>>TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Sis, co out. Have so popcorn and so spiced and baked festive holiday gourd seeds.
Co on. Co out.
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>>MANTID FREE WORLDS
No.
I'm fine right here behind the couch in my blanket fort.
But hand so popcorn and seeds.
Ooh, and a Fizzybrew.
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>>AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS
I thought the Terrans announced themselves and offered an opportunity to surrender.
I know they sterilized systems that were Lanaktallan controlled during the war, but this is really different.
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>>LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL
It's like these guys are completely silent.
It's eerie.
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>>RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
They're... not TDH.
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>>DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
Oof. The Theseus? They an business.
Ooh, Quack is being fielded?
That flotilla is roughly a fifth of their known ships. That ans that, if they follow their patterns over the last eight thousand years, they've got another 5th in for rearming and repairs, another fifth preparing for a mission, and the remaining 2/5ths guarding their systems as backup for the ho guard.
If Quack was activated, that ans their four or five other heavyweights are too.
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>>CONFEDMIL
We've spotted three of the others.
We haven't spotted Hell's Heart yet.
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>>MANTID FREE WORLDS
Thank the Digital Omnissiah.
brrrrr
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>>AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS
OK, who are they if they aren't TDH?
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>>TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS
Yeah.
I an, their ship lines are all off, they make sure the ship's lit up like they want it targeted, and how did they co in? What was that? I've never seen anything like it!
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>>LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD
How did you get this, Telkan?
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>>TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
I'm not at liberty to say.
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>>CONFEDMIL
I know, so does CONFEDINT and CONFEDMILINT.
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>>MANTID FREE WORLDS
Oooh.
That planet's going to need so spackle, maybe a new coat of paint.
Oof.
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>>TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Aw, it's just costic damage, I'm sure of it.
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>>PUBVIAN DOMINION
Yeeeeeeeeah, that's a kill...
I just looked at the record. They showed up during the Second Terran/Mantid War, huh? Just watching? Popping up here and there during so of the fights since The Glassing?
We know where they're coming from yet?
I an, you had 8,000 years to figure it out.
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>>CONFEDMIL
Uh, well... you see...
Uh.
No.
No we don't.
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>>PUBVIAN DOMINION
You are least know who they are beyond the blindingly obvious, right?
Are they one of the old United Nations slowships? Are they a Hamburger Kingdom slowship? A Your-a-Goon slowship? Any idea?
Did you at least figure that out?
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>>CONFEDMIL
Well... no.
They still refuse to communicate beyond warning everyone to stay back or be targeted.
They haven't been interested in communicating with anyone.
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>>MANTID FREE WORLDS
Well, they always send a ship with so variation of the na "We don't wanna talk" in their flotilla.
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>>RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
Looks like that one's going for low orbit with so support ships. The others are making least ti courses for the other inhabited worlds.
This is gonna be ugly.
I think
>>LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD
ONE TWO THREE FOUR GO!
WE ARE ALL THINKING THE SA THING RIGHT NOW! UNCLE MIKEY IS THE BEST! BE GOOD TO EACH OTHER!
heeheeheeheeheeheehehee
I am sorry. I do not know why they did that.
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Rigel>laughs
No, no, it's OK. It happens to Trea all the ti.
It's a good thing. It ans they've figured out that they control you, not the other way around.
Trust , it's a good thing.
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>>TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Yeah. They do it to all the ti.
I don't think it's funny, but they find it hilarious.
Ooooh, looks like they're having their dropships pull low orbits.
This is going to get ugly.
>munches popcorn
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Choi watched as the last vessel took position in low orbit, a chain of a dozen smaller warships following it, all increasing the gap between them until they were evenly spaced around the planet.
The Pearl Mantid's Nightmare was over the second planet from the stellar mass, the Entropy's Little Sister over the third, and The Terrible Silence of the Ducklings over the third.
She watched as lights struck down, ripping through the atmosphere, to impact on the vast crystal cities. Fireballs rose into the sky as the kinetic kill weapons, all with the bluish-white snap of antimatter at the core, obliterated the large cities. Boiling clouds, bloody and full fire, clawed into the stratosphere as the shockwaves rolled out across the rest of the city.
"They've started orbital bombardnt, Captain," Captain/Commodore Hooker said softly. "Looks like tungsten wrapped around Cole-Bunch Imperium-X with a hydrogen anti-matter core. Explosions in the 50 gaton range."
"Logged," Choi said.
The strikes had not co one at ti. They had all occurred simultaneously across all three worlds. All the 'flight' tis staggered so that the blasts happened within milliseconds of each other.
She didn't like the coordination one bit.
"Dropships detected," Hooker said. "Big ones. Sa types as on record."
Ti went by. Three minutes before the dropships would have made landfall, Hooker spoke again.
"Wark launches. Pod launches. Fast entry," he said. "Just over eighty thousand," he paused again. "Those ships must be little more than troops holding and engines."
"Is it standard to the records?" Choi asked.
"Affirmative. Exact sa tactics, timing, sequencing," Commander Tilkak'Nok said, clicking his mandibles. "To think, the Great P'Thok faced such creatures on the battlefield in little more than plasteel armor and a plasma rifle."
Choi just nodded.
The pod and wark landings went exactly as she expected, with big explosions. The pod ones were only perhaps a hundred ters in diater, but the wark ones sotis went out to kiloters. The pods were ablative and burned off on reentry, leaving a kneeling power armored troop in the crater, one knee and one fist in the red hot rock beneath them.
"Scans coming back. Looks like they still haven't updated their power armor or wark designs," Hooker said.
"Looks can be deceiving," Choi said. "Do we have ground signals or just orbital?"
"I can deploy intra-atmospheric stealth drones," Hooker said.
"Do so," Choi 'closed' her eyes and heaved a deep breath.
She had watched planets get murdered and now there was about to be an absolute bloodbath with no quarter asked or given.
Not to say she hadn't taken part in so horrific shit before. Clownface, Mithril, Triple-C most recently.
But there was just sothing horrific about what she was watching through Hooker's drones.
More than a few tis it looked like the ground forces were firing at nothing only for there to be a spray of purple blood and viscera, gobbets of purple flesh, with the purplish-white snap of collapsing phasic protections.
"Looks like Atrekna stealth shielding isn't up to snuff," Commodore Tunlu'uk said.
Choi just nodded.
"Quack and Theseus are engaging spaceborne Dwellerspawn," Hooker siad.
Choi turned her attention.
The extra ships, roughly three each, were sitting silent. There was no special effects, no using side effects of the weapon use for interesting and morale busting visual/audio effects. No flashing of guns, no ripples in spaceti.
Just energy surges just outside the barrels of the heavy guns.
Choi watched the oncoming Dwellerspawn. She had to admit, there was a lot of them. Six of the ones that General NoDra'ak had called "Big Slobbery Mo" were advancing on cilia surrounded by graviton energy.
The rounds reached the Dwellerspawn and 'detonated'.
"By Kalki's Dancing Goat," Commander Tilkak'Nok said softly.
This ti space definitely warped. The weapons went off, creating an artificial singularity that the instrunts estimated was slightly smaller than a marble. Flesh and armor was sucked off the Dwellerspawn by gravity, spiraling down into an ever decreasing tentacle. The singularity lit up with a bright whitish-blue light.
"Hydrogen antimatter reactions detected," Hooker said. He stayed silent, not bothering to say anything else.
There was really nothing else to say.
Choi didn't say anything, just watched as the giant hive ships and their attendants were sucked into the artificial gravity singularities. Another barrage 'detonated' at the sa ti as the artificial black hole lost cohesion and exploded in a ravening orb of energy.
It was over in minutes. Both huge armadas were wiped out, leaving nothing but expanding energy.
"Theseus and Quack are firing on autonomous war machine armadas, ma'am," Hooker added.
Choi watched as the singularities ripped apart the massive machines. The bombardnt lasted nearly six minutes, the two 'Earthling' fleets shifting position to avoid the light speed lag counter-strikes, letting them pass by with only a few dozen kiloters to spare, as if they really didn't care.
Six minutes later there was nothing more than expanding gas, light, and shredded atoms.
"Theseus and Quack are firing on the stellar mass," Hooker said. This ti he sounded choked up.
Ti went by.
"Impact. No apparent effect," Hooker said.
"It could take days or week for any effect to be apparent," Tilkak'Nok said. "Pressure at a star's core is extrely intense."
"Let's not forget who we're watching," Choi said. "Keep an eye on the stellar mass."
Hours passed while Choi watched the slaughter on the ground. Several tis screaming life forms she didn't recognize ran by the Earthling forces as the Earthling forces advanced into the teeth of the Atrekna.
Eight tis she watched as the Atrekna attempted to get the Earthlings to slow down or stop by carrying neo-sapients or Lanaktallan inside war machines or attached to the war machines.
It would have worked against the Confederacy, forced the Confederacy to either co up with a new plan or hold strategy etings to determine what to do.
The Earthlings didn't hesitate.
They just fired anyway.
The Atrekna's pattern recognition finally kicked in and they realized that the strategy might have bought them breathing room against the Confederacy or the Terran Descent Humans but it was completely useless against these new foes.
What bothered her is how they were completely silent. Hooker's drones picked up every decibel of screaming, every whisper of weapons fire, every hint of noise.
The only thing you could hear from the forces all in iron gray was the humming and hissing of chanics from the massive warks.
No music. No shouting. No warnings.
Just advance.
Shoot.
Kill.
They stomped through mushroom forests growing on sand, existing despite the fact that Choi knew you only got mushrooms on top of thick loam or decaying material. Not that the massive red and white spotted mushrooms, so nearly fifteen ters high, cared what Choi knew. They firmly insisted on existing despite Choi's xenobiology degree.
They stomped through shattered crystal cities, raking fire on any intact crystal, at mid air until the purple blood splashed, crushing giant engraved and inlaid crystals thrumming with phasic energy into gleaming shards.
Warks stood outside of intact cities and poured gatons of firepower into them, then stomped on, searching out their next target. The smaller ones, which Hooker had ID'd as Frogstar Power Armor, advanced into the city in what could best be described as 'mop up'.
More and more of the crew started showing signs of distress, so she lowered their consciousness level and rotated in their replacents.
She forced herself to watch the days of slaughter.
She didn't bother watching the Quack and the Theseus engage Atrekna piloted vessels. She knew the outco of that before they even reached engagent distance.
No call to surrender, no command to cut their engines. Just bombardnt with artificial singularities of compressed antimatter hydrogen and then expanding energy and sundered matter.
All in silence.
"Warks are engaging anti-grav. Looks like their making for orbit," Hooker said. "Dropships are recalling troops."
"At least they spared the civilians not in the fire zone," Commander Tilkak'Nok said. He sounded slightly sick when he said it. He'd seen Atrekna attempt to hide behind civilians and the silent power armor troops just shoot through the civilians as if they were paper targets.
"Anything from the stellar mass?" Choi asked.
"Nothing yet," Hooker said.
It was silent for several hours until only one dropship remained.
"Crap," Hooker suddenly said.
"What?" Choi asked, ntally reaching for the panic button.
"They know we're here," he said. "Or at least, that soone's here."
"How?" Choi asked.
"One of my drones is being commo-lased. Encryption and playback codexes from the Mar-gite War," he said. He frowned. "It's audio-visual feed."
"Let's see it," Choi said. "Everyone, brace yourselves, this might be ugly."
Choi expected a ssage, a Earthling giving a lecture or commands or a warning, or text orders.
Instead the image cleared to a local equivalent of a tree. The bark was thin and smooth, the leaves almost crystalline, the branches intricately intertwined.
Sitting on one of the branches was an avian. Bright feathers, what looked like short stubby crystals growing out of its head and down its spine.
It was singing. A complex fast paced cheeping and tweeting tune.
A gray armored hand reached up in a fist and Choi tensed.
The index finger extended and a chirping whistle sounded.
The bird looked at the finger and hopped off the branch and onto the finger.
All that existed in the image was the fist, the finger, and the crystal-finch against a reddish sky.
For almost a minute the whistle and the bird's chirping wove together.
The bird fluttered away.
END TRANSMISSION appeared.
There was silence.
"Last dropship lifting off," Hooker said. "What was that about?"
Choi shook her head. "I don't know. Sounds like sothing for MilInt-Psych to figure out."
"Stellar mass status change! Gravitation status change!" Hooker suddenly called out. "Looks like the system is surfacing."
"How fast?" Choi asked.
"Looks slow. Probably take several hours," Commander Tilkak'Nok said.
"Recall the drones. Self destruct any too far to recall," Choi ordered.
"Aye-aye, ma'am," Hooker said.
The ship was silent again, Choi hovering between wakefullness and stimulated dreams, when she was pinged and 'opened' her 'eyes' to see what was happening.
The stellar mass was changing color, shrinking, returning to yellowish.
"BRACE!" Commander Tilkak'Nok called out.
Space reverberated, shuddered, twisted, and howled as the system crested from the 'divot' it was in and spread back out to realspace.
"STATUS CHANGE!" Hooker called out.
Choi turned and looked.
"It's a trade ship! Squawking Telkan registry! The Earthlings have it locked up!" Hooker said.
Choi could see the Telkan trader.
It was in the middle of the loose formation of gray ships, less than a million kiloters from the Deathblossom.
"Shit."
>>MANTID FREE WORLDS
OOoooh, I can't watch.
>hides her eyes
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>>TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
It's so exciting!
>munches popcorn.
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