thing as she pointed her baton at the clustered Atrekna living ships.
The battle was winnable.
”GUNS FREE!” she shrieked.
-----
The system was a 'spoke base' system. It had impressive stellar resources and once the Atrekna had archeoreversioned the two planets back into life bearing state it had even more. The sun was dimming from bright orange to dim orange, the bubble-gates had been created, five in all, and the massive spawning pools and manufacturing facilities had been built in and around the gas giants.
There were dozens of Harvester class Atrekna AWM's in the systems, entire Hives of Dwellerspawn, not to mention hundreds of Atrekna warships guarding the system. Hyperspace and Hellspace and Jumpspace interdiction systems were in full place, even though the Atrekna did not understand hyperspace yet, they understood that gravitational shadows could be generated to block Hellspace just as one would block jumpspace.
A torpedo had slided out of the primary bubblegate that led back to the Hub System then disintegrated in a spray of exotic particles, including chronotrons and gravitons.
For long minutes, stretching into an hour, nothing happened.
The Atrekna breathed a sigh of relief, believing, logically, that the weapon was a stray round from the fierce fighting taking place in the Hub System. The fighting had grown fierce enough that the Convention that ruled the Hub System had ordered Spoke Base Systems to send reinforcements immediately.
The autonomous war machines, Dwellerspawn, and Atrekna war ships were moving toward the Primary Hub Bubblegate when it happened.
Space bulged, somehow looking from all angles as if space was flat at the bulge was pushing up despite all logical and scientific evidence to the contrary.
The bulge split down the middle, dark matter spraying out like water. The edges burned with Hellspace energy even as the area of the split glowed with a lurid purple light.
A massive vessel, nearly two-thirds the size of a Goliath Class Harvester, burst from the bulge, which exploded in a spray of dark matter, leaving behind a ripple patch of purple glowing dark matter hanging in mid-space.
The vessel looked like a huge wet-navy vessel. The front of the prow sported massive cannons in the six-barrel rotating configuration as well as five deep grooved pits surrounding an even larger one.
Before the Atrekna could react the ship's battlescreens came on, so thick that the vessel vanished inside a cocoon of interwoven energy.
The enraged bellow, however, left no doubt which species the ship represented.
HAVE GREAT FEAR!
THE MIGHTY MO' IS HERE! roared out across the system, even the stellar mass shuddering with the force of the roar.
Thinking arrays, shrieking arrays, Atrekna cognitive brains, all shuddered under the impact of that mighty roar. More than a few detonated in a spray of liquefied tissue, blood, and neural fluid. The hull plates of the vessels nearest the massive ship buckled as if the starship had run into the blast wave of a detonating gas giant.
The Lemur warship began firing its guns, not bothering with C+ cannons as it already had the tactical and strategic updates from the Steamboat Willy. Unlike Steamboat it didn't bother to release parasite craft or torchships.
The barrages aimed at the Atrekna hit and hit hard, the Lemur ship ignoring the autonomous war machines and the Dwellerspawn to focus on the gathered Atrekna-manned fleets. Shells hit hard enough to shatter neutronium and phasite alloy. The explosions drove nuclear and atomic force deep into the tissues of the hybrid flesh/machine ships.
Before the Atrekna could recover from the first barrage, they realized that several more were on the way and that the big Lemur warship was firing again.
Then the massive cannons at the front began to fire, rotating once every fifteen seconds to fire again, the previous barrels cooling slowly. The deep grooved pits glowed deep inside and then, one by one, firing opposite one another from the massive central pit. Energy lanced out that streaked across light hours in seconds, impacting the larger Atrekna ships.
The ships were cored out by the blasts that hit and appeared to splash uselessly on the armor, but the central core of energy tore through armor like tissue, reduced the tissues and machinery that made up the interior to its component sub-atomic particles, then blasted out the other side in a circular spray.
Unseen by the Atrekna, stealthy torpedoes slid through the subspace foam.
Each heading for one of the five bubblegates.
The Missouri knew it was only the first line, the beachhead, the Marines storming Iwo Jima.
The Black Fleet would cut off the Hub System from the Spoke Base Systems.
The Confederate and the Free Herd navies would handle the rest.
The Atrekna ordered the autonomous war machines and the Dwellerspawn to engage in flank speed, to head directly for the Lemur war machine, even as they desperately tried to use those fleets for cover.
They missed the torpedoes sinking into the subspace foam.
Where they raced for the stellar mass.
-----
The groundkeeper/janitor watched his wife's face as he relayed to her what he had seen. She had their five children sitting on her lap, beside her, and at her feet.
He took a drink of the fizzybrew as he described how the sun looked. Swollen, purplish-red, like a overripe rengup friuit left too long on the branch.
He told them how he could hear the thunder of the lemurs fighting the Atrekna as he had watched the sun slowly turn yellow again.
His wife was smiling, nodding along, her eyes sparkling with enjoyment at the story.
He smiled at her as he took another drink of the fizzybrew and she flicked her ears at him in affection.
She was happy.
Which meant life was good.