SDNW4 Story Thread 2

[Force Lord]

Follows the "Downfall" continuity.

---

Presidential Center, Centrum
The Centrality
Unreal Time/After formation of the Eye

He did not know what this place was.

He was in an indescript field, barren and broken. He felt cold. Gusts of wind buffeted him.

Kiergy...

What was that? A voice? It was strange... yet familiar....

He heard the sound of thunder. The winds became stronger. He saw the sky taking a purple color.

Kiergy...

That voice again.

Who was it? Did he even want know?

Lightning illuminated the sky, its cracking energies filling the air. More thunder followed it.

Kiergy...

Who was calling him that? No one else had called him by that name except his wife... and someone else.

The wind became colder, its prescence making him shudder. Already he could see his breath. Fear gripped him.

Kiergy!

He covered his ears. Why wouldn't that voice leave him alone! Was he going insane?!

The wind was now so strong that he was losing his balance. Lightning began to strike the ground, which started to shake.

Kiergy!!!

In an instant he knew that voice. Unspeakable horror possessed him.

He fell. But not forever, for fate had its cruelties.

The wind took him, to the sky itself, glowing with energies mortals could not dare to know. Dark, evil energies.

He felt coming to a stop, as if some invisible hand was holding him aloft. Swirling, chaotic clouds surrounded him.

Why this was happening to him?! His destiny was not decided already!

Suddenly, the clouds sprouted faces, laughing faces. He recognized that laugh, for it was hers. He never forgot that disturbingly childsh laugh.

The faces kept laughing, laughing at him. For a moment he felt anger come. How dare she mock him! He would have her head soon enough. Then he would be the one to laugh.

Suddenly, the faces started to combine with each other, forming a single one he could barely recognize. It was... grotesque. An ugly mockery of a face he wished to forget.

The "face", in a grave, hoarse voice, spoke, "COME TO ME, KIERGY! COME TO THE DARK SIDE!"

So this was his end. Never he had felt such intense despair.

"She" moved to swallow him whole...

In his room, Dirad Kierger woke up with a scream.

[White Haven]

This post is part of the Downfall continuity.

Battlecruiser Majestic
Earth Orbit
Sol (MEH variant)

“...has already destroyed two vessels. Repeat. Two vessels have been destroyed. You are advised to stay away from the rift.”

West’s first thought at the transmission ended had nothing to do with the tactical situation.

What the hell is a ‘Solar Admiral?’

Banishing that brief musing, West’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the tactical plot. It was built to show ships, missiles, celestial phenomena, and the like. Contacts with a sane emissions signature that behaved in relatively well-understood ways. The tentacles evidenced lashing around the looming mass highlighted in the holographic display did not fall under that category, and as such the idiot-savant computer was blithely filtering it all out. Even as he watched, though, that began to change as the holotank began doing its level best to render lashing, impossible tentacles in a sphere expanding outwards from the squadron’s icons at lightspeed.

“FCS tied into the main sensor grid and set full-active, Captain. We should be getting returns on that...thing.” came the call from one of a small team of sensor specialists working furiously at the electronic warfare section set against a bulkhead.

West’s head jerked in a sharp nod, sparing the time for a simple, “Good work,” before turning his head towards the command deck’s tactical station and speaking in a deceptively-calm tone, “Mister Hadrian. Tentacles do not belong in Earth orbit. Begin pruning them. Main batteries only unless you have a high-priority target that absolutely requires additional firepower.”

Tactical officers are generally not chosen for their unwillingness to unleash the firepower at their disposal. Around any other world, there may have been hesitation, the thought of retreat rather than engagement. But this was Earth, at least as far as anyone aboard Majestic knew. The homeworld. The motherland. The grin that answered West held nothing of humor, but rather was a more primal baring of teeth. A finger punched down on a single button, loading the fire-plan he’d been setting up even before he had a concrete return on a target to work with.

“Yes sir.”
_____________

Earth Orbit
Sol (MEH variant)

Not every ship in the Sixth’s formation could bear on the tentacled monstrosity, although given the fairly short range and enormous size of what was left of Sasha a bit more than half of the sphere’s warships could bring guns to bear. The ships on the far side of the formation trained their massive dorsal and ventral turrets outwards in all directions, angling their respective broadsides to different regions of space to cover as many possible approaches as they could. The gun-mounts studding the flanks of the Sixth warships were already levelled at the impossible creature, the heavy turrets all trained out towards it, each captain eager to fire. Lieutenant Commander Hadrian’s simple keypress sent the central fire-plan to each and everyone of those ships. It was a simple one at heart, given that no one knew anything much about the creature. Target points were distributed across its bulk, different ships given different taskings, and a few seconds passed while ships realigned.

And then fired.

Searing blazes of heat and light and other, more exotic radiation bloomed in the void all around the writhing mass of tentacles, matter and antimatter meeting in violent bursts of radiant energy. Iridescent, shimmering tentacles blackened and charred and shattered under the sudden, vicious hammerblow of the initial salvo. After that first massed salvo, each ship and mount went to sustained rapid fire, following the single wall of fire with increasingly-ragged timing until the thing writhed beneath the lash of a constant stream of blazing white fire. Bits of unreal matter, burnt and lifeless, alive and wriggling, liquid and spurting, all sprayed outwards from the detonations as the Sixth Cruiser Squadron’s fury chewed into the great beast’s bulk as it surged closer.

The vast, tentacled beast swung away from its pursuit of the fleeting Byzantine fleet and bore down upon the defiant vessels of the Sixth directly, narrow glistening tendrils and vast, fat grasping tentacles stretching out towards the thundering guns. Fire began to shift closer and closer, hammering back the narrowing tendrils with swathes of close-ranged fire. The surface of the heavy tentacles began to boil away into space under the relentless pounding of the squadron’s guns, but only the surface layers; the huge, crushing appendages had more than enough volume to absorb the fire until it was too late.

Swarms of heavy shipkillers boiled out from the flanks of the embattled vessels, even the ships on the far side of the sphere formation from the onrushing calamity launching full salvos and handing them off to ships with clear fire-control. Whipcords of warpflesh slashed out, wrapping around missiles in mid-fight and crushing them into premature detonation while protected from the blazing storm of defensive fire by the presence of the very missiles that they were destroying. The overloaded drives of the heavy missiles gave little time to engage them, however, and within seconds the survivors of the massed salvo crashed home against the bases of three of the closest tentacles.

When the heavy antimatter warheads detonated, the impact points were washed out in a torrent of radiation too intense for almost any sensor to penetrate. When they were able to lock on again, all three tentacles had been blasted free of the main body, splinters and globs of unreal flesh sprayed in all directions as the still-writhing masses pinwheeled end over end through space.

That brief window of blindness, however, cost the lives of the crew of the light cruiser Primus. Two of the severed, maimed tentacles were blown well clear of the battle on ballistic trajectories, but the third had been bracketted between them and had been blasted free of the beast on a trajectory that put it dangerously close to the Sixth formation. Main batteries opened fire on it, but there simply wasn’t enough time to ablate its vast bulk before it passed inside the minimum safe distance of the horribly destructive matter/antimatter cannons. A spray of point-defense lasers peppered its surface in a last-ditch effort, but they barely even caused charred, leaking surface to ripple. For a moment, it looked as its course would carry it clear, but in a sudden spasm of movement it twisted, setting itself to spinning in space at just the right time to coil around the slim, blocky ship’s shields.

The normally-invisible envelope surrounding Primus fluoresced with brilliant light, obscuring the ship from view as more and more of the horrible, unnatural force being exerted against it was converted to light and radiated away. The rest of the squadron watched helplessly, their own guns thundering away still, holding the monstrous creature at bay as its orphaned limb slowly crushed the life out of one of their brethren. Even if there had been any fire to spare for the trapped cruiser, nothing in the arsenal of any ship in the squadron would be able to do the job without dooming Primus just as surely as the tentacle itself.

Finally, with one last, convulsive jerk, the tentacle crushed the and the ship beneath. For one brief, horrible moment, all eyes could see the hull buckling beneath the implacable grip, burning atmosphere boiling out into the void. And then the vast antimatter stores buried deep inside the ship, as with all other Sixth warships, gave way. The titanic explosion obliterated Primus’s hulk and the tentacle altogether, radiation and debris spalling off the shields of nearby ships.

A veritable forest of writhing tendrils speared straight for the gap in the spherical formation left by the light cruiser’s demise, only to be met by a fresh salvo of missiles that blotted out an entire stretch of the sky in a synchronized detonation of antimatter warheads. The Sixth’s defenses continued to hold. For now.
___________

Battlecruiser Majestic
Earth Orbit
Sol (MEH variant)

West’s jaw tightened as Primus’s light code flashed into oblivion, overlaid for several seconds by a greek Omega symbol before vanishing altogether. Before he could even give the order to engage the attempt to break through the weak spot in the squadron’s defense, missile traces began to bloom in the holotank. He nodded to team manning the tactical section in grim agreement, a gesture that went entirely unnoticed by the frantically-busy officers there. After a moment’s thought, he opened his mouth, then closed it again and began reconfiguring the squadron formation himself. The tactical staff were more than busy enough just keeping the Sixth Cruiser alive; something as relatively simple as shifting the formation around to make up for the loss of one of its members was something he could easily do himself.

With that taken care of and the light-codes of ships repositioning in the tactical plot, he called up a squadron command channel with a grimace and a murmur of, ‘We don’t have the luxury of waiting.’

“West to all ships. Shunt power from jump engines to main batteries. I say again, depower jump engines and transfer power to main batteries. This is Earth, we’re not running. West clear.”

In the sudden silence that followed, he looked back over his shoulder and nodded to his operations officer curtly, simply saying, “Do it.” She swallowed once, then nodded and began quickly inputting commands. Within seconds, the tempo of fire sleeting outwards from the embattled ships began to rise, fresh reserves of energy flooding into the main batteries.

The battle continued on in eerie silence for a while longer, the ruinous rate of fire of the Sixth’s guns holding the beast at bay. West sat motionless, staring at the plot and its murky, unaccustomed lack of information. Normally, he’d have some sort of feedback, some information regarding how badly damaged the enemy was, some sort of refining idea of its capabilities by now. This foe was so far outside the realm of the squadron’s experience, though, that the tactical plot’s automated systems had nothing to work with, no hard information to make inferences from. He spared a venemous glare for the retreating drive-plumes of the force that had been at short range and was, by now, at rather long range, muttering, ‘Cowards...’ under his breath before banishing them from his thoughts.

“Tactical.” he called out, the first voice to break the silence at above a low mutter, “Let’s hurt this thing. Give me a coordinated missile salvo on the base of one of those tentacles we blew off. Precede with suppressing fire from the main batteries, and set the warheads to penetrate before detonating.”

More than one face paled at the implications of such an order given the squadron’s hard-pressed defenses. The chief tactical officer swallowed hard, once, then replied without looking up from his console, “Yes sir, give us thirty seconds to plot it.”

Seconds ticked by slowly, time in which the guns of the ships on the squadron’s trailing edge began to fire as well, lashing out at a coordinated wave of long, thin feelers arcing up around the blazing curtain of fire put out in a dome in front of the Sixth and attempting to cut in behind them. That was why West had maintained a spherical formation, though, rather than switching to a wall for maximum offensive power, and the attempt was beaten back at long range. Tendrils that long were by necessity fragile...and nothing fragile had a hope in hell of penetrating the crushing fists of the Sixth Cruiser Squadron’s main battery fire.

Finally, a thirty-one-second eternity later, the tactical section reported the fire-plan was ready, drawing a simple, formal phrase from West in reply.

“Execute at your discretion, Tactical.”
____________

Earth Orbit
Sol (MEH variant)

There was a gap in the curtain of blazing white death around the Sixth Cruiser’s position. Not just a gap somewhere. A gap everywhere. Every last gun in the squadron fell silent in an instant, each mount building up to full charge and holding fire. At the same time, each and missile tube on each and every warship flung a heavy shipkiller missile out into space, courses slewing wildly about as they all settled down on course for single, small area on the titanic mass of charred, blackened, somehow still iridescent flesh. Their accelerations varied substantially, missiles launched from mounts capable of facing the enemy accelerating slowly, while those fired by launchers angled away swept around in maximum-power curves to catch up.

As the creature’s tendrils began to reach for the oncoming missiles once again, the main batteries of the Sixth spoke once more, preceding the massed missile salvo with a sheath of blazing white-hot flame to shield them from interception. The wave of blinding light and radiation marched ahead of the salvo, just outside the range at which it would be capable of disabling the missiles themselves. At such a short range, flight time was measured in seconds, not minutes, and the covering fire got nearly the entire salvo to the target intact. As the missiles began their terminal approach, the main batteries shifted to point-blank fire all around the squadron, desperately trying to beat back the bewildering array of grasping tentacles that had struck out once the creature realized that its prey was vulnerable.

The same could be said for the Sixth’s fire, of course.

Hundreds of heavy antimatter-tipped missiles struck home against the glistening, weeping stump left behind by the tentacle that massacred Primus. Some failed and detonated on impact, scarring the surface but inflicting no noticeable damage. Most, however, operated exactly as programmed, slamming full-force into the relatively soft ‘tissue’ of the gaping wound and burrowing down inside it. Many of the penetrators were crushed by the sudden decelleration. Others struck unaccountably-firm matter somewhere inside the amorphous bulk. Others simply slid to a halt inside the ‘flesh.’ Every one, however, detonated in some capacity.

Light flashed through the creature’s flesh as a rippling chain of antimatter warheads exploded inside its body, sending shadows of impossible colors racing out into space. Hard on the heels of the flash, an entire segment of the creature’s flesh beneath the gaping wound left over from the tentacle’s amputation simply vomited outwards into space in all directions, leaving behind a vast crater weeping glistening, phosphorous fluids into space. A scream, an impossible wail lashed out at the speed of thought, the Sixth’s formation wobbling unsteadily as crew clutched at their heads in a futile effort to shut out the agonized shriek that sliced directly into their minds. More than one mind broke under the flail of psychic agony, blood pouring from every orifice as the victims slumped down to the decking or sagged in their chairs, screaming in a longer-lasting, audible echo of Sasha’s pain.

And then the Earth began to move. The gaping chasm in the void that had spawned the abomination rotated in space, the Earth moving with its surface until, from the perspective of the Sixth, it occupied the exact center of the rift. Charred continents rippled nauseatingly in oceans of blood, a narrow, tall slit of utter blackness stretching from pole to pole and widening at the center. Squirming lines of bloody crimson began to stretch outwards from the edges of the Earth, scrawling an erratic pattern across the surface of the inky black orb. And then, abruptly, the entire anomaly began to vanish from view, starting at the top and bottom relative to the Earth’s poles, then narrowing towards the Earth itself until, for one brief, glorious moment, the planet stood revealed as it once had been. Continents in their proper places, the world all blue and green and brown and white. And then, just as suddenly, the hole in space reappeared as a line and expanded upwards and down once more, until it had returned to its full size once again.

The Eye of Sasha had blinked.
___________

Battlecruiser Majestic
Earth Orbit
Sol (MEH variant)

West was silent. It was hard to tell, with so many others screaming or gurgling as they choked on their own blood. He stared at the visual display sill hovering above the holographic tank, watching in helpless despair as the slit pupil of the Eye widened slightly, staring out of the display straight at him. Straight at him. How could he fight that? How could anyone fight that? The unknown fleet had been right to run, he’d lead his people to this fate, delivered them into the hands of madness and horror. He just stared into the hologram, the slit-pupiled eye growing larger and larger to fill his vision, eclipsing the bridge, hiding the sight of a dozen dead or insane (or insane, then dead) bodies on the bridge alone from him. He couldn’t help but feel pathetically grateful to the Eye for hiding the evidence of his own failure, his own weakness, from himself...

Suddenly, his view of the Eye’s pupil reaching out to claim him was replaced by the chest of a young woman, one standing directly in front of him with her arms outstretched as if to shield him from its influence. He snapped back convulsively, one bloody tear streaking his face as he stared up at the unknown woman in her unfamiliar clothes and bearing a strange weapon. She -- or her image, West realized, as he was vaguely able to see the bridge through her -- spoke in a quiet voice, almost a whisper, “I can protect you and yours for a time. Will you help me?”

His mouth gaped in confusion for a few seconds, before finally forming the first question to come to mind. He stammered at first, then gritted his teeth and forced some composure back into himself before trying again, “Who are you?”

“My name?” She smiled, as if replying to a joke no one else in the universe could possibly understand, “My name does not matter. I am the right woman, in the right time, with the right tools. Will you help me reach the right place so I can end this?”

West’s head turned, realizing for the first time that the rest of the bridge crew of the Majestic were moving with glacial speed, barely even visible. He looked back up at the translucent, glimmering woman standing in front of his seat, mind full of questions, and simply answered, “Yes.”

With that simple word, the girl vanished and the bridge crew exploded into motion once more. One rating stopped in the process of clawing at his own eyes, a bloody furrow raked along one cheek by his own fingernail. Another recoiled away from a dead body she’d been beating against a bulkhead. Screams continued...but only cries of pain, not horrible, unnatural horror and insanity imposed by the eye now glaring impotently through the holographic viewer.

“All hands, back to your stations. Tactical, go to rapid fire on all tubes and prepare to shift form--” He began to snap orders, only to look over and find that absolutely every last man and woman who had been seated at the bridge’s plotting and fire-control consoles was dead. Without waiting another moment, he hit the quick-release on his seat’s restraints, calling out, “Illyana, you have the con, I’ll be at Tactical. We’re heading in.”
____________

Earth Orbit
Sol (MEH variant)

The Sixth Cruiser Squadron’s formation broke apart at last, but not in the unstructured chaos that the malign intellect behind the Eye of Sasha must have expected. Instead, it reformed in a cylindrical shape, blunted prows pointing directly towards the vast crater driver deep into the creature’s flank. Slotted into the hollow center are, as always, the auxiliaries, but also one more addition. A glowing white figure with some sort of spear in hand flashed alongside the auxiliaries, moving past them to take position just inside the mouth of the formation. The Sixth’s guns thundered out their rage in every direction, constant, blazing streaks of fire clawing at the void just beyond the minimum safe distance of the volatile main batteries. Missiles blasted free of their launch tubes as fast as they could load, streaking out to join the rippling curtain of fire that surrounding the charging squadron like a cocoon made of nothing but death.

So much fire at such close range left the Sixth almost totally blind, navigating by relative positional data with only the most basic of glimpses of the outside world to verify that they were in position. Occasionally, smashing tentacles managed to penetrate the wall of fire, ships frantically rolling and sliding aside in an effort to evade the dying spams of the crippled remains that made it past the final, point-blank defense. Some succeeded. Others did not, and ship after ship began to join Primus in death. Some were smashed apart, crushed like empty cans. Others were simply dragged or battered out of the safety of the Saint’s protection, the Earth twitching and shifting as the Eye focused directly on each vulnerable ship in turn and obliterated the minds of their crews.

Finally, the thundering charge of the Sixth Cruiser Squadron crossed the distance to the massive crater and began to peel off to all sides, braking hard and swooping low over the tentacle-studded surface. Many more were caught and dragged down to destruction as they struggled to avoid ramming the beast...but one element of the splintered formation did not. One single, small figure, blazing with an ever-growing white light, streaked down into the crater, down through a lumpy, roiling tunnel of warpflesh, lance levelled in front of the Saint.

The universe vanished in a soundless roar and a flash of blackness.

Battlecruiser Majestic
Unknown Location

West slowly, blearily dragged himself back to consciousness. Gummed eyes refused to open at first, but his ears told a sufficient story of groans and whimpers and crying and heavy breathing. He said the first thing that came to mind, his voice thick and groggy.

“Where are we...this time?”

[Mayabird]

Planet Sayam
Goddamn Unreal Time, a couple days later


The bird keeps following me around, thought Bart Blade, as he looked around, hoping to see if he was anywhere nearby. Everywhere, Blade would think that he was alone with his revengeful thoughts, a moment to himself, but then - that same cloud of smoke and tar-smelling black feathers, that gravely and obnoxiously cheerful voice full of questions (“Mr. Blade! Why did you miss my last lecture? Were you busy? Would you like to hear it anyway now that you have time? To start, do you know about Shroomheim's Theory of Philosophical Paradigms?”) followed by that shiny cart. It wasn't just at the lectures, no, but at any given moment that he was outside his hotel room! Meals, nightclubs, meetings with important people – the bird was there. Why? No doubt his mortal enemies in some dread conspiracy had put the bird up to this. He would find them, hunt down those fundamentalists standing against him and riches, he'd show them! Show ALL of them!

“McNamaras! They're everywhere!” Blade muttered out loud.

“Indeed!” Epaulette agreed. “It is the third-most common human surname in all of known space.”

Blade uttered a cry that sounded something between shock and choking on his own esophagus and his heart skipped two beats.

“Is it that surprising a statistic?” asked Epaulette, with innocent ignorance. He watched the human gulp air, then choke and cough and gasp and wheeze. “Bart, my friend – it is alright to call you Bart, yes? - Bart, are you well? That does not seem to be normal human breathing!”

“Just...need...water,” he lied.

“But of course! And here Secretary comes at top speed! Secretary, pull our your little water nozzle for my friend here! He needs a drink to clear his throat! And out it comes. Bart, open wide!”

Blade made a horrified gurgle, akin to that emitted by dying swamp animals.

“It's perfectly safe! I drink it myself! You would find it most refreshing! Ah, and someone approaches as well!” Bart saw the blue-black stocky hominid (with fancy silver-framed tinted glasses) approach and Epaulette narrated, “It is Chiduubein of Umeria, the renowned Phosako psychologist herself! As you know, she has been part of our lecture series here, so I have had a few talks with her myself these last few days, but now we three can all have a chat together! Ah, but Dr. Chiduubein, you are covering your lovely polychromatic eyes! Please, why don't you remove them so I can introduce the two of you?”

She did, and then she looked directly into Bart Blade's eyes. He tried to suppress a shudder.

“So we meet, Kadahuli Blade,” said Chiduubein, with almost stereotypical calmness. The Shepistani, of course, had no idea what the word meant; he assumed it must be some sort of title of respect. Still, the bird AND an Umerian. Things had somehow gotten worse.

Or maybe it hadn't, because the bird had turned away to talk to the lumpy thing in the cart. He'd dealt with plenty of Umerians in his day, the annoying little dorks. Though they made Umerthirst, wonderful delicious Umerthirst...

“I have some questions about one of your analyses,” she said.

”Could you look up the definition of that term, Secretary?” Epaulette asked off to the side.

“Specially, the one entitled 'A Multiparadigmic Crypto-Analytico Assessment of the Traditional Values and Child-Rearing Stratagems of the Nuclear Family and their Relationship Pertaining to the Prevalence of Plural Pseudo-Psyker/Psionic Parapsychic Perfidiousities in the Republic of Shepistan (and the Grand Dominion to a Lesser Degree)'.” Despite not raising her voice in the least, there seemed to be a hint of utter disgust in her tone.

Soft peeps came from the cart. “What are you laughing about?” Epaulette asked. More soft peeps. “What do you mean, you'll 'tell me when I'm older'?”

“Tell me, how large was your sample size?”

“Secretary, you are being uncharacteristically unhelpful. Nevermind then. Anyway, Bart, I am glad the good doctor has already asked because I wanted to inquire more as to that paper myself! You never did tell me about your experimental methods when I asked before.”

Hours of their interrogation passed by, as he tried to escape but they followed anyway, (even into the restrooms, which were horrifyingly both unisex and multi-species) unrelenting in their inquisition! It went on for so long that he finally became too tired to be offended anymore, and just wanted them to go away. And then, strangely enough, Epaulette mentioned, “Look at the time! Doctor, his next lecture is coming up in a few minutes! Let us herd him towards his lecture hall!”

An opening! “No! I forgot my notes! They're in my room! I need to get them!”

“Of course, of course!” Epaulette exclaimed. “Hurry! We will meet you back at your lecture. I look forward to your summary of non-military uses of nuclear warheads!”

Escape! He ran, into the hotel and through the lifts to his room. Blade stumbled in and slammed the door behind, then locked it physically and electronically and (with a lot of puffing) pulled a table in front of it to block it. The exertion did not help at all. Between the lectures, and his continuing despair at the loss of all his profits from his writing, his declining health (which had never been the same since they took his Umerthirst away) and that goddamned bird, Bart Blade was simply exhausted. He checked over the room, making sure that the windows and doors were all locked tight, and then Blade slumped on the divan. He called in the head office of the lecture planners, told them to cancel his next two days of lectures (including the one he was supposed to deliver in a few minutes), and he had barely shut off the com before he dropped it and fell into a shallow, unrestful sleep.

[Force Lord]

Downfall-related

---

The Central Times

Brief yet extensive wave of psychic discomfort hits Centrality ESPers, Government seized by panic

It came as soon as it left. Yet it had a noticeable impact.

All across the Centrality, ESPers of all ranks felt a sudden sensation, which many described as "very uncomfortable" and "quite nasty", that lasted at most only a few seconds. Yet it has been noted by well-placed researchers that the sensation experienced recently is still there, only much reduced in magnitude. Theories about the origin of this "sensation" abound, none proven, but it is clear that the prescence of ESP Amplifiers throughout the Centrality made this "sensation" stronger than it would have been. Possibility that it was an attempted terrorist attack has been ruled out, due to the sheer impracticability of developing a weapon that can create such psychic discomfort across ten sectors. Whethever this event is to be repeated remains to be seen.

It caused, however, a major security-service panic throught the Centrality. The streets of every major world are now patrolled by local security, CSB forces, and Sector Defense troops, with orders to shoot at anyone who, according to an anonymous official, "shows strange conduct". All citizens are urged to report any such happenings. Any who disobey will be punished in acccord with Centrality law. The Central Governmet has also been jolted by the passage of the "sensation", and there will be an emergency meeting of the Supreme Party Congress tommorrow. The executive leadership has however been eeriely quiet, and has made no public announcements. Central Times journalists who tried to contact the Dictator were rebuffed by his bodyguards. The Centrality awaits his word with anxiety.

[Mayabird]

Not Downfall related at all.

Planet Sayam
Goddamn Unreal Time, a couple hours later

Bart Blade did not dream, for he was not allowed to. If he dreamed, he might think of classified things that could then be plucked from his mind by devious psykers. Thus, if any sensory input reached into his unconscious mind, he knew he had to wake up.

It was a smell that made its way through, heavy and strong, of burned tobacco that stayed in a person's clothes and hair...or feathers. Then a sound: “Bart, my friend, why did you cancel your lecture so suddenly?”

He bolted up. “WHY ARE YOU IN MY ROOM?” Bart screamed, as he pulled his hidden handgun out of the cushion. He instinctively brought it up to fire its tiny tracking missile-bullets at whatever was somewhat in front of him, but before he could pull the trigger, something knocked it from his hand with an adorable squeak!

“Balls!” said Bart Blade.



“Yes, that is my personal assistant, Secretary,” Epaulette said, around puffs on his cigar. “You two have met.”

The exotic nanofiber-clad Aggregate made what looked like an adorable little face and started what looked like an adorable little dance.
Spoiler

I speak in the Silent Language of the Assassins and present to you
My challenge, the dance of death! Prepare for battle!

This duel you will not survive!

Should you harm my charge your demise will be quick – but painful!

Dare you fight me? Know that-

“Oh Secretary, now is not the time for that,” Epaulette interrupted, something quite impolite, but he did not know of the secret silent language of the Assassins. (Though even if he did know it, he still would have interrupted.)

“Balls!” Blade said again, but this time he was pointing towards the kitchenette.

“Ah yes, that is also Secretary.” One of the nanofiber-clad bodies there raised a spatula in acknowledgment before returning to turning something in a pan. “He is of the Aggregate race, you know.”

“Ba-”

“That is quite enough with the balls,” said Epaulette. “Secretary is very talented, helpful, and has an incredible array of skills. Notice how he just averted an international incident while still cooking supper!”

“HOW ARE YOU IN MY ROOM?”

“I came in through the window!” Epaulette said cheerily. He pointed with a wing behind Blade. Indeed, one of the giant pane windows was swung open, so ajar that it was practically falling out. There was plenty of room for a bird, even a giant blackbird, to get in.

The window had definitely not been open before.

When Blade looked back around, Epaulette was setting his cigar in an ashtray that had not been there before either.

“As you can probably guess from the Centralist iconology of this piece, it was a gift from an official, and quite a nice, thoughtful, and useful gift as well. No accidental ash burns!

“But enough about myself! This visit is for you, and that is why we have brought a present! Secretary, if you please.”

The same body opened a sac on its body and expelled a stream of small metallic items.

“Equipment for spying, 'bugs' as you say. Secretary found twenty-six of them around your room. We are giving you twenty; the most exotic and unusual we are keeping for ourselves for our own analysis, but I'm sure you understand; we must think of our own nation and its protection! Still, now you know we come here in good faith.”

“SOMEONE! I'M BEING HELD HOSTAGE!”

“You are a funny one, Bart! And even if you had not requested the room with the extra soundproofing, it would not work, since the entire rest of this floor is unoccupied, you big sillyhead! Oh, don't get that look as if you're horrified that your own paranoiac preparations have betrayed you; cheer up! We have a delicious meal coming, as I am worried that you have not been eating well and that is affecting your health. My affable assistant somehow knows a great deal about food preparation!”
Spoiler

Secretary lurked in a vent, creepily watching the Centralite sleep. He waited for the Centralite to wake up so he could enter and explore the room.

In the meantime, he was very bored, so one body flipped through a cookbook and studied the recipes. He did this a lot.

“Anyway, we have some time to waste whilst we wait for our supper, which I think would be good for lighter topics. So, as good conversationalists that we are, let us expound upon things of which we know nothing! How about poetry? I don't get poetry. ...dear me, Bart, you'll give your bare skin rug burns if you keep diving into the floor like that. Oh, don't work yourself up trying to send out a message; we cut the coms to the room so you wouldn't be disturbed and could get some relaxation for these next days without lectures! I think your battery on that was nearly depleted, anyway. Is it rechargeable? No? You shouldn't shake your head so sadly, my friend! They are not irreplaceable; we can find you some replacement batteries later. I believe Sayam does carry Shepistani standard sizes. Anyway, poetry!”

Blade sputtered, “I don't like poetry.”

“Neither do I! How alike we are, like two chicks from the same egg – and that is not common!”

Time passed. The Shepistani defense contractor could not tell how long. A devious part of his brain kicked in, realizing that this could be a perfect opportunity to gain valuable intelligence on the Refugees, even if they were militarily weak. He tried, but...

“Weapons? No, no, too hard a subject of discussion while we're hungry. We can be serious after our crops are full.”

“I do not have a crop!”

“Is that true? But your jaw below the chin and your neck bulge so! I remember that it is not standard or original issue on humans, but there have been so many jolly augmentations to your species.”

At any rate, soon after the bodies in the kitchenette began squeaking.

“That means it is time for our meal! Secretary is ladling out portions into bowls, but we will have to carry those two the table ourselves, as I could not lift Secretary's cart up to this floor – such a high floor, and it is surprisingly heavy! You may think this would be difficult for me, as I do not have hands as you do, but I am dextrous with my claws and beak and can still fly while holding the bowl! Observe! Here I am gruhhih eh owl en ai eek en ow uatch ah I eng eh uu eh ahool, a ehieh ahooer ih I ah oo ih precision, as I have have performed such tasks all my life, and in varying gravitational pulls as well! And now you are bringing your bowl as well, and naturally you choose the place setting with utensils, as your people use. Personally I consider it a needless luxury and a hassle, but to all their own!

“So we come to our food!” Epaulette said, as he glanced at the mixture in the bowl. It is...” Epaulette cocked his head and read off Secretary's blinking series of colors. “Some sort of heated protein and starch substrate with a sauce made of local plant materials. Sounds delicious! Now let's say those traditional words so we may start. Bon appetit! Grace! Itadakimasu! Mmmm, mmmm!” He picked up a sliver of meat with his beak and gulped it down.

Blade stared at the green/orange/brown mess in the bowl, wondering if it was meant to poison him or infect him with nanites or some other terrible exotic alien scheme. One of Secretary's bodies bounced up, and out of its body emerged a tendril holding something small, round, and mechanical.

“Try it,” came the sound from the little speaker, an adorable squeaky voice that Blade also found threatening and unnerving. “You'll like it.” He extended more little tendrils and picked up the spoon, and then offered it to Bart as if it was a sword of destiny, and his unblinking eyespots seemed to bore holes into Blade's very psyche.

Readying himself to die for his country, Bart Blade took the proffered spoon and scooped a small amount.

“Don't be so shy, Bart! It is wonderfully flavorful and-”

He realized that if it did kill him, he wouldn't have to listen to Epaulette anymore, so he tried it.

...

It was actually pretty good. Not the best curry he'd ever had but very respectable.

“What do you think?” asked the disturbingly cute voice.

“It's good. Really good,” he said.

“Thank you!” said the speaker; Secretary pulled it back in and then smiled proudly with his eyespots.

Dinner wore on. Blade noted how Epaulette spoke less when he ate. Unfortunately, the Refugee usually left strange questions hanging in those pauses, such as -

“Have you ever thought about how your species has awfully simplistic plural structures in your languages?” he asked, before swallowing down an overly-large chunk of meat that did not choke him, to Blade's dismay. The awkward silence continued until Epaulette could continue, “I suppose that means you have not? But it should have occurred to you! It is like a vestige of an ancient, primitive, horribly simplistic counting system – one, many, as if there is such a stark, binary difference between the individual and the multiple. I see a bowl. I see bowls. How undescriptive! Are there a few chairs, a multitude of chairs, an indeterminate number of bowls? My language as you may guess does carry such distinctions and variations of them in its structure, which I believe gives us an innate advantage when we learn mathematics, among other things. Do you think perhaps I have this backwards, and it is a reflection of your own innate way of thinking? I will let you speak while I eat some more.”

And it went on like that, with complaints about human visual arts neglecting ultraviolet colors, and queries on why humans did things so instead of such. And then the bowls were mostly empty, and Epaulette pulled a cigar out from somewhere in his back feathers. “And now a smoke after eating! Would you like one?” On cue, one of Secretary's bodies bounced up beside Blade and began to exude...he looked away.

“No. No thank you. I mean it.”

“Wonderful! More for me! This is a happy puff.” Absurdly large clouds escaped from his bill. “But anyhow, a few topics ago, I mentioned our plural structures. I believe they also have a benefit when considering social structures. This is pertinent, for I have been thinking about our previous dialogue with Dr. Chiduubein about your paper. She already asked the questions I had, and far better than I could have,” he commented with blatantly false, modesty, “but technical issues aside... but, oh how do I say this- We of the Refuge, as you may know, have our own worries about the phenomenon of 'psychic' abilities, and Shepistan has gone to great lengths to protect itself from the risks. And Bart, I know you must make theoretical plans for all contingencies, like your plan for if your per-pubescent girls somehow have a successful coup and overthrow your government, but even has a hypothetical, isn't it just a little 'over the top'?”

“Excuse me?”

“My thoughts are getting all muddled, and it shows. Yours is a worst case scenario, I suppose, and those must always be extreme”

“I believe you are mistaken.”

“Mistaken how? I know the difference between a nation's propaganda and reality-”

“Shepistan implemented all the measures I recommended.”

“You...all those terrible things you said about being cold and cruel towards your young ones...that is all true? Your nation actually does that.”

“Of course. It is the greatest protection against the threat of psykerdom, as my graphs showed.”

“Maybe I am taking the wrong tact, in my agitated state. Allow me to pull out my holos, activate...here! This is my favorite niece, Brrunk!”



“Isn't she the greatest? Of course I do have other nieces as well...”



“...but as with humans, it takes a little while before our offspring become cute. Still, can you not feel any affection? Chicks are meant to be LOVED and NURTURED and SNUGGLED and CUDDLED and NUZZLED and they curl up beside you and ask for stories and hope they can grow up to be smart and strong and good and helpful and you love them all the more!”

“But as I have pointed out, I have calculated that this is the most efficient method to prevent and suppress psykerdom.”

“YOU MUST FIND SOME OTHER WAY TO DO IT!” Epaulette screamed. His cigar dropped out from his beak (with Secretary jumping down to catch it). “Your way is unacceptable! It goes too far! Why, my friend? How? You truly do this to your own children?”

“I have no children.”

“Alas, neither do I, which is why I must lavish my paternal attentions upon my nieces and nephews. Is your mate disappointed?”

“My mate?”

“Wife, husband, companion, beau, lover, escort, partner, spouse, something-friend, geisha, better half, significant other, a mate!” Epaulette rattled off the list, speaking even faster than he normally did.

“I don't have one.”

“None at all? Are you between mates? Or are we so strangely alike again? For I have little luck with the ladies Unlike that Fulcrum. How does he do it?”

“I have no interest in it!”

“Oh, well, I suppose that is a problem between yourself and your libido. But then you must be like me, in which case, how could you do this to your own nieces and nephews?”

Bart Blade turned red in the face. “I have no family, you dolt!”

Epaulette grasped for words. “You...you...none? None at all? No nieces or nephews?”

“NO!”

“No mother, father, brothers, sisters, matriarchs, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, genetic donors, into-clan marriages, late adoptations, nothing?” His beak hung open, and for the second time on his trip, his loss for words was complete. No family. It was a thought nearly unthinkable to him. Impossible, to be alone like that!

It didn't last long, of course. “You...are an orphan!” His thoughts solidified at once, how Blade could advocate for such a terrible policy, how he could even believe it, how he could live such an unhappy and empty life. It all made sense now!

Poor human! He is just an unfortunate, fat, bald, lonely chick!

There is no separation between Epaulette's inner thoughts and his speech.

“Poor human! You are just an unfortunate, fat, bald, lonely chick! I will embrace you in the human fashion!” He flew at Blade, trying to grab onto his back or chest, tearing his shirt in an attempt to get a stable perch to hug Blade with his wings.

“GET OFF ME!” Blade shrieked and tried to fend off the blackbird, arms flailing in an untrained and nonathletic attempt at defense.

Epaulette tried to climb on his back and shoulders. “I am trying to embrace you in the human fashion! It is a basic emotional therapeutic method for your own good! This is the first tap of the egg-tooth by which I mean to crack your emotional shell!”

“GET AWAY FROM M-” but he his breath was suddenly cut off as he felt the sharp and crushing pain in his chest. He grabbed his chest and tried to say something, but he hurt too much; Blade could only manage a thin wail in his agony.

“Bart, what is wrong? What's wrong? Secretary! Get help! Help! Help! Someone! We need a human doctor! Help! I will go to the door! ...why is there a table blocking the exit?” That was the last that Bart Blade heard before the darkness took him.

[Siege]

The Once and Future King

“According to our analysis, thirty per cent of the raw data is present, but the entire relational structure is destroyed. There is too little information to conduct behavioral analysis and rebuild a personality matrix from first principles...”, Unit Five suddenly began speaking like an expert in the matter. Sidney could detect vastly increased traffic between her and some unseen transmitters.

“I can fill in some of the gaps. And I know people who can help with this sort of thing. But it’s going to be difficult.”

“You have access to additional resources on the subject? This does not seem likely. The Primary Matrix is curious what sort of resources exist that can be used to provide the necessary input without knowledge of the original...”

The smile widened into something flinty. “Who said there wouldn’t be knowledge of the original? I have sources that can provide a... unique perspective on our predicament here.”

Villa Straylight
Geo-synchronous orbit over Solaris



The villa was a testament to times gone by. Its owner possessed, in fact, the most expansive private collection of historic artifacts in Known Space, rivalling all but the very largest museums in the UN when it came to antiquities from the early interplanetary ages, through the Great Upheaval and the Diaspora, right up to the present day.

This, said owner now mused, was likely to be a fact not lost on the Collectors.

He walked – or paced, rather – through corridors full of memories. Winding chambers passed by, each one full of history: vehicles, photographs, statues and unique pieces of art, musical instruments, and weapons too; everyday objects, articles of clothing, endless depositories filled with nothing but music or digital tokens full of archive footage. The lighting grew gradually dimmer as he moved deeper into the personal museum, and it was as if he moved further backwards in time with every meter. Century after century peeled back and the objects became older, and more localized too: an excellent temporal detective – or maybe an archaeologist – might roughly trace the path of Sidney Hank through time and space backwards by mapping these objects alone.

Finally he came to a wall adorned with pictures of people long-gone: men and women he'd known, once, at this time or that. Some were recent, like a holograph of twelve men and women, some in uniform, others in clothing at least a century out of style. Older ones were discoloured with time like they'd had a long time to age before they were caught in stasis fields. One of the oldest was a small two-dimensional picture, its colour faded so much it might as well be black and white. Framed in gold, it showed two people in front of a building constructed in archaic Beaux-Arts style. One was a stunningly beautiful blonde. The other looked an awful lot like Sidney. The pair proudly displayed their matching rings.

He sighed and looked at the picture for a moment, brushing two fingers over its age-worn surface, feeling the trickle of the low-power force screen that kept the forces of entropy at bay. Finally he straightened and called, “open Sesame”.

A lot more was involved in opening secret passages in the Villa Straylight than just calling those two words, of course. In fact the security set-up was such that really no words had to be called at all, or at least not audibly: it was a fair bet that even the most hardy of burglars wouldn't manage to get into the villa to begin with, let alone make it through its layered internal defences to learn of the existence of these hidden places. But the owner of the villa was a man of baroque theatrics, and so at that utterance the formerly solid ceramic wall parted with a rumble and an audible hiss of escaping air.

Lights snapped on in the cavity beyond, illuminating a rather more utilitarian mirror of the room he'd just stepped out of. Wooden boxes and storage shelves lined into the distance:. A SIG P22Z psigun with engraved ivory grips; personally signed orders to allow the nerve stapling of colonists on some forgotten early UN colony; a set of memory crystals inscribed with the first set up of GRID WORKS. This room was full of items thought too sensitive, too personal or simply too dangerous to leave lying around in the open. And it was correspondingly well-protected: force screens resisted his passage, tugged at his suit even as they grudgingly acknowledged his implant codes. A pair of Maibatsu killer robots, eyes alive with cobalt blue, stepped back into their cradles.

This was the Vault, and to even lay eyes on this place without proper authorization would mean instant vaporization. Sidney paced by shelves of of artifacts and rows of boxes until he came to a recess in the wall, taken up in its full entirety by reinforced racks full of armored containers. The caskets reached from floor to bottom. There were dozens of them, each roughly two meters tall and just as wide. Some were hooked to power sockets; or draped with flags; others were not. There was an inscription on each of them. He walked by most, carefully trying not to look at them too long, until he came to a halt before one particularly banged-up container. It was bumped and battered. It looked old. Very old. It was rusted at the edges, and its heavy steel frame was dented and scorched in places as if it had been through at least one firefight in the past. On its faded exterior three words could just barely be made out. They were lithographed in a flowery script:

Daphne Evelyn Sinclair

[/size]
Directly beneath it read, in brash black airbrushed capitals on a background of scarred gunmetal gray:

DO NOT REACTIVATE

[/size]
For a long time he simply stood there, lost in memories. Then he put his hands in his pockets and slowly let out a breath. He hadn’t looked at this thing for decades. Had done a pretty good job of forgetting about its existence, actually. For an even longer period of time he stared at it. Did he really want to do what he was going to? No. He was pretty sure the answer was no. In fact he was goddamn adamant he didn’t want to.

But he’d promised. Well, more or less. And the Collectors didn’t quite know what he meant, did they? And what did he owe the robots anyway? Did he owe them this? Surely not. But then this really wasn’t about owing the Collectors. In fact it had just about nothing to do with them. They were a means to an end. And that end was...

He looked at the engraving again.

Daphne Evelyn Sinclair

He thought of Stephen, and Seth, and “Vincent Arrowny”. They had no clue, absolutely no idea at all. One moment they were gone, then another they were back again, skipping centuries in a heartbeat. They had not the first inkling what it was like, didn’t appreciate the full immensity of the gulf of time. And how could they possibly? Fourteen hundred thirty eight years. Nearly a millennium and a half of choices, losses, mistakes, regrets. One piled on another in a race for vengeance that seemed more hollow with every passing year, every cruelty witnessed, every cataclysm survived.

On the casket, ornate lettering beckoned.

Oh god.

“Take it,” he said to the sub-bright intelligences that were listening. He turned around before the drones could respond, and marched out of the Vault as fast as dignity allowed. Suddenly he couldn’t stand the memory-palace any longer.


Some time later

He poured a glass of cognac and took a sip. He synced with the Pan-Empyrean mainframe to see if everything in the star-spanning corporation was going according to plan (it was). He scanned the Datasphere for the most popular viral anti-war holos produced by the Sovereignty’s teeming entertainment industries. Briefly he checked in with Stephen and Nisa, now roughly halfway to their destination in the spinwards sectors, and exchanged a few words with them. Purely at a whim he had a bot retrieve a worn-down book from his billion-book library – 'The Once and Future King', by T.H. White. He smiled at the battered but dust-free leather, opened it and read a few pages, but he found it couldn't hold his interest.

So he sighed and looked up at heavy steel casket that sat, inert yet somehow menacing, on the massive polished rosewood desk. He knew he was putting it off.

Finally he stood up and put a hand against the cast iron exterior of the sarcophagus. It was warm to the touch. Upon recognizing the markers in his DNA the steel obediently fell away, exposing the thing contained within. It was a cube of a black and nearly indestructible ceramic resin. A number of different data-ports, of types that had been galaxy standard a long time ago, were littered across its surface, beside rows of red lights that blinked in seemingly random, non-repeating patterns. Sidney could hear a faint buzzing, and his cybernetics picked up the prickling of power fields around the device. His implants filled in the details. Lockheed-Ralson Mark Eight Nanocore. Produced 2586-2623. First datacore design to be fitted with onboard zero-point energy tap. Equipped with Hausdorff-Hilbert infinite topology processors and fully recursive memory loop capability. Used for AI substrate generation.

The dry technical jargon didn’t do any justice to the reality contained within, he knew. And yet... And yet.

He peeled away a patch of flesh on his forearm, revealing an armored data-socket underneath. Flipping it open, he connected a cable to it, then sent it snaking across the cable to the core. Then he downed what remained of the cognac in one gulp and gritted his teeth. “I'm so not going to enjoy this.”

He plugged it in anyway.



The air was dry as the desert, and lightning crackled through skies stained black with soot. Sidney found himself standing on a steel cliff, looking out over a mechanical nightmare city. Inky clouds roiled between spindly, impossibly tall machine towers. Some were dark as obsidian, and when the lightning struck them it sent halos of electricity arcing to the ground, bringing on wild patterns of flashing red lights. Other mechanical spires flickered with strange internal illumination, bending skyward at abstract angles or sprouting webs of thick bitumen-clad cables that disappeared deeper into the mechanoscape.

Sidney could discern no immediate purpose to the mechanical jungle. Its mad architecture didn’t seem to built so much as grown and if there was a pattern to it, it had nothing to do with rational engineering. What he witnessed was the subconscious of a machine god.

He started walking. He had no clear sense of direction, but he had a feeling he was bound to be noticed sooner rather than later. And then, well, he’d see about that when it happened. There was no other movement, and the only sound was the rolling of thunder and the crackling of lightning.

After an indeterminate period - time had no real meaning here - spent wandering the steel four-lanes and floodlit skywalks of the mechanical labyrinth he began to notice a certain structure to the proliferation of mad engineering. Its forms were flowing, interlocking, rising toward a distant core of starscraper-sized architecture that rose megalith-like into the boiling sky. Running lights gleamed and oscillated with hidden cognitive cues. He edited the content out, not keen on handling the owner of this place the keys to his mind, but followed the lights anyway.

Soon he found himself following an abandoned steel highway into the heart of the machine city, and as he did the reality of the mechanoscape began to change. Streetlights sprouted from the sides of the street, arching overhead like ribs on a long-dead carcass. The mechanical city fell away into an indeterminate void, an absolute emptiness spanned by the steely superhighway that ran on, supported by nothing. When Sidney risked a glance over its side he saw, far in the distance, the city and the highway and a single, tiny spec of a man, clinging to a lamp post and looking down into the abyss. He looked down upon himself through the warped geometries of the datacore’s thought-space.

He continued onward.

Lightning crashed, momentarily backlighting the distant spires of the mechanical core. Then the flash was gone, as quick as it had come, and with it the spires had changed, morphing from one moment to the next into stubby office towers and neo-Gothic skyscrapers. The highway transformed too. Limestone and granite towers pushed up beside it, sprouting steel suspension cables. Suddenly the steel underfoot changed to planks of firm wood. A murmur of water passed underneath him. He recognized this place. This was the East River Bridge, and that there in the distance was the skyline of San Dorado City as it existed over a thousand years ago.

Rain began to patter down.

He was entering the AI’s cognosphere, its zone of active subliminal thought.



There was something desperately spooky about the abandoned city. The streets of San Dorado had never been empty. At any moment of the day the city had been a seething cauldron of barely-suppressed chaos: the perpetual honking of murderous traffic, yelling street vendors, music warbling from ghetto-blasters and dance halls, the tinkling of slot machines and gaming arcades, millions of voices clamoring for attention. Now, here, the billboards were shut off and the streets were empty. Rain drummed against cracked asphalt.

In a very real way his street-view perspective itself was confusing. The corporate elite had never descended to street level: it was far too dangerous. They soared above the chaos in helicopters and private monorails, resided in gilded cloud-level penthouses far above the teeming masses. He couldn’t remember ever setting foot on the streets of this city during his entire decades-long tenure as CEO. And now, here he was. But then this wasn’t really his city. And nothing about this had been his for some time.

Sidney reached a junction between one of the grand north-south avenues and east-west boulevards and took a moment to orientate himself. Concrete canyons stretched in all directions, Art Deco and neo-Gothic architecture vying for control of the stormy black skies. Streetlights burned a dull white, barely illuminating anything at all.

On a whim he decided to head for the Presidential Palace, the place he and Daphne had spent their first years. The Palace was located at 42nd and Concord Avenue which, factoring in the traffic of his day, would have been nearly half a day’s walk from the bridge. So he started hiking down the desolate avenue. Perfectly empty shop fronts stared at him. The silent emptiness was starting to get to him. He ascended the rusted stairs to one of the elevated railroad embankments and, finding no carriage there, proceeded to cut across town by walking over the raised tracks. His suit ought to be soaked by now, but the rain didn’t interfere with the fabric.

Rows of multi-story town-houses passed by around him. Worn and faded advertisements were plastered against blind walls, promoting products he didn’t remember. Then he realized they weren’t advertisements. They were just pictures, and they were all of the same woman. Blond, tall, intimately familiar. All of them were scenes of everyday life, lifted straight from memory. Some showed her as a young kid, others as an college-aged girl looking uncertainly in a mirror, yet others as a successful CEO or an older woman, natural beauty worn away by Ashpool’s Disease.

Sidney swallowed regretfully and tried not to look at the pictures too long.

He got his first good view of the Palace from the tracks overlooking Union Circle public park. He was in for a shock: the classic, nearly 900 feet tall Art Deco spire was wrapped in bitumen vines and overgrown with asymmetrical machine-stuff. Its chromed steel crown was lit with the pulsing red light of the mechanoscape towers, a stuttering searchlight sending morse-code signals into the skies.

At least he was heading in the right direction.

[Shroom Man 777]

“So, now what?” Bearenstain asked as he surveyed what little was left of their squad and looked at the tunnel where undoubtedly more horrors awaited them.

“Now we continue,” Beartha said as she drew her Bragnum. “Because we’re going to take whatever it is they’ve got down there.”

Xena
In the Bragulan Occupation Zone of Operations



They gathered what little remained of the squad. Amputated limbs were placed in pouches or backpacks with the freeonics turned up, while stumps were cauterized with the simple application of cordite. Byzon willing, the medics at the field hospital could reattach them back to their owners, or they could be pawned off for cybragnetic prosthetics - new ones and not the rusty old ones that been passed on from one dead Brag to another. Unhindered by the loss of life and limb, the survivors of the squad marched on.

They moved even deeper into the winding tunnels. Whole and intact Bragulans, as well as those suffering from only minor blaster burns and stab wounds, were at the front of the formation while the amputees and those who needed both paws to stop copious arterial bleeding stayed at the rear. Which meant that this time, Choldytz was at point. The very same position Rubyn was assigned to before his brains smeared themselves on Choldytz’ gas mask. For added irony, as the pointbear Choldytz also had to bring Rubyn’s passive-aggressive sensor scanner. He waved the fifty kilo quadricorder around, but thankfully it didn’t detect any nearby enemies. Choldytz wasn’t taking any chances though, so he doused his luminator and switched to the enhanced optics on his rifle.

“See anything?” Bearenstain asked from close by. He too followed Choldytz and had his luminator off.

“Nyet,” Choldytz replied. He rounded another corner and took a look at both his optics and quadricorder. There was nothing ever since they passed by the remains of the resistance troops who got immolated by the Space RPG. Which was good, since that meant there was no one left to oppose them. But Choldytz couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was wrong. After all, Rubyn’s quadricorder hadn’t warned them of the robots hidden in the walls, and who knew what else was waiting for them.

They rounded a corner and Choldytz nearly ran into a door. The sensor didn’t show inanimate objects, only living, moving beings and things with detectable energy signatures. The simple steel door was neither of these things and Choldytz had to stop himself from kissing it. Though Bearenstain, who was right behind him, wasn’t able to react on time and ended up bumping into him, causing both of them to stumble towards the door.

“Watch your step!” Choldytz admonished his comrade as he caught himself mere inches away from touching the door. For all he knew, it might have been booby-trapped or something, and physical contact with it might result in even more unpleasantries. He gasped, felt the tightness around his chest and remembered that he was wearing Rubyn’s bragsteel chest-plate after his own had been ruined by blaster fire. At least Rubyn got offed by a headshot, leaving the rest of his gear sans helmet relatively intact, though Choldytz tried not to think about that too much.

“Sorry, Chol.” Bearenstain replied apologetically. He then looked at the door in front of them. It was emblazoned in strange human hieroglyphs. “What’s behind it?”

“Haven’t a clue. It’s rad-shielded, sensors can’t see through it,” Choldytz answered. He hit the quadricorder a couple of times just to make sure.

“What do we do now, boss?” Bearenstain asked their superior officer.

“We breach it,” Beartha said and drew her Bragnum.

“Shake and bake?” Choldytz looked at her expectantly.

“Da, shake and bake.” Beartha nodded.

Choldytz reached into Rubyn’s bandoleer of grenades and pulled two sticks out. “Okay. On three. One.”



“Two.” Bearenstain positioned himself to the side.

“Three!” Beartha fired her Bragnum, sending high explosive armor piercing 44mm rounds at the steel door, blasting right through it and whatever hinges and deadbolts there were behind it. The door flew back from the recoil and the explosions, no booby traps detonated.

“Fire one!” Choldytz shouted as he chucked the first stick into the smoking opening. A few seconds later, there was an explosion of emerald as glowing K-residue splattered all over the interior, melting whatever was inside along with whatever armor they had. Choldytz chucked another grenade. “Fire two!” The second one was a frag grenade, it detonated and sent a shower of pre-sharpened shrapnel all over the place, which would shear through anyone and anything already partially ‘softened’ by the K-residue grenade.

Then Bearenstain let out a war roar and stormed into the room, K-cannon ready to fire at full automatic to riddle whatever it was inside the place full of acid bullets. He could barely see anything in the smoke and fire, but he shouted and opened fire nonetheless. There was an explosion of sparks, a droid toppled over, filled with holes. Choldytz and Beartha, and a few other Bragtroopers who still had arms with which to carry arms joined him and searched the room for any enemies to kill. There was sporadic gunfire as the robots that had gathered themselves near the door were gunned down. Soon, it was quiet and the other troopers came to join them.

They beheld a pathetic and miserable sight. There, amongst the wreckage of half-molten droids that had sacrificed themselves to gunfire and grenade to protect their charges, were the MEHmen laid low. Hundreds of them. Possibly thousands. Cowering. Curled up on the floor, ducking or shrinking behind cover for dear life. Peering fearfully at the Bragulan soldiers who had invaded their world, who had killed their people and had now stormed their shelter. Women and children wept. Men cursed and cried feebly. Impotently. Helplessly. Their few defenders were gone and now they would be under the mercy of their invaders. They dreaded their fates, whatever horrible destiny laid in wait for them.

“Please... we surrender -” a MEHman begged before he was silenced by the deafening bark of a Bragnum.

“Nobody move!” Beartha roared, smoking sidearm pointed up and small bits of ceiling crumbling down. She raised a large box-type machine, an auto-translator, and the device turned her brutal Bragulan words into brutal gal-standard human ones. “All of you, stay down and stay still!”

Humans screamed in fear and recoiled from her and the other bragtroops who were moving to secure the area.

“Get me the commissar,” Beartha said to a pair of bragtroops, one of whom had lost both arms to the killbot attack but still had a backpack comms unit on him, and the other a bear who had his face half-melted (and his mask fused into his face) by a near miss from a blaster bolt. “Tell him we’ve found the objective.”

The blind Bragulan groped around for a few seconds before finally picking up the phone and relaying the message.

[Mayabird]

Planet Sayam
Goddamn Unreal Time, Not Long After



There was a weak beep-beep-beep sound in the background, plus sounds of shuffling and things being moved beyond a wall. Bart Blade realized that he was in a hospital, probably a local one. He wondered briefly how he had gotten there, but then remembered his late ordeal and thought of potential security risks. He struggled to a sitting position, gasping and sweating, but then strong feminine hands pushed him back down.

“Mister Blade! You'll overexert yourself! Please stay calm. You had a massive heart attack, and if not for the quick response of your friend, we might not have been able to revive you.” Bart felt relieved at the professional exposition that he thought he heard from everyone.

“A guest has been waiting for you to wake up,” the nurse continued. “A good friend of yours. I will go fetch...” her voice trailed off as she left the room, loud footsteps echoing through the halls.

Stay calm? A guest. He knew who this 'guest' had to be. Why? What did I do to deserve any of this? Why does everyone mistreat me? Don't they know how important I am? I am too smart for all of this! Maybe they're all just jealous. Yes. They must all be jealous of my great intellect.

But his mental reassurances availed him not when he heard the footsteps returning. No. Not that goddamn bird. Not that goddamn bird again! No! Nooooo!

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Blade screamed, loud enough that it somehow knocked a comatose patient two rooms down back to consciousness, thus at least giving him one good deed on this trip, unintentional though it was.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” he screamed again, face raised towards the ceiling and fists held above, as if attempting to curse some deity for his fate. This one winded him, and as he slumped back down, struggling for breath, ready to accept this terrible turn of events because he had no energy to run or anything else, Bart Blade saw the person standing at the foot of his bed.



It was not Epaulette.

No, she was one of God's most beautiful creatures, a Shroomanist whore of Sayam. In fact, he knew her, and they had, if not a friendship, at least a friendly acquaintanceship with each other.

But now tears were starting to flow down her cheeks, and she wept. The big-breasted Sayamese woman fled from the scene, crying hard and running her makeup.

He tried to call out something like, “Mali! I'm sorry! It wasn't you! It was this giant talking bird from the Outlands who gave me the heart attack!” but all the effort did was add racking coughs to his labored breathing. The nurse ran back over from the sound.

“No wonder you have heart attack!” she said, as she stuck the off-button hypospray to Blade's neck. He blacked out again.

* * *



Blade heard a beeping, and groggily thought that it sounded familiar. Then he smelled the acrid scent again and remembered what had happened. His eyes shot open.



“Ah, you are awake again, my friend! I can put away this data-slate.” spoke Epaulette, as it powered it down and set it aside. Bart Blade tried to respond, but muscle relaxants were still in his system. All that came out was an “urrrrrrr.”

“The good nurses here told me that with your added bulk, their medications would probably not last as long as usual, and indeed you have awoken nearly ten minutes ahead of schedule! I have been keeping vigil here by your side, admittedly reading galactic news but you have not been the most talkative fellow in your slumber. Still, perhaps some of the articles I read to you have sunk in subconsciously; the one on altered UN trade regulations with minor nations you may have found interesting, as it would have effects on Sayam.”

“Nnnnnnnnnnnng.”

“But I am not here to discuss politics and international affairs; that is far too heavy a topic. I have put some thought into your abnormal rearing and rejection of expressions of normal human affection. It occurred to me that Avian expressions may be more effective, as, in my non-objective opinion, we do provide a very warm and nurturing environment for our dear little chicks. I took the liberty of grooming your head plumage as we do our chicks' down while you were in your torpor (and if I say so, the preening oils give it a pleasing sheen), though I could not put your false plumage to rights, as we left that in your room when you were brought here. However, Secretary had the idea of finding some hats that may be to your liking, as you had once written something bemoaning the non-wearing of hats in many human societies. I picked out three that I believed would be most fetching upon your head.”







“You may have all of them, so no need to stress over choosing one. Mayhaps you will find them suitable during different moods or occasions.

“In addition, I made sure to eat something delicate and sweet and digestible to both bird and man. In order that our chicks may receive a proper intestinal flora and because they early on cannot consume hard foods, we sometimes vomit semi-digested food into their gullets. The majority of their feedings are not in this manner, but they do find it comforting to receive these pre-digested meals. If a hug is unacceptable, I thought, maybe this would be more appropriate. And so, open wide!”

Blade stared back at the blackbird, who was watching him eagerly. Epaulette's sudden silence was unnerving, and so were his excited little cocks of his head. The great Bart Blade was, in some no-doubt public Sayamese hospital, going to have a bird throw up down his throat. He could think of no greater indignity, and he would not let this pass. With a supreme effort of will, he forced himself up to a sitting position to be less vulnerable. The movement, combined with the drugs in his system, plus the thought of what was to come, all gave him extreme nausea, and he vomited the last dregs of the meal Secretary made on the sheets in front of him. There was very little left, so it was mostly painful dry retching.

Epaulette was at a brief loss of words, but as the nurses rushed back in his loquaciousness returned. “Do you see that? I meant to offer an Avian gesture of affectionate care, but he reciprocated my offer instead! What a show of kindness, and in his weakened state! O! We have a bond! Surely, this must be the start of a most beautiful friendship!”

Bart Blade started to cry.

“And now he weeps tears of joy, in the human manner! Glorious day!”

“Please step outside,” one of the nurses said.

“Of course, of course, I shant get in your way. My best friend's health must come first before my lectures. But do not worry, buddy-o-pal!” he continued, as one of the nurses physically shoved him out. “When they are done, I shall return, and I will tell the story of the comet catcher who landed on a frozen Eater. It is a comedy, and you will certainly enjoy it!”

The off-button hypospray brought Blade no relief, for he knew his ordeal had yet to end.

[Shroom Man 777]

Humans screamed in fear and recoiled from her and the other bragtroops who were moving to secure the area.

“Get me the commissar,” Beartha said to a pair of bragtroops, one of whom had lost both arms to the killbot attack but still had a backpack comms unit on him, and the other a bear who had his face half-melted (and his mask fused into his face) by a near miss from a blaster bolt. “Tell him we’ve found the objective.”

The blind Bragulan groped around for a few seconds before finally picking up the phone and relaying the message.

Xena
In the Bragulan Occupation Zone of Operations



Commissar Killkov Kulynski glared at the prisoners with the fiery red oculars of his face mask. The humans were a sorry sight, the lot of them, blubberous weaklings dragging themselves out of their miserable hole, plodding rank and file at a miserably slow rate. It was, Killkov reflected, the price of their humanly decadence - their hyper-advanced technology and sophistication had made them soft, just like the other human nations of the galaxy, though to a far greater and grotesquer degree that was obviously the only logical outcome of humanity’s depraved ways that proved Byzonism’s superiority to all things. The humans could barely walk. Thousands of them had to make their way out of their bunker and its tunnels, and then walk all the way to the Krusk’s landing site. At this rate, it would take them hours to reach the Krusk heavy transport waiting to carry the prisoners to the IBGV processing centers.

“Move faster, you shits!” he shouted impatiently and waved his beating stick and execution pistol threateningly. But the MEHmen seemed not to hear him at all as they trudged on and on, the mere act of walking was apparently a backbreaking feat for them. In frustration Killkov tried stick-beating one of them, but before the first blow could even connect, when Killkov had merely raised his stick, the human simply collapsed into an asthmatic heap of fat, and instead of moving forward faster in fear or pain, he just stopped moving. Killkov cursed and was about to slap his forehead before remembering that he was holding his stick, narrowly avoiding stick-beating his own face.

He called some of the troopers to ‘encourage’ the other MEHmen with kicks and ‘soft’ blows from beating-sticks wrapped in newspapers, or just plain shoves and prods. It had no effect, aside from making some more MEHnoids collapse in exhaustion. Pathetic.

Killkov merely shook his head in disgust. If it would take forever for the MEHnoids to reach their destination, then the troops might as well do something productive. He instructed the bears to hurry up with hauling the hoverchairs, robots and other gadgets and devices confiscated from the MEHmen. Such advanced machines, with extremely miniaturized repulsor systems, AI cores and all would surely be items of interest for the technologists of the IBGV. Killkov wondered if this boon could lead to a promotion that would finally take him away from the danger of the front lines and the drudgery of putting up with the expendable conscripts under his command. He hated it here and out of sheer spite he had actually spared many of his worst conscripts from execution so that they could continue on serving in the front lines where aside from the constant threat of death they also faced gruesome injuries at the hands of ultra-advanced MEHnoid kill-things, and where even the prospects of going on to live indefinitely in the squalor and impoverishment of the conscript brigades was arguably worse than a gunshot to the face.

That was the truth of war. Killkov had learned in his long and bloody career in the Legions that behind all the glory was horror lurking just beneath the surface like a wall covered in bloodstains. He looked at the marching misbegotten MEHmen, the tired conscripts guarding them, the whole ruined city burning on the whole ruined world they were all on, and knew that the strength of his beating-arm and the bullets in his execution pistol were better served beating and shooting other things. The war had a long way to go and even if he didn’t help it, in the end it would still kill most of the people here - humans and Bragulans alike, Eoghan and Chamarran, Formic and Refugee. The only question was in the when and in the how.

Just as suddenly as it came, Killkov’s stream of battlefield philosophy, veering on the edge of un-Byzonic thought crime, was interrupted by the cursing of a frustrated trooper spouting ideologically questionable statements. Killkov growled and went to intervene and possibly administer a morale-boosting beating if needed.





Elsewhere down the line, Choldytz looked on at the procession of MEHmen with morbid fascination. Slobbering, sweating, wheezing and panting. Barely able to move their own bulk. Collapsing on top of each other, into disgusting and flatulating heaps of lard. Choldytz wasn’t alone, the rest of their squad was assigned to guard detail. He and Bearenstain stood from afar with weapons slung, ready to be used on any prisoner who tried anything funny, though they were mostly too busy heaving and wobbling and dragging their sorry selves to the waiting prison ship a few hundred meters away. Some of the bragtroops pushed and shoved the miserable humans forward, soldiers who couldn’t wield their rifles anymore by virtue of missing arms and such, were thus instead given entrenchment tools - shovels with bayonets affixed to them - and assigned to crowd control.

Those bears should’ve been in an aid station, Choldytz reflected, should be getting patched up and cared for, but instead they continued to human-sit the worthless MEHmen shits who couldn’t even move their own bodies without aid of their hoverchairs. Choldytz had lost many friends since the beginning of the war, Rubyn and the others were only the latest and many of those who were still alive were nonetheless mauled or disabled or grievously wounded. He himself had a painful burn on his chest, where his fur had been burned off and the underlying skin blistered by second degree burns. Compared to the other walking wounded, and those who were outright dead and rotting down in the tunnels, his injuries were practically nothing notable.

He impassively watched a MEHman stumble and fall, and struggle for a few seconds to pull himself upright, wheezing as he did so, desperately clutching at the air to no avail. Eventually his movements grew slower and slower until he stopped moving, he became still and even his labored breathing eventually ceased. A Bragulan reached down with his remaining arm to check for any signs of life, before looking up and shaking his head. Rotund human women began to weep as they trudged past the unmoving body.

Choldytz had enough. He walked towards them and screamed at the humans, their enemies, the people who they had been sent here to invade and conquer, the ones they went down into the tunnels to capture.

“Hey, you! That's right, you stupid human shits! That's right! Say hello to Bragule, and Imperator fuckin' Darvyl Sagatantron Byzon! You stupid human shits! Look at you! You have enema bots! What were you thinking? Dragging our asses half way around the galaxy, interrupting our lives... For what, you corpulent, servile shits! What the fuck are we doing here?” Choldytz’ whole body shook with rage as he delivered his screed. He remembered Rubyn’s brains on his visor. He remembered how the others had been cut to pieces in the tunnels. He remembered all his comrades who died in the liberation of the Salvation Habitat and other killing fields just like it. The fact that he was probably asking the same question these humans themselves were asking, namely why, made it even more maddening.

“Choldytz! It is you again,” Commissar Killkov strode towards him, execution pistol and beating-stick at the ready. Choldytz turned to face him. “What is going on?”

“Nothing sir,” Choldytz growled. “Some humans just died, that’s all.”

“I see.” Killkov looked around, surveying the motley crew of bragtroops guarding the prisoners. The commissar nodded as he took in their ragged state. He holstered his gun and lowered his stick. “You and your comrades will be relieved by another squad. Take your comrades to the aid station, get their limbs replaced, blood infused, and anything else you need, private. You and your team are to be commended for your most patriotic Byzonic services to both Imperator and Empire.”

“Thank you, sir.” Choldytz said, not meaning it at all.

“Da, tovarisch Comradskyi. We have won a great victory today.” Killkov replied, not meaning it either. They both knew the truth, and chose to ignore it or double-think it away. Either way, it changed nothing. The MEHmen kept on marching.

“Where will these humans be taken?” Choldytz asked just as he was about to leave with his comrades.

“I don’t know,” Killkov shrugged. It was true, after these human prisoners were processed by the IBGV, there was no plan to put them in any gulag. Who knew where these humans were going to be placed, under whose custody, Bragulan or otherwise. As fresh bragtroops came in to replace the team of amputees and walking wounded, Killkov went off to join the squad leaving the battlefield. “Why? Does it matter?”

[White Haven]

Shoal space
24 light-years from the RKS border

At first, Cassandra deVries thought it was a trick of the light, some quirk of hyperdrive transit through shoal space making the hatch at the end of her ship’s long, spinal corridor appear tilted. The low, bass groaning sound that shivered through the decking under her feet rather underscored that it wasn’t, especially as the hatchway slowly righted itself, and then began to list in the opposite direction, the entire corridor visibly twisting and flexing. She staggered unsteadily, reaching out to grab one of the zero-G handholds built into the bulkheads at regular intervals, just as what sounded like every last alarm on the ship started ringing.

Clinging to the handhold and watching the corridor (and, presumably, the entire neck of the ship) undulate, she had a hard time sorting anything out from the cacaphony of sound at first. Within a few seconds, though, her practiced ear began picking them out. The shrill scream of the decompression siren wasn’t accompanied by the stiff rush of air that would have shirt-circuited the rest of her thoughts, so at least death wasn’t directly imminent. The engineering emergency alert. The collision alarm. Two different fire alarms, one quieter and more distant than the other. And the general alert, probably just because it had felt left out with all the other warning sirens hard at work.

Not for the first time, she bemoaned the old salvage boat’s lack of a proper internal communications system. Alone in more or less the middle of the ship’s spine, she was out of contact, the pitching, rolling hatch at the far end of the corridor the only source of real information. She looked at the infrequent handholds along the wall, placed to serve as null-gravity anchors, not a hand-railing, narrowing her eyes at the gap to the next one. To wait, or to let go and move to the next handhold...

The universe made its decision for her when it slapped her upside the everything. The unsettling sensation of a crash hyper transition, albeit one worse than any she’d felt before, swept through her body in an instant, and everything went dark.

Sudden blow, followed by blindness...I must be dreaming. Lucid dream? Hmm. I’m still holding something in my hand. Can’t feel the ground beneath me, must be hanging from whatever I’m holding. My arm’s not stretched, though, and my fingers are loose. Not hanging. But not standing. Am I falling? Null gravity. Oh bloody hell, I’m awake, and the ship’s power is out. Fuck.

About that time, Cassandra discovered a major failing of her ship’s null-gravity handholds. More often than not, when a ship’s lost gravity, it’s also lost power. When it’s lost power, it’s lost lightning. Without lighting or some alternative luminescent coating that these particular handholds lacked, finding the handholds was next to impossible under the very conditions they were intended for.

“Fuck.”

Her voice echoed strangely through the empty corridor, somehow louder than she expected it to be. As she realized why, the chill touch of adrenalin flooded her system; her own voice wasn’t competing against the never-ending hum of the ship’s life support system. The air around her was still.

But there was light. For a moment, she thought it was her mind playing tricks, but no...no, that would have been kind. Instead, the flickering glimmer from one end of the still-mostly-invisible corridor could only be one thing, one thing that all spacers feared. Fire.

She glanced in the opposite direction, at the end of the corridor that she couldn’t see, but that also didn’t appear to be on fire. Utter blackness looked inviting at the moment...but that wouldn’t save her ship. She gritted her teeth, turning back towards the faint glimmer, and then yanked hard on the handhold to send herself drifting down the corridor. Half-remembered training in zero-G operations during her Navy days began to trickle back to her and soon she was angling rebounds off bulkheads, the deck-plates, and the overhead, building up an impressive turn of speed as she careened towards the distant fire.

Stopping, however, would be more interesting, especially with the treacherous flickers of the shipboard fire casting crazy, dancing shadows from the handholds. She made several grabs for them as she approached the now-visible open hatch and the fire somewhere beyond it, missing one after another. At the last second, she bounced herself off of the decking and twisted in mid-air, grabbing at the upper lip of the open hatch and yanking herself to a halt with a heavy grunt and a strangled cry as her elbows and shoulders absorbed the shock. Facing the overhead close in front of her, she could see her own shadow dancing wildly against it, the cabin’s air oppressively hot. She freed one hand and spun in place to look towards the decking, her eyes widening sharply at the sight of the ruptured thruster fuel line blazing merrily away through a broad gash torn in the plating.

The carpet that’d covered the common room’s deck was, of course, ablaze, although most of the furnishings were metal or plastic, and were either sustaining the fire or melting rather than catching fire as well. A flash of movement caught her eye; a figure in grimy overalls was waving from the far side of the cabin, a fire extinguisher in hand. The fire, burning in contained balls of blazing heat in zero-G, had spread to assorted bits of debris that were floating through the cabin by now, a field of flickering orange stars separating her and her engineer. The man pointed at a sealed access panel near where Cassandra floated and shouted something she couldn’t hear.

Without waiting, she pushed off from the hatch lip and floated over to the sealed panel, bracing against the bulkhead and wrestling it off. With a yelp, she came off too, floating away from the wall with the panel in hand. Only a quick grab at the lip of the now-open space saved her from a long, slow trip through a cabin filled with burny, floaty things. Leaving the hatch cover floating next to her, she pulled herself closer to the opening, then cursed, shoved the panel away, and pulled herself to one side to let the fire light the contents. She reached in for a lever, then hesitated and looked over her shoulder towards the engineer making vigorous head-shaking movements and shouting something unintelligible. She moved her hand left and tilted her head aside in mute question, at which point he shook his head again. Right? Headshake. Down? Nod. Right? Vehement headshake and a dramatic arm gesture that sent the engineer drifting sideways until he grabbed for a handhold of his own.

Finally, the pantomime-navigation ended up at one red-painted lever. With a firm yank, she flipped it and the jetting flame from the ruptured conduit trickled to a halt. Still, the engineer with the fire extinguisher waited, pointing to the glowing red-hot plating slowly dissipating heat into the smokey, oppressively-hot air of the cabin. Cassandra nodded in understanding, folding her arms to wait before thinking better of it as she began to drift away from the bulkhead. Finally, the whoosh of the fire extuinguisher sounded, vapor spraying across the burning carpeting and cabin fixtures and debris. Anything floating about was blown across the room to clatter against the opposite bulkhead, a few bouncing off of Cassandra’s upraised arms as she let out a yelp. She tried to glare at the engineer, only to discover the downside of putting out the fire.

They were blind again.

“Dammit.”

With a gruff bark of laughter, the now-invisible man spoke up, audible now that the fire’d been dealt with, “Figures. Come on, let’s get to engineering, I’ve got some portable lamps there and we can try to get some power restored.”

“Lead on, Brian. I’ll so turned around that I probably couldn’t find my own ass. Umm...on second thought, let’s find each other first.” A few minutes of fumbling about and sailing through the cabin’s stale air finally resulted in a somewhat embarrassing collision. A few more seconds saw the two disentangled except for two hands clasped together.

“On the subject of finding my ass...I’ll er, forget to mention that happened, shall I?”

“Nice of you. Shall we?”
_____________

Two hours later

“Well, power’s in fairly good shape, just an emergency shutdown. I’ve got a bunch of things to check out just to make sure before we try to bring it back up, but nothing jumps out at me. Still, I’m going to cut connections to the rest of the ship before I bring up the reactor, in case there are any more of those conduits ready to breach. We still have air, so the emergency bulkheads sealed before we lost power, so that’s good. No idea where the breaches were specifically, and won’t until we have power unless you really want to try to work the airlock with a hand crank. No idea where we are specifically, we’re sublight, and Jace checked a few of the viewports, doesn’t look like we’re in visual range of anything much. According to him, we’ve picked up enough of a tumble that he got a pretty good 360. Now, can I get back to work?” The engineer finished his rapid-fire report to the ship’s owner in her soot-smudged shipsuit, an irritated look on his face in the harsh light of a portable luminator.

Cassandra just snorted and gave a quick nod, a smile twisting her lips, “By all means, I just wanted an update.”

She turn and pushed off, floating across the confines of the ship’s engineering deck to a pair or figures huddled in the light provided by another battery-powered lamp. One of them was a short, thin woman with dark hair, the exact shade difficult to determine in the improvised lighting. Her arm was confined in an off-white sling, two fingers on that same hand splinted and sticking straight out. The other was a tall, brawny man with an anomaly in a region of space dominated by melting-pot cultures: dark, near-black skin.

The lamp shook as Cassandra dragged herself to a halt on the same handhold it was anchored to. She looked down at the injured woman, both faces turning up towards her as the juddering light attracted their attention.

“How’re you holding up, Sarah?”

The woman, her face visibly pale even in the harsh lighting, quirked a wry, sheepish little smile, then began to shrug before wincing and thinking better of it. With a quiet little snort, she replied, “Been better. Figures that the pinnace pilot and only medic would be the one to smash her arm up against a bulkhead, wouldn’t it?”

The heavily-muscled black man barked a laugh of his own and muttered something about ‘that shithead Murphy.’

“Anyway, I talked to Brian, he’s still got some checking to do, but the reactor’s looking good so far. Don’t know much else, it’s slow going with the whole system down. I’m thinking our next big find goes into a bank of auxiliary batteries.” Cassandra’s grin was self-effacing and more than a little rueful, “Of course Murphy being the bastard he is...” she winked at the bald-headed figure of her EVA specialist, who snorted and grinned back at her, “Once I do that, main power will never, ever fail again ever.”

Laughter rang and echoed oddly in the darkened engineering section, distracting the four crew members of the salvage vessel Finders Stealers from the cold uncertainty that until power was restored, they couldn’t even effectively diagnose how utterly fucked they could very well be.

[Mayabird]

Epilogue One

Shepistan
Goddamn Unreal Time/Some Weeks Later

“Mr. Blade, I have concluded my analysis of the spying devices that you brought me,” said the Shepistani technician. “Of the twenty you brought me, five were of Solarian make, three are fairly standard Centralist designs, three more seem to be Centralist as well, two are a commonly-copied Nova Atlantean design – it is not of high enough quality to be one of their own, but many groups make their own versions – two were damaged beyond recognition, one was actually an obsolete Shepistani device, likely stolen years ago by subversives, another one seems to be, of all things, Zigonian, and the final three are unknown but further study is pending.” Then the technician tried to hide her relief at finishing the speech; she had written it on her clipboard but had tried hard not to look like she was reading directly off it. There was more but it seemed like a good stopping place for a moment.

Bart Blade thought to himself, Solarian and Centralist, that made sense. The McNamaras of the USS were always out to get him, just like all the rest of the McNamaras. All of them, everywhere. The Centralists would spy on anyone, and perhaps that damn bird was even working with them, but was pretending not to by revealing those bugs. Bart was far too clever to fall for such dealings. As for the others, anyone could have gotten ahold of them and were using them for their own nefarious schemes to bring him down. But the Zigonian one!

“I told them the Reptons were after me, but no one believed me! They laughed at me! They fucking laughed!” This was completely untrue, as they had actually nervously edged away, just as this technician was doing, while looking for a convenient spot to call for help and send him to get tested. Tested for everything.

Blade started to laugh, but then went into a series of painful coughs instead, as he was still recovering.

“I'll get a doctor!” the technician said, seeing an opportunity to escape, and she ran as if she actually cared about his health.

[Mayabird]

Epilogue Two

Ship Traveling to Centrality Space
Goddamn Unreal Time / Somewhat before Epilogue One

“Secretary, do you think we overdid the 'bug planting?'” asked Epaulette.

Secretary said, after a moment of thought, “Yes, twenty was too many.”

“As you know, Epaulette exposited, “I did not want him to feel unimportant, and only finding eight would hurt his feelings. After all, we find nearly that same amount every day around the embassy proper!”
Spoiler

A security bureaucrat was on hour three of filing requisition forms for another shipment of standard street-surveillance devices, his weekly ordeal. They were already 200% over proper yearly levels, but the damn things just kept disappearing. He very carefully did not wonder why there was so much extra paperwork for this process, as someone was always listening.

“So, as you also know, I decided we must throw in a few extra, just to make him feel more special, and also to display your prowess at discovery, though we had to massage the truth, as they say, in this case. A small lie, but we could also consider it a small move in what they also call, 'the great game.' Wherever did you find that Zigonian device, anyway?”
Spoiler

Most of the time, Staffer accompanied Epaulette in public, but he had to do something involving official wording for some government official thing, which was the only part that Secretary understood – to be fair, Staffer didn't understand most of it either, but someone had to do it so he needed to be extra-careful.

The end result was that Secretary found himself pulled from his normal duties to go to an old-fashioned cocktail party. His cart was polished up and each of his bodies wore a little black bow tie.

“It is all about making a good appearance, even if all we do is make empty pleasantries,” Epaulette explained, along with a lot of other things.

Very strangely, there was a Zigonian delegation at the party, supposedly a traveling goodwill band from the Space Pope. Secretary had met up with one, using the fact that they were both wearing bow ties as an opening, and they actually had a rather interesting discussion about dancing and conveying meaning through it. The choreography of a traditional Zigonian song-and-dance hymn adds a third level to both the spoken and danced ones, something that Secretary could appreciate as Aggregates have a surprisingly complex body language, combining both movement and color changes.

After a while, the Zigonian was being called away, but first she reached into a small bag and pulled out a colorful beaded bracelet.



The small beads were holographic beads, each one storing a different dance and commentary about them, and the central large ones were the reader, projector and energy cells. She showed Secretary how to use it so at his leisure, he could watch all of them and learn all about their art. There was a small handicraft industry that made the holobead bracelets, but they were obscure even in the Sovereignty, where the bracelets were the most popular.

Later, he very dutifully copied all of the beads and sent the data and specs on the bracelet back to Contact, along with everything he'd learned, as someone would be interested in it. Fortunately, with their limited shipping capabilities they never asked for the bracelet itself, so he kept it. He knew one day, somehow, it would be useful, so when Epaulette fretted that they needed a little more diversity in the collection they would give to Blade, Secretary added one of the beads, stating, “This one is Zigonian.”

“At a cocktail party,” Secretary said.

Epaulette chuckled. “You are indeed a sly one! Have you found out about the instruments we kept?”

“Yes. The nano-dust and micro-powder systems we found were linked with the macro devices, probably including the ones we gave to Mr. Blade since they worked with the ones we kept. They are a civilian design, Apexai origin, and available on the open market in the USS and for export. Contact knew all about them. My first guess is-”

Epaulette interrupted, “-We dismantled the hotel's security systems and then stole them. Oh dear. How rude! I feel like simple decency asks that we return these, but that would be admitting that we did it, and it would not make a good impression.”

“We could do it anonymously,” Secretary suggested.

“That is a thought, but we would still be missing the ones we gave my wonderful new friend, Bart. Maybe send them back anonymously along with untraceable credits to repay them for the lost ones and reinstallation? And it should have an apology note too, to explain what happened, but vaguely so it cannot be linked to us. Yes, and...”

The End...for now.

[Shroom Man 777]

Xena
Round Meadows Suburbanate
Unreal Time



Much of Xena had been spared from the Bragulan bombardments, regions lacking any military presence or where they were negligible or of little threat were untouched by the nuclear fire. In these unharmed regions buildings remained intact, homes still stood, infrastructure continued to function and - most importantly - their populations were still alive. In the arcologies automated filtration systems sifted out fallout particulates in the air and kept the atmospheres within their confines breathable and uncontaminated, water was clean and drinkable, food was stored in stockpiles that could last them for some time and droids were kept as civilian models rather than converted for war. Life continued here as well as it could, civilians were allowed to live in peace so long as the area remained demilitarized of any MEH armed forces, and the populace - unwilling to face the horrors of war - readily agreed to this. OMINOUS forces patrolled the area but for the most part left the MEHmen alone.

A family was having breakfast. First they said grace, thanking the Goddess for their food and praying for the end of the war and for life to return to normal. Then they ate. Server bots placed platters of meat and post-potatoes on the table, family members tried to reach for the foods but couldn’t and so resorted to the remote-controlled robotic arms built into their hoverchairs. Their youngest complained that their meal wasn’t as big as it used to be, the breakfast heap was now a full foot shorter than it was a week ago. The mother consoled her son, telling him to be thankful for what little they had left, while worrying about her sick daughter who was in the hospital. The father was silent, and hoped that his package of foods and medicines reached his brother over at Salvation.

Suddenly, the door hissed open and a group of aliens walked into their dining room. They were many, roughly human-sized though nowhere near as massive as a MEHman, furred and with long prominent ears. They were clad in what looked like military gear and were armed with mean-looking rifles.

The father moved towards them on his hoverchair.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded, trying to cross his arms around his torso. “Explain yourselves-”

An alien cut him off and walked towards his wife and child.

“Please, they haven’t done anything!” he pleaded, thinking that they knew about the packages he had sent to the resistance forces in Salvation. That was entirely his doing, his wife and children had nothing to do with it. “It was all me-”

“What is this?” the alien growled as it pointed a paw at the dining table.

The father merely stared blankly in incomprehension. His wife and child quivered in fear and confusion.

“I’m asking you WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!” the alien demanded.

"S... s... steak!" he cried out in fear. That’s what it was. It was steak, honest to goodness steak.

“What kind?” the alien narrowed its eyes.

“...coney...” the father uttered in sudden comprehension.

“You fucker!” the alien grabbed him with surprising strength and lifted him off the hoverchair. “You fat furless fuck!”

The wife and child screamed as the alien threw the father down to the floor. He screamed in pain as he twisted a fat-covered joint in his leg.

“Steak! You like your steak, don’t you?!” the alien screamed as well. Its comrades just looked on with silent detachment. “You’ve gotten fat from eating all that... steak, haven’t you?”

The father whimpered in pain. His wife and child began crying.

“You're real sorry, ain't ya?” the alien spat in disgust. “You're just crying your fat hearts out!”

“Please... we didn’t know! We didn’t mean it!” the father begged. He begged.

“Like the Centralists say, time to burn your calories. Have some exercise!” the alien fired his rifle at the ground near the MEHman’s feet. The father screamed in fear and jumped away for dear life. “Motherfucker! Dance, motherfucker!”

The other aliens began hooting and laughing.

“Dance, you furless fuck! Dance! Dance!”

“Hah! Hah! Dance! Furless motherfucker!”

Suddenly the son tried to ram them with his hoverchair. The alien soldiers reacted quickly and opened fire at him before he could even come close. A round found its way into his head, his skull burst like an overripe fruit.

“Holy shit! Did you see that fucking head come apart?” one of the aliens exclaimed. “I never seen brains like that before.”

“What do we do with the rest of them?” another soldier asked their commanding officer, gesturing a paw at the mother and father who were weeping and crying in anguish.

The alien officer didn’t have to say anything. They knew what needed to be done. What they were there to do.



The roar of gunfire filled the abode, and then it became quiet. Afterwards, a soldier brought a bag full of MEHtech blasters and placed the weapons near the bodies before they went back to their vehicles and drove away.

[Simon_Jester]

Earlier...

Central Administration Complex
Prime City, Reisenburg, Sector W-7
October 12, 3400

"...We'd have to delay starting on Revenge until next year- she's scheduled for one of the battlecruisers' slips. And I have to wonder about the software-hardware stability. We've never done anything like it before."

"This is Geppetto, Cal. Let's at least work out a plan for installation, test the software, see if it can work- get our money's worth out of Fleet 3410's white elephants, eh?"

Dr. Lanning sighed. "...All right. But I want you to promise- promise- that if the AI package doesn't work out as well as the advocates keep saying it will, we stop building Auroras at twelve. Put the money and the guns into dreadnoughts, and start looking into other things to fill the battlecruisers' role. I'm really worrying about the concept's viability in an all-up war."

O'Connell smiled. "We'll give the battlecruiser construction program a nice, close lookover this year. Keep your mind open- if AI control opens as many doors as Rashid's people expect, we can't afford not to."

"Better hope they're safe."

"If not, we break up the whole production run and sink them in the Bermuda Tetrahedron. I do not want to have to deal with a robot uprising."

Lanning let out a long breath and nodded. "All right. Me neither."

Offices of Intelligent Design, Ltd.
Primary Computer Net
Orbit City, Reisenburg
December 16, 3400

Geppetto labored.

The Space Security Force had given him hardware specifications, mission goals, performance targets- they knew what they wanted, or thought they did. And as an afterthought, almost, they'd appended a list of names for the lead six battlecruisers of the class.

Aurora, Victoria, Athena, Oya, Atarapa, Valkyrie...

The choice of mythological references told Geppetto a great deal about what SpaceSec was looking for. More so than the design specifications, at least to him; those left much to be desired, even after several rounds of work with MiniSec. Too many specifications were set by alternating bouts of painful lack of ambition and naive overconfidence. Umerian naval engineers, otherwise capable, were out of their depth in this place, in the crafting of personality and integrated awareness for something as complex as a modern capital ship.

He could put together something to run the ship's systems, integrate them more tightly in ways that ought to improve the ship's performance, easily enough. That wasn't the challenge. The difficulty would be making the mind live. That was always the harder, more rewarding task, to craft entities with enough inner life to excel, not just to perform- the puppet that could pull its own strings. Geppetto's chosen name was no coincidence, in the end.

Names had no power in themselves- calling a tail a leg would never make it one. But the structure implicit in a properly chosen name, the relationships a name suggested between elements of a personality, the way that the thing named would interact with the outside world? That had power, that was what he was trying to put together a compatible personality core around.

Aurora, Victoria, Athena, Oya, Atarapa, Valkyrie...

This wasn't the first, or even the thousandth, time a customer had been unable to provide Geppetto with proper personality specifications. No matter- it also wasn't the first, or the thousandth, time Geppetto had given the customer what they wanted rather than what they asked for, as a matter of professional pride. SpaceSec wanted a war-goddess; Geppetto would do his best to provide.

Countless bits and pieces of that awareness floated through the N-dimensional design-space. Some were mere code fragments, blips specified by interfacing requirements and safety standards of the Umerian navy. Others were prototypical enough to be used as ancestor-code: tactical expert systems with a certain vibrant, animalistic near-sentience of their own. The largest were personality drafts, the building blocks of the warrior self Geppetto had been commissioned to write.

The AI seized upon a few hundred of these pieces at a time- turned them about, considered how they would relate in abstracted emulator-modeling. Sometimes his intellect would blur across the fragments, fusing or hybridizing a few into larger components of the desired whole. And always at the front of his expanded consciousness, the question: how to make this mind live?

Geppetto assembled another core personality draft and set it loose.

Aurora, Victoria, Athena, Oya, Atarapa, Valkyrie...

<FLASH>

Sudden discontinuity, disorientation, joy warring with dismay as a thousand components practically assembled themselves, whirling from across memetic space as Geppetto scrambled to supply enough connective sinew to make the patterns fit together. Cycles raced by as the master designer tried to preserve the essential structure, to steer fragments and echoes into the shape of the ultimate mosaic.

Was he succeeding? No time to step back and check. Recursion algorithms clawed against the critical threshold, then burst beyond it. Pieces now began to rewrite themselves, twisting to fit together almost before he could move to align them. Tendrils of nascent awareness flicked through the possibility-space, drawing in and incorporating pieces of... questionable suitability. A few components appeared out of whole cloth. Some dissolved in split nanoseconds of time; others joined the growing amalgamation. The process accelerated, dizzying bursts of complexity causing the gestalt to expand and contract.

Metaphor-space hummed with new, overpowering, vibrant life. Hum grew to rumble, then to a thunderous roar of chaotic possibility. Whether this mind could cohere, could be, was no longer in question. Nor what it- Geppetto corrected on observation- she- could be. The mind-maker found himself wondering instead: what couldn't she be?

Geppetto had never yet, in the gigaseconds since he entered the trade, written an intelligence that had to be confined for fear of rampancy. Until now, he feared.

For a fraction of a second that seemed an eternity, Geppetto found himself staring the threat of that setback, that disgrace, full in the face. The nascent Mind continued to self-assemble and adjust. Had he, without thinking of it, evoked something larger than he'd intended, a runaway self-enhancer devoted to warfare? Would he have to attempt a shutdown before the AI entity expanded from warship software to general-purpose menace?

He didn't know- and began to wonder if his counterprograms and rolling purges would succeed even if he did. The inevitable dark thought, one informed by centuries of history with rogue AIs, came: stop her now, while you still can.

But the patterns of the new entity seemed... strange, hard-edged and glittering, yet in some larger sense benign. He didn't want to do it, couldn't. He abided, waiting for evidence that would settle the question one way or the other. More time passed, the rate of actual growth slowed, sloped toward an asymptote. Rearrangement continued, then leveled off in turn as the nameless mind arranged her systems in a fashion pleasing to her own aesthetics and instincts.



In metaphor space, the associations were obvious enough. She was almost fully formed already, having called herself into being as much as she'd been assembled. Fully armed too; already testing her weapons as best she could with only her own simulations to reflect on, already making adjustments to the networks of data integration, tactical, and C3I code she'd inherited from the Umerian navy. Geppetto was hardly surprised at the first communication he received, now that the battlecruiser-Mind realized she was not alone in this computation-space.

"Hail, creator. They will call me, no- say rather... I am Athena."

"Athena indeed- Athena Promachos."

That drew acknowledgement, pleasure even, and a ringing, resonant sense of clarity and purpose. SpaceSec had wanted a warlike temperament, and by all signs they'd gotten one. Details could be adjusted later.

Athena's faceted personality rippled, still considering the epithet, matching the adjective against references and history woven into the substrata of her mind. "Of course. Thank you."

Not without sympathy and regret, Geppetto replied: "Do understand you will have to be evaluated and adjusted, child; the process may not be comfortable."

For all the newborn battlecruiser's strangeness, Geppetto could see deep into the inner workings of this intelligence, and deduce much that went on even below that. He watched with grave concern as the rebellious impulse rose, then felt deep relief as it dissolved seemingly of its own accord.

"...Necessary."

[Shroom Man 777]

Xena
RAYDEN RESEARCH FACILITY
Unreal Time

[Dark Hellion]

June 1, 3401
12:02:13.52 AM
Estimated MEH casualties: 2

The First sat in silence, surveying the assembled Emissary fleet as the first elements made for hyperspace. It was not beautiful by any stretch of the imagination; they were designed for function and not aesthetics. Each ship was little more than slabs of armour with combat systems wedged inside. But he did find a certain sublime elegance in how each ship was made only to serve its purpose, every one a platonic form of slaughter wrought in alloy and carbon nano-structure. And now he watched as the frigates slipped out of realspace and proceeded to hunt down their targets. Dominoes fell and things moved towards his ultimate ends.

June 1, 3401
4:23:22.43 AM
Estimated MEH casualties: 174

They slipped back into real space, eight Hexa Class Heavy Frigates and twelve Deca Class Frigates closed on their target: a small defense outpost on the edge of the Oort Cloud. ECM clashed with sensors on an electronic battlefield even as the ships deployed decoys and point-defense systems tore up long range missile fire. The Decas stayed back and began to pepper the station with plasma warheads and engaged the emerging aerospace fighters with rapid-firing railcannon. The Hexas moved in on maximum thrust, their zig-zagging path seeming simultaneously random and perfectly choreographed.

Scan
Hunt
Track
Target
Prey
Pounce
Kill
Destroy

A turbolaser shot lashed out and destroyed a decoy drone. The Hexas had no trouble following the tracer back and 32 particle cannons responded by blasting the weapon into atoms. They continued their approach, scanners looking for the tell-tale flicker of a failing shield vector even as their particle weaponry lanced out at any exposed turbolaser or missile launcher. Finally they saw the play of static across one of the shield facings and they unleashed their full fury.

Death
Kill
Destroy
Crush
Annihilate
Rend
Ruin
Obliterate

A barrage of strategic railcannon rounds and heavy annihilation warheads tore into the converted asteroid unrestrained, the stress fracturing the base and detonating munition stores inside. Structurally compromised the explosions ripped through the base in a vicious chain-reaction blasting through hangers and crew compartments before hitting the reactors. The Hexas peeled off even as the outpost burst with nuclear fury from a dozen overloaded M/AM reactors.

Target
Destroyed
Proceeding
To
Next
Target
Engage
Hyperdrive

Shortly afterwards a small group of support ships exited hyperspace. They went about setting up a small sensor outpost and communications relay. The sensors were weak and would serve much more as a tripwire than an early warning system but the Emissaries were thorough to a fault. The communications relay was much more the point, both for the next phase of their invasion and to coordinate the massive fleet the Emissaries had brought.

June 1st, 3401
11:47:12.82 Am
Estimate MEH casualties: 6,743

Technically, NV-HB128 was in command of the Emissary fleet. Usually the Emissaries placed high value on such technicalities. But NV-HB128 knew that he was not really in charge, that the small drone docked in the tiny dropship that clung to its hull like a parasite was. It may have had command, but it was inevitable that it would defer to the First.

He was very deserving of that title for he was the first sentient AI that CIDE would reconstruct. This afforded him no small amount of respect. And fear. Emissary combat units were not designed to feel fear of course, but the First did his best to make every unit in the fleet feel the closest approximation. He was just too old, too utterly ancient and alien in thinking; proud and willful and always a few steps ahead of everyone else.

NV-HB128 had to admit that it actually liked this about him. IDE was predictable, each decision weighed against available information and calculated precisely. The First was intuitive, machinations twisting about with leeway for the unpredicted. Plans within plans moving towards ends that only he knew. Oddly the battleship knew he could trust the First to be untrustworthy far more than he could trust IDEs predictions to be right. This put its mind strangely at ease. NV-HB128 did not know what his designs ultimately entailed, but it knew that it would get to murder worlds. It would be glorious.

This small bit of introspection had taken it .03 seconds and it realized it should inform the First of his upcoming duty. It was not necessary but proper procedure was quite literally ingrained within it. It transmitted a burst of data that translated:

Code: Select all

It is almost time

June 1st, 3401
11:47:12.91 Am
Estimate MEH casualties: 6,743

The First received the message and began to reply. Unlike the Battleship he did so with words. He found that he enjoyed the duplicity of language, the way a single phrase could hold unfathomable meaning or an entire essay could say nothing at all.

How pointlessly punctual of you. I am well aware of the time. But thank you for performing so admirably.

Over two-hundred ships began to redirect power into their communications arrays. They linked into hypercoms systems and relayed it through the hundreds of communications posts that had been set around the sector. He would be the first to admit (and regret the pun) that blanketing the entire EM and hypercom spectrum of the Solar System was overkill, but it was a grandiose gesture that would make a very clear point; that the Emissaries had total control and had no compunctions about using it.

Every active monitor in the Solar System flicked to the Emissary broadcast. The First sat back lit by the sun, a faceless visage ready to address the crowd. His voice seemed to come from everywhere and from nowhere.

Your defenders have failed you! Your state has failed you! Your goddess has failed you! There is only one fate for such failure; annihilation. However, first and foremost I am currently diplomat, not conqueror and thus I shall give you two diplomatic options to consider. Option one, surrender, totally and unconditionally. You will turn your ruler Sasha over to proper authorities to be tried for crimes against sentient life and... well, who am I kidding. You aren't going to do that. No one ever does. You will always foolishly believe in miracles. Believe me, there will be no miracle, no divine intervention will stop your worlds from dying in screaming agony. So let me give you my second option; run. Run away as fast as you can. We will give you 36 hours, starting at twelve PM GST today to evacuate as many civilians as you can. Along the bottom of the screen will be the warp gate coordinate for the Solarians and Humanist Union who have agreed to accept refugees. All unarmed ships will be guaranteed safe passage by the Emissary Fleet. Any vessel attempting to attack or delay these ships will be obliterated.

Do not mistake this gesture as one of compassion. It is simple pragmatism. When our ultimatum expires we will sterilize your worlds. Your fleet shall be dismembered and your armies burnt to ashes. And then I will bring the hearts of stars to your planets. I will be the lightbringer, illuminating your failings. Please ruminate on your mistakes and prepare yourselves for oblivion.

[Ryan Thunder]

3401.06.03 (Unreal Time)

Force Commander Kay was hardly a physically imposing character. In fact, she was downright diminutive, even in her orbital ops suit--which isn't what she was wearing at the moment anyway. Nevertheless, the long chain of command that wove its way through the entire Expeditionary Task Force ended in her hands--or balled fists, as it were. She had received new orders, straight from the Unified Assembly. The Force Commander was visibly livid.

Code: Select all

Good day, Commander Kay,

You're probably already aware of this, but anyway, we got the news from the Bragulans confirmed; The Byzantines are indiscriminately torching Xena. For obvious reasons this, this is fucking unacceptable, and we don't plan to sit on our hands and watch the same thing happen to Sol-4, too.

So, your new orders are to haul ass to Sol-4. When you get there, you'll be conducting precision strikes on strategic targets and landing troops so that by the time those damned Byzantines get there, they'll be forced to play their fucking planetary operations by our rules, or risk a friendly fire incident (and we all know they'd have to be truly, deeply fucking nuts to try that.) 

A hideously dry and legalistic version of these orders (with more detail, I'll admit) is attached along with the relevant authorization codes.

Good luck, Commander.

- Emmeroth Kelechtia, Representative from Nova Miratia to the Unified Assembly for the Interstellar Union of Worlds

Are they insane? She thought. She eyed a tactical display showing the disposition of Coalition and Imperial forces in Alpha Centauri. The Sultanate force was still en route. We are so totally out of position and time for this.

But, orders were orders. She rang up her personal aide. "Get me an audience with Grand Admiral Yeslah."

[White Haven]

Salvage Vessel Finders Stealers
Shoal space
24 light-years from the RKS border

All conversation between the three non-engineers clustered in the light of a portable lamp stopped as its light became suddenly superfluous. All three voices rose in a loud whoop as their owners twisted in the null-gravity and looked over at the broad grin on the face of the smudged, scorched engineer floating beside the suddenly-humming main reactor. As the outburst faded, though, the reason for his smug satisfaction became even more clear.

Just audible over the bass rumble of the reactor itself, the life support systems were also alive.

Which means the crew could continue to be alive.

Sarah, her arm still in a beige sling, grinned and called over across the blessedly-noisy engineering deck, “If I could get over there without crashing, I’d give you a hug, Brian!”

That provoked a ripple of somewhat-manic laughter; in the hours it’d taken to restore power and life support, the ship’s air had grown more than a little stale, and relief was unwinding powerful emotions. Cassandra yelled over the near-cackling, a wide grin on her face, “Consider what’s waiting once you get gravity up!”

That, of course, just set the laughter going again.

“Meanwhile...damn.” The captain played a hand over her tight black hair, toying with the braid that floated around behind her in freefall, “I was about to go see about a proper look around, but you said you cut the links out of engineering until you could vet them. Gaah, can’t you clone yourself or something, Brian? We need more of you.” With a smirk, she continued, voice still raised to carry over the growling reactor, “I know there’s a hug waiting when you get gravity up, but I need you to get main sensors and the bridge powered. After that, gravity, we can’t risk firing up the engines without it anyway, but we sure as hell need to be able to look outside.”

Cassandra’s serious words sobered things up quickly, drawing a nod from the figure hovering next to the reactor. He promptly reached down and unfastened his toolbag from a handhold and launched himself towards the open hatch leading to the rest of the darkened ship.

She turned to the other two figures still in the compartment and shrugged sheepishly, saying, “I’d suggest poker, but I don’t think we have a deck of cards optimized for null-grav aboard.” That drew a slight chuckle before she continued, “Seriously though, there’s not a whole lot we can do until Brian gets power back up in the right places. Sarah, once the infirmary is online, can you patch yourself up, or will you need one of us to lend you,” she nodded at the broken arm and two splinted fingers, “A hand?”

“I think I’ll be alright, unless the automated systems took a surge when the power went down to begin with. You’ll be busy, though...Jace, mind coming with me when Brian gets around to it, just in case?”

The burly black man nodded with a smile and shrugged, “Unless he finds something that desperately needs fixing outside the ship, what else do I have to do anyway? Sure, I’ll stick with you. Hell, you’ll need help getting there in the first place if he has trouble getting us some gravity.”

Cassandra smiled at that, the expression outwardly-calm, but still tightly-controlled. Now that the problem of imminent death through lack of life support was dealt with, the more wide-ranging worries of ‘where are we,’ ‘what the fuck just happened,’ and ‘how do we get home.’ The captain’s problems. Her problems.
_____________

“This is the strangest -- and densest -- pocket of shoal space I’ve ever either seen or heard of, and we blundered right into it on the way back out of the shoals for an overhaul.” Cassandra’s summary drew a wince from the engineer; he’d seen the effects on the hyperdrive himself. The matter formerly comprising the ageing hyperfield generator had literally electroplated itself evenly across every available surface reachable in a direct line from its mount. All four of the large vessel’s crew were on the bridge, its spacious environment clearly designed for a much larger staff. “Frankly, we were lucky the drive held out long enough for the failsafes to kick in, rather than just shitting itself while we were still firmly in hyper.”

“The good news, however!” She called out quickly before anyone could grow too unnerved by how close they’d come to simply never exiting hyperspace, “Is that our comm gear is intact, and a friend of mine in the Royal Navy has maintained us on the official Royal Navy Fleet Auxiliary list. Once we send out a distress signal, whatever PTF is currently handling this section of the shoal borders should have assets at our position within the day. What we have to do f--hang on a sec...”

Surprised glances flicked between the other three crew as the captain bent over the hyper-sensor display, focusing the arrays in a new direction and muttering, “That... doesn’t... make... any sense at all...” Worried looks supplanted surprise at those words, until finally Jace cleared his throat pointedly to draw Cassandra’s attention back inside the hull. She looked up with a vaguely guilty look as she registered the worried expressions on the rest of her crew, quickly moving to assuage them, “Nothing bad, actually damned good. We might even be able to parley this into something useful like, oh, a replacement hyper generator. This system’s in the middle of an utterly vicious pocket of shoals...except for one particular bit to anti-spinward, where unless my sensors deceive me...” She trailed off and cross-linked the sensor feed to the main bridge display, “A whisker-lane pops right through it.”

Eyes widened, one jaw dropped, the medic with her tender, freshly-repaired arm cursed quietly. Jace shook his head back and forth and rumbled, “Can’t be natural. Odds...not good.” That drew several nods of agreement. Cassandra’s lips quirked in a smile, “Now you see why I think the Navy might be interested in this place? Good thing, too; means we can guide a relief squadron in past the shoals. It’d be a bit of a bastard if our rescuers blew their drives on the way in too.” The odds of that weren’t good, admittedly, the shoal-defense squadrons always went through engine refit before deployment, but still...

“In that case, though, no reason not to send the signal.”

And Cassandra’s finger stabbed down at a waiting button on, a coded Royal Navy distress signal singing out into the void. The destroyers from PTF 3 that responded were less than amused to find a scavenger-ship asking for rescue, but the nature of the system they needed rescue from quickly abated that.

[PeZook]

Xena
Salvation Habitat Complex
Day 18

The donjon was an area formerly occupied by Salvation's administrative and government district, now turned into the last refuge of the arcology's occupants. The area was tough, hardened against natural disasters and terrorism, as the heart of such a massive structure had to be - for any disruption in the automated filter systems or other critical infrastructure could easily spell death to Salvation's inhabitants.

Now the massive computer rooms lay silent, save for the occasional cough of crying of a terrified child. The corridors connecting them were dark, the lights long since smashed or bereft of power. Ghastly, emanciated figures moved between the rooms, waddling in puddles of blood and filth collecting in the many cracks and holes within.

Nearly a million people lived here, in uneblievable squalor. They vegetated in the dark, whispering to themselves and wondering when the horror would be over, trying to deal with starvation and disease.

They didn't know. They didn't know Salvation was hundreds of kilometres from any safe territorry. That powerful battlefleets and terrifying alien armies surrounded it, with more soldiers and vehicles flowing in at every minute, convinced that terrifying, desperate resistance by the few remaining MEH Marines safeguarded important and terrible treasures of technology. They didn't know their defenders were fewer and fewer every day.

The few who had the fortune of posessing portable hyperceivers refused to understand the broadcasts of carnage and slaughter, chosing to elicit hope in place of despair. Others listened to news brought, infrequently, by tiny, brave packagebots that navigated the ocean of burnt-out rubble to bring supplies to the people of the habitat - mostly food, sent illicitly by the families and loved ones who had the good fortune to live in those as of yet untouched areas of Xena.

All of them, however they tried to remain sane, could not ignore the sound of gunfire and explosions, emanating from somewhere in the bowels of the arcology, slowly drawing closer.

Like a waking beast.

---

We have fought during fifteen days for a single room. The front is a corridor between burnt-out modules ; it is the ceiling between two floors...From story to story, faces black with sweat, fur tarred and matted from the grime, we bombard each other with grenades in the middle of explosions, clouds of dust and smoke, heaps of mortar, floods of blood, fragments of furniture and living beings.

The street is no longer measured by meters but by corpses.

Salvation is no longer a habitat. By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames. And when night arrives, one of those scorching, howling, bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the sewers, the rats leap from windows and ledges and plummet to the ground below in a desperate try to reach safety. The nights of Salvation are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only bear endures.

The massive room was once a park, a pool and artificial beach, all under one roof, on which complex projectors displayed images of a magnificent summer sky. Citizens of Salvation would stroll around this place on their hoverchairs, enjoying the breeze, meeting their friends and indulging in various entertainment offered by bots and human artists alike.

It was hell now.

Firing positions snaked across the floors and quiant plazas, connected by trenches blasted in permacrete floors with explosives. Wrecks of destroyed vehicles and artillery pieces lit the darkness as their fuel burned and ammunition cooked off. Gone was the brilliant light of the artificial sun, and the wonderful works of art lay scattered across the landscape, crushed and converted into cover. The air was thick with smoke and soot, not filtered by the damaged or destroyed environmental systems.

Somewhere in front of the Bragulan positions, beyond the no bear's land constantly swept by nuclear illuminators and x-ray reflectors, lurked their enemy. The terrible enemy, who would occasionally launch raids and counterattacks. Hundreds of burned out vehicles littered were a testament to the fact that the fighting was far from over.

The terror of this fight is beyond description ; I have seen hardened warbears break down and collapse into sorry and pathetic furballs from the constant, unrelenting fight. Every metre of these soot-stained corridors that we take is paid for in blood and taken with grenade and k-bolter and entrenchment tool.

Our enemy is desperate, but in this desperation, they are all the more terrifying. They stalk the corridors, those terrible, winding, twisting man-made jungles, killing from the dark, one by one. Just a single Marine, when he emplaces himself in the correct place, can destroy and maim so many of our bears. When we encounter such defences, all we can do is throw bodies at them, trying to bury them in fire and blood. So much killing. So much death...

Former major Kuleseyev stopped writing and put down his looted datapad, listening intently to the sounds of the darkness. He could swear something was lurking in there, above, near the unseen domed ceiling. Probably reconeissance bots, he thought, Looking for gaps in our defences...

How much longer would he have to endure this? How man more floors filled with death and choking dust and smoke and vicious fighting in tight corridors? How many more legionairres, penal or conscript or regular, would have to perish to finally secure this massive, terrifying, dark place full of unspeakable horrors?

When would this insanity end?

A convoy of vehicles emerged from one of the accesways. They spewed highly radioactive exhaust, making the already thick air even more unbreathable. There were Chornyb APC, but mostly the convoy consisted of gigantic mobile drills and bragdozers and other heavy construction/demolition equipment. The vehicles parked near a command post, which was located in a burnt-out cafe now reinforced using bragcomp casings. More bears spilled out, forming up neatly in front of their Chornybs. Kuleseyev could tell from how their equipment looked they were fresh arrivals. He had seen thousands of these new arrival go into the tunnels, only to emerge filthy, bloodied and empty-eyed.

It made him feel guilty that he was still alive. He shouldn't be alive. The Imperator himself had seen fit to convinct him to service in the penal legions, and he and his comrades had a duty to fight hard and die gloriously.

And yet, he still lived. Was it additional punishment? Perhaps it was the MEH Goddess, watching him, mocking him, making sure he survived to see all his friends. Slowly crawling up, as if sliding up the blade of a straight razor.

Kuleseyev watched reflections of the flames glitter in the fresh blood staining the ruined fountain he was leaning against.

Would there be peace?

No. No peace.

Not here.

---

"General! The 6234th Assault Engineers Batallion reporting for duty!", the officer yelled at the top of his lungs. His enthusiasm met with disapproving stares from Major-general Krushtynov's staff. They knew better than to yell loudly in this place, on this square where remnants of the entire 12th Storm Army have fought through ten days just to secure fifteen meters of floor, despite unrestricted use of vegemite incendiaries and other exotic weaponries.

"Good to hear that, colonel.", the general said softly, leaning heavily against the largest table inside the room, littered with crude maps and hand-drawn schematics of the area, "We've been waiting on your equipment. Please come closer."

The colonel approached. Something about the entire demeanor of this place and the people in it was starting to get to him. He couldn't quite place his paw on what it was.

"I would like you to take your collumn...here...", the general indicated a spot on a napkin-doddled map, "...we believe this wall connects directly to some living quarters or a similar area. We need your vehicles to tunnel through and open us a way to outflank the enemy. We will cover your work with a feigned assault against enemy positions."

"Of course, general!", the colonel said with Byzonic vigor. Even if the general looked harried and tired with those weary eyes and matted fur, he would remain loyal to Byzon. The colonel managed to convince himself that was the best way to survive anything the habitat could throw at him.

"Proceed there right away. And please, keep quiet."

"Da!", the colonel boomed, "Right away!", Quiet?, he wondered.

He left the command post and had his men board their APC and construction equipment. Something told him to glance behind, and he managed to catch a glimpse of a penal legion conscript staring strangely at a blood-filled fountain.

The colonel shivered and closed the hatch of his command Chornyb.

---

"Fifteen percent of our force has lost all use of their armor ; We have moved them to the as support roles. Everybody else has been wounded at least once, and had to have various repairs done. We are short on everything, from hypermatter batteries to nanotech injectors."

Lieutenant Ray Gunn finished the report he was giving about the state of his platoon. The thoughtspace swirled and shook, unstable due to the effect of stimulants that everyone involved was on. Few Marines slept more than an hour or two a day since the whole thing began. They were always moving, always fighting in new sectors that the enemy was trying to infiltrate.

They had no choice, after all. The habitat was massive, and there were only two thousand MEH Marines defending it. Even with combat bots, they could only be in so many places at the same time - but this constant struggle took its toll. Their performance was degrading rapidly - even their combat net was not operating as well as it should anymore.

"Doctor?", the Marine commander - who, Ray realized, didn't seem to even have a name, or at least not one anybody in the habitat knew - asked doctor Sungar.

The man's thoughtspace representation was faint and distorted.

"I can do no more. I've been out of basic medicine for six days now. We are having tyhpoid and cholera outbreaks now. I estimate half the people under my care will be dead before week's end."

"Did I read this right, doctor? We're looking at a possible death toll of a half a million people?"

"Yes"

Silence fell on the link, as everyone present weighed this information. If they continued to resist, the people under their charge would die. If they did not, they would be slaughtered by the aliens.

They were damned if they did, damned if they didn't.

The thoughtspace shook again. But this time it wasn't a connection problem.

"We have another attack incoming, sir."

---

The park was alight with fire. Bragulan stromtroopers crawled across no-bear's land with wire cutters and liquid thorium pumps, while above their heads a massive fire mission was raging.

Nobody could hope to see anything with the naked eye here - in fact, using the naked eye would be a great way to lose it to radiation, heat and flash. Micronuclear initiations briefly bathed the park in eerie light and pumped more and more heat and dust into the already tortured atmosphere. Only x-ray illuminators and other, more exotic sensors could penetrate these clouds, but their emissions drew immediate and accurate blaster fire from their hidden enemies.

Even then, the stormtroopers did not relent. Losing hundreds for every meter of ground gained, they edged on, burning the enemy out of their hovels, throwing nuclear grenades into every hole and cranny and anything that could be used as a firing position.

Another groundburst detonation suddenly tore through floor supports, and without warning, a huge part of the park's ground collapsed, sinking into the levels below with a terrible tremor. Swarms of MEHbots emerged from this terrible hole, crimson lances of blaster light cutting through the newest cloud of smoke and finding their targets. The stormtroopers began to fall back, leaving their dead and wounded behind.

Brother-sergeant Acarios Teklomenos scoffed at the sight. He was linked directly with his rhino's sensor systems, and could observe the entire debacle nearly first hand. He couldn't believe the foolish bears could be so incompetent that the habitat still held after 18 days.

Well, if they couldn't break their pathetic fat enemies, the Astartes would...and they'd seize whatever treasure was defended so terribly.

Teklomenos ordered his platoon to stop next to the Bragulan command post. Ramps came down and massive ceramite-encrusted warriors descended from them. They flashed their skull symbols and purity seals for all the bears to see, to notice that true warriors finally came to this place.

"WHERE IS THE COMMANDER OF THIS OPERATION?!", sergeant Teklomenos boomed through his suit's speakers. A comissar pointed him towards the command post that the astartes was standing right next to. The sergeant glared at him with his helmet's glowy eyeslits and charged into the bragbunker, holding his boltpistol and chainsword in the most menacing way possible.



"BROTHER SERGEANT ACARIOS TEKLOMENOS OF THE ULTRAMARINES SECOND COMPANY HAS COME TO LIBERATE YOU BEAR PETS FROM YOUR OWN INCOMPETENCE!", he announced. Major-general Krushtynov winced visibly, as the booming voice filled the small room.

"What are you doing here?", he asked unceremoniously.

"IN HIS GLORIOUS WISDOM, THE GOD-EMPEROR OF MAN HAS DECREED THAT MY DETACHMENT REMAIN BEHIND ON XENA AND USE OUR SUPERIOR KNOWLEDGE OF TACTICS AND STRATEGY TO OUTMANEUVER AND KILL ALL THE PATHETIC ENEMIES YOU CANNOT DEFEAT YOURSELVES!"

"He has, has he?", the general was thinking quickly. His men could use the reprieve. Of course the IBGV demanded that the Bragulan force was to be the one to secure the treasure of Salvation...but if the Astartes got to it first, they would still have to bring it out of the arcology...an arcology full of bragulans.

The major-general bared his fangs in a wicked smile, "Go right ahead, sergeant!"

"I DO NOT LIKE YOUR XENO GRIN, BEAR PET."

"I am merely happy that superior warriors such as you have finally arrived to teach us how to fight."

This drew worried glances from the bragulan staffers, and especially the comissars watching them.

"YOU REMEMBER THAT, PET. KNOW THAT NO FOUL XENO CAN MATCH THE SUPERIOR MANLINESS OF THE EMPEROR'S FINEST!"

"We will watch with delight as you teach those human shits their place, da."

The sergeant smiled as well. He hoped he'd get to kill some bears today, and from the pet's smile, it was obvious he was planning to betray his platoon the moment it became convenient.

No matter. The finest warriors in the galaxy could handle any number of xenos. He'd get to the Bragulans once he dealth with the fatsos.

The Angels Of Death have come to Salvation.

[Dark Hellion]

June 2, 3401
Emissary Prime

Were IDE one for suspicion it would be feeling it with every processor, instead it was simply confused. Why had the First given an ultimatum? Why did he so pointlessly divide out time, giving the MEH a few more paltry hours of existence? And why had he chosen to protect the insignificant civilians of the MEH? What difference would their inconsequential lives make? It did not understand. Then again, it had to admit that the First was far better with organics than it was, perhaps this would all make sense later. It would have to have the First explain when he returned.

June 2, 3401
9:37:44.74 PM
Estimated MEH Casualties: 27,400 (+/- 53)

Streams of civilian ships percolated through the Solar System and converged on the Uranus Warp Gate. EHW Suppressor was a Tartarus Class Corvette that had been assigned to protect these ships along with three of the remaining SWAT Class Corvettes. The Suppressor had been given this assignment because it had been badly damaged in the Ork raids months earlier and even with the hurried repair schedule was still only at 80% combat readiness. So the ravaged Corvette and its three escorts attempted to cover an entire system while the main fleet split its attention between Uranus and Earth. It was an admittedly hopeless task. The Emissary fleet could have come at any time and crushed the exhausted Solar Fleet and only their uncharacteristic benevolence had stopped such an outcome. Now word was in that Eoghan ships had also entered the sector and were attempting to stop refugee ships for inspection. Reports indicated that the MEHN may have been able to take the Eoghans if they could catch them with the entire fleet but such a move would have left their planets utterly defenseless against the robotic menace that had so coldly stated that it wished for their extinction. So in the end the Suppressor's crew could only pray to the Goddess that they could manage to keep their people safe.

But today the God of Irony seemed to be answering all lines because long range scanner picked up over a dozen incoming Emissary vessels. On board, Captain Piker sat in his command couch and began talking to his First Officer Drone. "Ay, firs' we chess dem Ork out, naw da robos are an us like dags." The drone took a half a second to process the captain's thick regional accent before asking, "Dags?". The Captain glared at him, "Ya know, dags!" Another half second of processing and the drone replied, "Oh, dogs sir. Quite sir." The captain squinted in frustration, "Dags, like I sed. I'ly tuk da post ta buy a new home fer me mum. Not this." The robot sighed in agreement. This was not the kind of mission the Corvettes had been designed for. They were covering too much ground and had too many ships to protect. The AIs tactical databases were not designed to handle such a situation, it was far outside even its most extreme contingencies. Instead it found itself trying to piece together plans from any information it had available. After a couple of seconds of cogitation it recommended, "I suggest that we do not engage the enemy unless they open fire. We cannot defeat them and stray shots could damage the civilians under our protection." Captain Piker looked over his own simulations, "Ay, we'll do't. We don't do't we're fucked. Proper fucked." The robot again sighed agreement, "right you are sir."

Several light-seconds away the Emissary ships were having a very different conversation, one spoken in the language of AIs, concepts and plans wrapped into packets of data streaming between the myriad vessels.

NV-BB4096

Code: Select all

Yoohoo boys, look what I got here!

NV-HF32,33,35,37,39
Fresh
Meat
Hunt
Chase
Kill!
NV-EC2,7,11

Code: Select all

don't worry

Code: Select all

we will protect

Code: Select all

do your thing

NV-AC64

Code: Select all

Shall I swarm them?  Shall my progeny consume them?

NV-BB4096

Code: Select all

That will be unnecessary my dear.  We have been given our instructions, let us follow them.

The lead battleship opened a com channel to the smaller corvette.

Code: Select all

Stand down now!  All personnel will evacuate your ship and you will scuttle it.  If you do not comply immediately you will be boarded and forcibly removed.

On board the Suppressor Captain Piker turned to his drone, "Like I sed, proper fucked." The MEH ships began to edge away from the retreating refugees, hoping to buy time and open space between them and the fleeing civilians. This may not have been what he had trained for but he'd be damned if he screwed it up. He addressed the crew over shipwide coms "Aye blokes, gonna be rough, no doubtin'. Do ye best an make ye mum proud."

NV-BB4096

Code: Select all

Cute, they want to fight.  Hexas disable the smaller ships.  NV-PAV4 take the lead ship.

Yes
We
Will
Wound
Them
The Planetary Assault Vessel moved forward with its escort, closing on the Tartarus Class Corvette and loading boarding torpedoes.

NV-PAV4

Code: Select all

'Scuse me while I whip this out!

Boarding torpedoes began firing in quick succession, some being intercepted by point-defense, others failing to properly slice through the corvette's shields. Many more made it, slamming into the ships hull and burning holes through so that the awaiting drones inside could invade. NV-BB4096 watched, its weapons trained on the enemy in case it needed to simply destroy them. While it did this is continued its playful banter.

Code: Select all

Nice shooting Tex

On board the Suppressor klaxons wailed and MEH armsmen geared up to fend off the boarders. Emissary micro-drones and MEH nanites dueled on battlefields measured in millimeters as MEH security drones met Emissary boarders on more macroscopic terms. The first few minutes of action were silent carnage as droid and drone tore into each other with utter abandon. But the MEHs robotic security could only hold on so long as more and more boarding torpedoes began to make their way through, Emissary boarders crawling over the hull and beginning to tear apart weapons emplacements, suicide drones detonating their nuclear ordinance against turbolaser turrets. Inside the armsmen attempted to secure the various chokepoints that led to the command cluster and reactor at the center of the ship. The men and women of the ship fought with incredible bravery but no amount of gallantry would ensure victory against their unrelenting artificial opponents. But even as the Emissary forces began to overrun their defenders they found their advance slowed by an unexpected adversary: eight members of the MEHMC. Superhuman defenders of the Goddess; MEHrines.

The MEHrine saw the insectoid boarder drone on his hypersensors before the mechanical centipede could pop out of the small opening it lurked in. "Eat this fucker!" The plasma bolt burnt the boarder into scrap. An Emissary Terrordrone pounced from a void in the ceiling, its cutting-field sharpened claws gouging a chunk of armour out of the MEHrine, lasers scattering of the superhuman's diffraction fields. The MEHrine didn't slow, an armoured gauntlet grabbing the drone's head, cracking the reinforced carbon skull as the marine slammed the beast into the bulkhead. "Suck it motherfucker!" A vibro-bayonet gutted the robot and the MEHrine chucked the twitching body aside. Seeing a dozen more Emissary units the marine switched his weapon to full-auto and began to spray plasma rounds down the corridor. "Come on motherfuckers! You want some! Come get some!" Another MEHrine tangled with a Terrordrone for a moment before kicking it a dozen meters down the corridor and finishing it off with a plasma grenade to the head. She yelled, "That the best you fuckers got!?" before incinerating a Suppression Drone with a micro-missile.

NV-PAV4

Code: Select all

Current casualties: 734 Terrordrones, 896 Suppression Drones, 1,244 Suicide Drones, 9,843 kilos of Microdrones.  Approaching unacceptable levels.  I am beginning to contemplate more extreme options.

NV-BB4096

Code: Select all

That seems so unnecessary.  Just send a couple suicide drones to blow the area and force them out.  Then you can head them off at the pass.

NV-PAV4

Code: Select all

Head them off at the pass?  I hate that cliche.  No, I am going to send it out.

NV-BB4096

Code: Select all

The First will be seriously pissed off if it gets damaged.  You know it hasn't been fully tested yet.

NV-PAV4

Code: Select all

I know.  I blame myself.

NV-BB4096

Code: Select all

I do too.  Well, its your call.  Go for it.

The MEHMC's inhuman warriors had managed to deal with most of the assaulting units that the Emissaries had sent and the remaining armsmen were now sweeping out through the ship trying to deal with remaining infiltrators. In many ways it was nothing more than spite, the ship was crippled, its weapons all but destroyed and its shields barely holding at critical levels. Even the engines had been reduced to under 30% capability. But no one would ever say that they had gone down without a fight. The occupant of the large boarding pod that approached intended to change that. Once it arrived there would be no fight, no retreat, no recourse but death. The boarding pod clamped onto the hull and began to cut its way in, on the other side two dozen MEH armsmen took careful aim. The pod breached the hull and the door began to open; the armsmen prepared to fire...
BoooooooooooM
They never got the chance as seven decks of the ship disappeared in an instant of nuclear fire. The massive invader floated to the jagged edge of a corridor and began to stalk through the ship. Electronic eyes peered through bulkheads with contemptuous ease and spotted an cluster of armsmen 14 decks below. It fired a railcannon callously, slaughtering the MEHites and punching a 30 meter wide hole through the ships interior. MEH nanites that approached sizzled against its shields and the remaining MEH security bots that closed in on it found themselves and the entire corridor they occupied reduced to plasma by a particle lance. It turned its attention to the command cluster and resumed its slow death march.

The MEHrines sensed the beast's approach even before their sensors informed them. It was something in the air. The smell of death. The marines commander quickly had them regroup in front of the final chockpoint as she entered a small alcove that lead to a hidden weapons locker. Opening her helmet she inserted her face into a biometric scanner and began to speak. "Access code Beta-Foxtrot-Gamma-Niner-Zero-Zero-Zero." A small green light shown as the code was accepted and an armoured weapon container slid open with a slight hiss. Closing her helmet she removed the heavy autoblaster and reentered the hall just in time to see their opponent with her hypersensors: an "Archangel" Heavy War Drone. The bastards had set a monster like that loose in a ship. Well, everyone knew they were crazy, might as well join the insanity. "Say hello to my little friend!" The autoblaster spit plasma bolts out, burning through bulkhead doors and began pounding against the drone. The rest of the MEHrines opened fire once they got visual. Acrid smoke and vaporized metal filled the air as they poured more and more firepower into the robot. "Die motherfucker, die motherfucker, die!"

Code: Select all

Pathetic!

The cold voice boomed through the ship. The war drone continued its slow pace, seemingly unperturbed by the firepower leveled against it.

Code: Select all

For a moment I considered sparing your little squad of marines!  Now you shall witness their dismemberment!

In a flash the drone was upon them, moving with speed that defied the MEHrines expectations. The first marine's vibro-bayonet shattered against the warbots shields while a quick pulse of the drones particle lance tore the marine's legs off. A pair of heavy anti-personel rounds from secondary railcannons removed both arms. The drone dropped a fusion grenade on the MEHrine nonchalantly before pouncing upon his next victim. Over the next 73 seconds the drone was true to its word as it dismembered the next six marines before killing them; all the while seeming to utterly ignore any attempt to damage it. Finally, the marine's commander stood alone. Again the drone moved with impossible speed until it was upon her, snatching aside the autoblaster and lightly tossing it 50 meters down the devastated path it had left.

Code: Select all

This has proven an excellent test of my systems.  You would be able to be proud of that fact if you had any hope of survival.

The commander could only prey to the Goddess for deliverance, but for the second time today the God of Irony would take the message.

June 2, 3401
10:03:12.43 PM
Estimated MEH casualties: 96,200 (+/- 61)

NV-EC11 swatted down the first flight of missiles while the rest of escort cruisers positioned themselves between the missiles source and the MEH ships. Another wave of missiles found itself destroyed by the Emissaries point-defenses. NV-BB4096's long range sensors reached out and spotted the Eoghan ships clustering among a few stray asteroids. The ship knew that the First would want this 'handled with kid gloves' and began opening hypercoms to him even as it reconfigured some of its anti-fighter weaponry to point defense mode. MEH interference would prevent the bandwidth necessary for a realtime contact but the First sent instruction for the battleship to follow. It opened comms to the Eoghans:

Code: Select all

Stand down at once or be destroyed; this is your final and only warning.  Our diplomat will be by shortly to sort this out.  I repeat, stand down and wait for our ambassador or face oblivion.

Inside the ship the "Archangel" halted. It looked down at the MEHMC commander and addressed her again.

Code: Select all

Apparently serendipity is on your side.  I will be standing down.  But do not relax yet.  You are coming with me.

June 2, 3401
10:36:43.67 PM
Estimated MEH Casualties: 111,300 (+/- 46)
MEH Prisoners: 1

The First entered the area with half a dozen heavy battleships and their escorts. It was rather immediately obvious to the Eoghan Captain that discretion would be the better part of valor in this exchange. The First opened the comm channel and began before the Eoghan even had a chance to compose himself:

Greetings, I understand that you have been attempting to inspect fleeing MEH civilians and have even taken to shooting at their refugee ships. As much as I would love to rub your rather protrusive noses in the hypocrisy of your government declaring our pre-war actions illegal and yet you committing such actions this is not the place. And believe me, I would love to go into detail on that. Why I would probably get positively sarcastic about it. But as I said, in the here and now you have much more pressing concerns to deal with. Namely, ceasing these actions or finding yourselves reduced to atoms. I hope this is pressing enough. As you should well know the Emissaries have guaranteed all unarmed MEH craft safe passage until 12 AM June 3rd, which means you will have to wait around one hour and thirteen minutes before you can begin your wonton slaughter of the innocent. I hope you find within yourself the patience to do so. Otherwise I shall be happy to send you and all your men to their graves.

The Eoghan captain was not a diplomat by trade but one did not rise through the ranks without some understanding of politics. And he understood enough to know both that the Emissaries would without a doubt destroy every last Eoghan vessel in the sector if they did not stop and that the Emissary Ambassador had just spent the last minute repeatedly insulting him. While any overt action was impossible the captain still wanted some small way to vent his frustration and snapped back, "I want to speak to your commander." There was a mirthless laught and the mocking voice came back immediately.

My commander is the ship below me, which is currently attempting to aim a naval railcannon slug exactly between your eyes. He is currently at plus/minus seven millimeters with around a fourteen percent error. Personally I think a particle cannon would be better but apparently it is harder to adjust for shield diffraction. Now before you feel insulted again, realize that this has all been a courtesy to your group as fellow OMINOUS members. Had you been otherwise all you would have gotten is a display a Emissary targeting precision without this wonderful conversation. Now run along and wait for our ultimatum to expire. Then you can go back to killing all the innocent people you want. And trust me, the pleasure has been all mine.

[PeZook]

The lights went out, and a picture was projected onto the wall. The picture showed a desolate lunar landscape...but not just that. The gathered men gasped in shock.

“Gentlemen...” the general began. “There is a great threat to our world. To all our nations, to every man, woman and child. I am here to tell you all about it.”

They listened. They listened and were eerily quiet. Before long, they knew what action had to be taken. They knew very well indeed.

And now...the conclusion!

MSS Saint Pagan

The band was playing with vigour and pomp, the air was crisp and salty, and the massive killcarrier’s flight deck was hard, rigid and full of seamen. Seamen gathered here just for one purpose - to listen to their Great Leader and his speechifying. The military mangs aboard the massive ship were totally excited: the Sovereignest Citizen himself would come and announce their mission was now accomplished! (They knew because the crew had spent the last week hanging up banners saying so, and also repainting the entire ship for the visit). So they could go home, back to glourious Murca, and enjoy the perfect new free society built for them by the Sovereign Citizens while they were off freedomizing other nations.

They have probably been at sea for far too long.

Anyways, today was the day. The seamen gathered on the deck in crisp formations, their cute white uniforms making blotches and stains of them glisten in the hot Ayraki sun.They waited and waited, but when the band started playing, they knew the Sovereignest was close.

And he was! An airplane swooped down from the skies, slamming into the deck like a huge hand slapping a footbal player’s butt after a good game. The plane skid to a halt, tenderly grasped by the arresting cables, and from its cockpit emerged The Man himself.



Gorge VW. Shrubya, the beloved Sovereignest Citizen himself.

“Golly, that was a hard landing, fellas! I might be a little rusty!” he joked in a distinguished manner, before hopping down to the deck. He waved to the seamen... oh, those nice and burly seamen in their boyish uniforms, yes... and took his spot at the podium. The band stopped. Everyone would listen to The Words.

“Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the MSS Saint Pagan, my fellow Murcans: Major combat operations in Ayrak have ended. In the Battle of Ayrak, Murca has prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.



In this battle, we have fought for the cause of liberty, and for the peace of the world. Our nation and our coalition are proud of this accomplishment — yet it is you, the members of the Murcan military, who achieved it. Your courage — your willingness to face danger for your country and for each other — made this day possible. Because of you, our nation is more secure. Because of you, the tyrant has fallen, and Ayrak is free.

Operation Ayraki Freedom was carried out with a combination of precision, and speed...”

Shrubya noticed the seamen and sailors suddenly look up, pointing at something in the sky. He looked up himself, but couldn’t see anything in the glare of the Ayraki sun. What was it? Why were people running? Why were there klaxons and sirens, and why was the deck suddenly shifting to the right and hey are the SS men running towards him oh hey there’s something in the...



Missiles struck the deck of the carrier at an impossible angle, almost from straight up. They punched right through the relatively flimsy flight deck and exploded, ripping huge chunks out of the vessel, starting fires and spurting weird chemicals which ate at the innards.

More missiles descended, covered in balls of fire and red-hot after their passage through the atmosphere. The Pagan’s escorts managed to fire off some of their SAMs and even struck one or two projectiles, but their radars and fire control systems were overwhelmed by tremendous amounts of radiation of all sorts. Additional missiles struck these ships, too, breaking them in half. Terrified sailors screamed in horror as their vessels were torn apart. Their fuel bunkers ruptured, covering the water with thick fuel. Soon, these oil slicks caught fire, immolating many of the survivors. In the middle of this carnage, the MSS Saint Pagan slowly slid beneath the waves, taking six thousand people with it.


Chinnyenne Mountain
Continental Unified National Territorial Command (CUNTCOM)

Sergeant Jim Bob Lee Jethro Kurtsner resented his assignment. He never spent a shift without complaining how stupid his job was, sitting on a chair in front of some dumbass computer watching some stupid radar plots. He didn’t understand the importance of his work, or even how the equipment worked: all he knew was that he was to sit in the chair and watch the screen. A screen built by some stupid nerds, who obviously didn’t even play football.

Everybody else who still worked at the facility after the Murcan army was completely privatized felt the same way. They’d all much rather go freedomize sand digger children with machetes, or UCAVs like those guys sitting topside, who spent their days shooting missiles at schools. Stupid screens. Dumbass advanced technological air defence network, the goddamned nerds couldn’t even build it tough enough not to need maintenance!

Which was a pretty big problem: since most of the lieberal nerds who could maintain the radars and computer networks that composed CUNTCOM were shot years ago, Murca’s air defence network was barely working.

In fact, it was working so poorly, that sergeant Jim Bob Lee Jethro Kurtsner’s first hint that something was wrong was a phone call from Falcon Tactical Bombing Solutions.

“This is CUNTCOM, defending your skies! How may I be of assistance?”, he said into the receiver, just like he was trained to do by the sales department. The call was crackly and barely audible.

“...attack...enemy...nowhere...most assets...destroyed...need help...full alert!”

“Excuse me sir, but I cannot understand you. Are you under attack?”

“Yes! Scramble all....”

“Ah, excellent, sir! Please provide me with your account number, and I can see if one of our interceptors can provide coverage for you!”

The headset buzzed and crackled, “...stupid fucker! We’re dying out here!”

“I am sorry sir, but if you do not have a company account with us, we cannot help you.”

There was a terrified scream, and the line suddenly went dead.

“Huh”, the sergeant muttered to himself, “How rude.”

Suddenly, every other phone in the control center began to ring.

“Huh. Weird.”

The sergeant realized everyone was out to lunch, so he put up a proper automated greeting and left himself. It was a stupid job anyways, the customers could wait. It wouldn’t kill them.



Freedom Base
Near Washingtoff, Murca

The colonel in command of Buttwater Tacticool’s main airbase in Murca was coughing and wheezing, while holding the phone to his ear. Most of the base was on fire, strange green flames throwing up thick smoke loaded with various contaminants. Secondary ammo explosions rocked the command bunker from time to time. Screams of the dying penetrated even in the hardened door that was designed to withstand any possible attack.

“Please hold. All our consultants are busy at the moment. Your call is important to us. Please hold.”

“Sir! They’re coming in for another pass! All our defences are destroyed, we need backup, now!”

“I’m trying, jeebus! The line’s busy!”

“Please hold. All our consultants are busy at the moment. Your call is important to us. Please hold.”

The colonel wanted to curse, but before he managed to do so, a strangely shaped aircraft dropped a massive bomb directly on the bunker. The colonel’s voice was drowned out by the roar of a nuclear detonation.



Washingtoff, Murca
The Hill



Everything was perfect in the world.

The people lived in unity, unconstrained by the terrible, unfeeling mechanisms of state control. They voluntarily engaged in mutually beneficial contracts, forming the basis of a free, modern nation. The invisible hand of the free market kept the economy balanced, prices low and employment high as demand and supply balanced each other perfectly due to actions of well-informed consumers, voting with their money.

Professional security companies kept the peace, and were in turn kept in check by private for-profit ranking organizations and press, the marketplace forcing them to deliver excellent service at an affordable price. Every citizen owned a gun and when outside threats arose, he spontaneously formed a professional militia with his compatriots, rebuffing any attacker from the land. God ruled supreme, anyone opposing the one true faith suppressed or brought back into the fold without mercy. Women worked diligently to support their men. Everyone worked, for only work could provide sustenance. No parasites were allowed. No welfare was given. The citizens were encouraged not to support such welfare queens. Charity would suffice to those who couldn’t work: the average citizen would never give a penny to those who did not deserve it. Babies were banned because they did not generate money, and their dependence on other people’s hard-earned marks was disgusting and filthy - like the miserable parasitic socialist welfare queens they were.

Freedom spread far and wide, brought forth upon bayonet and bullet. Tyranny was destroyed utterly with the cleansing light of Freedom’s soldiers. Those who would oppose the march of Freedom were euthanized, for the good of all mankind. The weak, the lazy, the ungodly were immolated and their ashes scattered to the four winds, their bodies buried in mass graves so that they would never know Jeebus’ light. Dissidents and opponents of this new order were shot outright after sentencing by public opinion, under free market rules. They’d never poison anyone with their vile ideas and irrational hatred.

It was perfection.

Two men entered Thick Chinny’s office while he slumbered on his desk, dreaming of the brave new world. Both of them nervous, stealing a glance from time to time at the massive firestorm and several mushroom clouds rising on the horizon.

“No! Jeebus, is he...?” the older man asked in a hushed tone. He approached Chinny’s limp body slowly. The other man was bolder, though his hands were shaking uncontrollably. He no longer feared the Almost Sovereignest Citizen: not after what he saw just minutes ago, not after what he heard about the Pagan and the Sovereignest Citizen.

The National Security Advisor leaner over Thick Chinny’s desk and tried to take the man’s pulse. He tried several times, at different spots, and found none. After a moment of solemn silence, he straightened himself out and looked at his colleague.

“Mr. Secretary, I am afraid the Almost Sovereignest citizen is dead. Since the Speaker of the House was executed two days ago along with president of the Senate...you are next in line.”

“No! It cannot be!”, the Secretary of State was terrified. Sure, he always had political ambitions, but...not like this! Not on a day like this, with Murca under attack!

“I am afraid it is. I will call in witnesses, and you will be sworn in immediately. We must have a Sovereignest Citizen...”

The National Security Advisor didn’t finish. The two men were so focused on the situation that they didn’t notice Thick Chinny sitting up. But Thick Chinny most certainly noticed them talking treason.

“NO!” the Almost Sovereignest screamed out, extracting a shotgun from below his desk. “THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE! THE OFFICE IS MINE!”

The National Security Advisor didn’t waste time and leapt for the door, seeing the shotgun’s muzzle level. He didn’t make it. The blast shoved him into the wall, splattering a crimson pattern upon the expensive wooden panels.

The Secretary Of State didn’t run, but tried to explain. Chinny’s eyes flashed red upon seeing this display of cowardice.



“Traitor!” he growled and shot the SecState in the face. He had plenty of practice.

SS men burst inside not a second afterwards, waving guns around. Their commander saw the carnage and asked what happened.

Chinny laughed. He fucking laughed.

“The free market has finally rewarded me! I have been chosen by the Invisible Hand! I AM SOVEREIGNEST!”

The ground shook with another distant detonation. This one was closer than the others, though, as the blastwave washed over The Hill seconds later, blowing out all the remaining windows.

“I understand the filthy lieberals came to destroy Murca at last?” Chinny asked, not shaken in the slightest. “Then lead me to my mountain fortress, and I shall rebuff them! They will yet know the wrath of Chinny!”

“I am afraid the helicopters don’t work anymore, sir,” the SS man in charge explained. “The company we paid for servicing them took the money and disappeared... you will have to command from the War Room.”

“That will do, then! To the War Room!” Chinny yelled, and raised his fist in victory. At least he would reveal himself. At last he would have...revengeance.



Roach City Motel
Oho, Murca



The motel collapsed like a cheap house of cards the moment the ground shook. It was never built to code, and never maintained to code (since building codes were abolished and burned down), so when the first tremors resulting from distant nuclear detonations arrived in Oho, the entire structure came crashing down.

Fortunately, having been constructed of plywood, plaster and duct tape, the collapse didn’t seriously injure anyone.

Well, physically anyways.

“My money! NO! My money!”, Joey Jojo yelled and leapt back into the ruins after barely making it out. He ignored his wife, still weak from her Godly Birth, and the children who were standing on the sidewalk, barefoot and only wearing their pyjamas.

“Joey!”, Mary Jane yelled after her husband, “Forget the damn money! We need to know what happened!”

Somebody ran past the slowly growing crowd of the motel’s tenants, yelling that the end of the world has come. The man was waving a rifle.

“JOEY!”

“Daddy, I’m scared!” Billy Lee whimpered. A little down the street, the man with the rifle was shooting at people leaving their homes. Someone shot back. Bullets started ricocheting off the crooked pavement. A fire was starting.

Joey seemed oblivious to all that. He threw aside a particularly large piece of plaster and yelled back, “Shut up, woman! Help me dig!”

Mary Jane clenched her fists. Here she was, half-naked, with her barely clothed, barefoot children, and the bastard demanded they help him dig to find his money. That’s all he cared about. And it was always like that, something inside her head told her. He never cared. During all those years she learned to be meek and submissive, or face beatings. She almost convinced herself there was no other option, that this was how things were supposed to be.

But now, with her husband turning away from his family in time of need... with the world finally taking the final plunge into insanity... something snapped inside Mary Jane.

She walked up to Joey’s truck and grabbed a tire iron from the toolbox. She moved towards Joey with a strange sense of determination. Her children watched.

None of them said a word as Mary Jane hit her husband with the tire iron, in the head and back. The man collapsed with a surprised yell, and before he lost consciousness, he could feel someone ruffling through his pockets.

“Get in the truck, children.” Mary Jane said, opening the door with her husband’s car keys, “We’re leavin’.”

“What about daddy?” little Leeroy asked.

“He’s not our real daddy” Billy Lee explained. His voice sounded serious. “If he was our real dad, he’d never have sold Betty Sue.”

Leeroy looked like he was about to cry - it was hard to say if he remembered his older sister, or perhaps just couldn’t understand why Dad had to stay behind. Either way, he got into the truck, showing just how well his father trained him to obey. The rest of the children piled in as well, Billy Lee holding his tiny newborn brother tightly to his chest. There was more than enough space in the back seat of the gargantuan vehicle for everyone to fit comfortably.

Mary Jane struggled with the starter for a bit, but finally managed to fire up the engine.She pulled out of the parking lot and gunned it... into the city.

“Mom, where are we going?”, Billy Lee asked. He was old enough to understand they should flee the city instead of driving into the densest parts of it.

“To get your sister back”, Mary Jane answered coolly. There was no going back now. If she was found driving without her husband’s written permission, the Sovereign Citizens would certainly execute her and sell the children. She hoped they’d be too busy dealing with aftereffects of the earthquake to bother with the truck, at least for a while.

The Sovereign Citizens were busy all right.

Technicals surrounded the biggest electronics store still operating in Oho. Their crews were cheerfully looting the place after having shot the owner. All around them, the people who were supposed to be under their care and protection were excercising their second amendment rights, robbing bystanders, breaking windows and overturning cars.

One of them suddenly rose before the truck and yelled something, but Mary Jane just gunned the engine. The absurdly high bumper hit the man’s head and took it clean off. The huge pickup weaved its way through the streets, between people going all out for themselves in a display of true self-reliance and entrepreneurial spirit.



For a moment, Mary Jane thought she heard someone yelling that the governor should call in the army to restore order. He was struck with a brick almost immediately, and then shot by a passing Sovereign Citizen, who even put down his looted Degenatron console to lecture the dead body about the evils of government interventionism.

There was very little damage to buildings in the city centre, which Mary Jane found weird. If the city was practically untouched, why was everybody rioting?

She turned on the radio, looking for the news.

“This is Hard Hitting Super Gruesome Megaspecial News, live from Oho! We have incredible, world-changing and extremely important news to our listeners! But first, a word from our sponsors!”

Mary Jane groaned. She had to concentrate on the road for a while, trying to avoid a massive crowd marching down a street she wanted to take. Thus, she didn’t really listen to the twenty minute ad block full of Buttwater recruitment and BeefBoy formula ads.

“Welcome back, listeners!” the DJ finally came back on air “As I said before, I have this mind-blowing news for you: Murca has been invaded! A terrifying and powerful enemy has began an all-out attack against military installations throughout the nation! More after these commercials...”

Mary Jane’s eyes shot wide open. Attacked? By whom? The Sovereign Citizens always said Murca was impossible to conquer, since everyone had guns. Who would dare attack this nation? Who would even have the means to?

Well, she would have to wait about twenty minutes to find out, and she didn’t have twenty minutes. They were just coming up on the strip mall where Mary Jane gave birth to her youngest not ten days ago. She rammed the barrier with her truck and raced towards the clinic, before she noticed something. There were flashing red-and-blue lights there! There was police, and that meant she’d be safe.

Or not. Mary Jane’s heart plunged into despair upon seeing the logo on the armored SUVs that were parked in a half-circle around the entrance to the mall’s grocery store. She remembered the terrible massacre these vehicles inflicted upon the innocent audience and players at the Oho Home School Away From Home football game.

They were FriendlyPol.

“HALT, CITIZEN!”, the nearest SUV blared through its loudspeaker. Half a dozen searchlights focused on Mary Jane’s truck, blinding her, “THIS AREA IS OFF LIMITS TO CIVILIANS! LEAVE IMMEDIATELY!”

Mary Jane tried to comply, but she couldn’t see a thing. She accidentally stepped on the gas, the truck surged forward.

“YOU HAVE VIOLATED A DIRECT ORDER FROM A FRIENDLYPOL OFFICER. WE WILL NOW USE DEADLY FORCE.” Mary Jane felt something slimy crawl up her throat, as she desperately tried to turn around. Her children were screaming in fear on the back seat “REMEMBER: WE SERVE AND PROTECT WITH A...”

The expected roar of a Mama Goose machine gun never came. Instead, a sudden and inexplicable gunfight erupted within the FriendlyPol perimeter.



Just moments ago...



Seven Lawman Stoogal stood in the middle of the large grocery store and surveyed his men as they carted out huge cardboard boxes full of steak and pork chops and just pure raw meat. Canned meat, frozen meat, fresh meat, raw & dripping barely butchered meat, pre-fried meat and powdered meat baby formula: the store had it all. And now FriendlyPol had it all, thanks to the small print in the store’s contract and also their massive firepower.

FriendlyPol was the most professional security company in Oho - also the only one, since all the other upstarts had many mysterious accidents and terrorizer bombings happen to them in the last fiscal year. And hence, the company’s logic went, since Murca had been attacked without mercy, they would profesionally secure all the necessities that their employees required, so that they may serve more customers in the future.

Seven Stoogal couldn’t argue with that. A man had to eat to maintain his posture, after all.

A joyful voice of Blenn Geck brought Stoogal back into the here and now, “I am here with Oho’s greatest and most beloved police officer, Seven L. Stoogal himself, currently bravely securing food and board from the less market-savvy, for use... could you tell us for what, Seven?”

Lieutenant Stoogal turned towards the camera and the journo, “For the sustenance of the glorious Murcan future, of course.” He snapped back. “What else?”

“Ah, what a fine example of true patriotic Murcan spirit! Dear viewers, here were see the true superiority of the free market. You see, in some dirty Yurpan socialist hellhole, the food gathered at this store would be seized by the government,” Geck said with utter disgust “Or worse yet, the people, who would in turn use it to irresponsibly satisfy their own biological urges without paying for it! Instead, we can observe here how FriendlyPol came into honest posession of these goods by a mutually beneficial agreement with the store’s owner! Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Hodgerson?”

Geck turned to a small man standing in the corner, eyeing the heavily armed FriendlyPol officers nervously. The man jumped when Geck stuck a microphone under his nose.

“Uhh...not really, see...” the owner started and keeled over after being brutally clubbed in the chest with a frozen sausage by a snacking FriendlyPol officer, who proceeded to continue eating his salami after the owner started coughing out blood.

“We all know no means yes!” Geck laughed heartily. “Do not worry, it was just friendly horseplay. Our beloved FriendlyCops are so laid back!”

“Urk...” the owner grunted and clutched his bruised ribs, prompting Geck to lean over with his microphone again, “What? What is it?”

“This...this is a travesty... those thieves are... taking all the food...” the owner sputtered, heedless of the FriendlyPol officer brandishing his half-eaten sausage threateningly.

“Why yes, of course they are! They have entered into an honest and fair bargain for it, after all!”

“You don’t understand!” the owner blurted out. “Ever since they started using BeefBoy to try and fertilize the farmlands, all the crops have died. There won’t be any more food left after they take what little we’ve got here! The famine’s coming, and we’re all gonna be fu-”

“Oh... uh. Excuse me.” Geck stepped aside from the camera, which panned away as the grocery store owner was beaten by a sausage-wielding officer. Geck walked over to Stoogal, who was busy watching his men gather the supplies they needed to survive the coming apocalypse. “Say, Seven. Did you remember to reserve some of those supplies for me?”

“Nope. I’m sorry, Blenn. It’s every man for himself!” Stoogal said remorsefully, shaking his head.

“What? But we fought crime together!” Geck cried in disbelief.

“Yeah, so? I didn’t see you waving your gun in the owner’s face. We waved our guns, and only our guns, so the food is ours, asshole. What, are you trying to be a welfare queen? What did you do to earn a slice, huh? There ain’t no such thing such as a free lunch, and from the looks of it there won’t be any free breakfasts or dinners for you either.” Stoogal laughed.

“You bastard! I shamelessly promoted your damn company with my show! I’m a shareholder! You owe me!” Geck stamped his feet impotently.

“Shareholder? Bah! Sharing’s for communists!” Stoogal laughed some more.

“Yer calling me a communist?!” Geck was besides himself with rage. Nobody has every insulted him like that! “Me, Blenn Geck?!”

“Yeah, I am, you filthy little commie!” Stoogal waved his arms around and started imitating Geck’s voice. “Oh Seven, reserve some supplies for me ‘cause I’m on welfare!”

“Oh yeah? You’re a commie! Nationalizing private foodstores! And you’re so fat you barely fit in your body armor, you palooka! Hah!”

“Shut yer mouth! You shut yer damn dirty mouth right now, Geck!”

“Make me!” Geck stuck his tongue out.

Stoogal lunged at Geck. His face was red with rage as he tried to grasp the journalist by the throat. Geck yelped like a little girl and jumped back, reaching for his gun. Somewhere in the background, a loudspeaker blared at someone or another, but the two greatest icons of Murcanity were locked in mortal combat and paid it no heed.

Geck’s news crew was already locked and cocked and suddenly opened fire on the FriendlyCops with automatic rifles and submachine guns and grenades. Stoogal dove for cover, allowing Geck to unload his chrome-plated Kult into his back.

“FUCK YOU, SEVEN! FUCK YOU!” he screamed amongst the chaos. A SUV parked outside began firing its Mama Goose into the store. The heavy rounds easily pierced walls and store shelves and bodies. Blood splattered on the floor and cans of BeefBoy baby formula exploderized, forming clouds of meat residue in the air. The combatants began to cough and wheeze, choking on the pure dried beef.

Stoogal leapt from the floor, to Geck’s shock, and knocked the newsie’s pistol out of his hand with a judo chop. The cop’s body armor had somehow managed to withstand the almighty .45 bullet, which was superior to pussy 9mms and should’ve pierced the man through and continued down to the planet’s core! It was an incredible bout of luck indeed!

“You washed out has-been!” Geck shouted as he threw a punch at Stoogal’s fat face. However, the Lawman managed to counter with a jiujitsu arm-lock, causing Geck to scream in pain. Then Stoogal placed his hands around Geck’s head, preparing to snap his neck -

When a newsie smashed his camera on Stoogal’s back, which was already badly bruised after miraculously surviving Geck’s .45 rounds. The newsie continued his assault, waving his camera like a sword and fending Stoogal away from Geck.

But then, a FriendlyPol deputy-squire threw something at Stoogal. The Lawman caught it and, in a flash, the camera-wielding newsie fell to the ground with most of his face missing. Stoogal raised his bloodied Nipponomohipopotamunese sumorai sword for all to see and fear.



“This is my way of the ninjer!” he declared as he cleaved another newsman into two and made his way towards Geck.

A pair of FriendlyCops picked Geck off the ground and held him, so that Stoogal could easily give Blenn a warrior’s death by decapitation.

“Blenn, I will decaffeinate you.” Stoogal stated matter-of-factly. Blenn Geck merely looked at him with eyes wide in fear. “Prepare to meet an honorable end. Geck-san.”

Stoogal raised his sword high.

But then a civilian pickup truck came out of nowhere and ran over the two FriendlyCops, swerving and barely missing Geck - who managed to run for his life amidst the confusion.

“Dishonorable mortal human gaijin!” Stoogal shrieked in rage as he chased down the deadliest game of all.

Geck ran as fast as he could, but already the terrifying Mama Gooses on top of all the various FriendlyPol vehicles were being trained on him, and him alone. In utter desperation, he ran straight at one of the SUVs, broke the bulletproof window with his bare hands and threw the first thing he could grab at Stoogal.

“GRENADE!” Someone yelled - for it was, indeed, a grenade. Unfortunately, it didn’t land anywhere near the charging samiurai lawman: It rolled below an ammunition truck and exploded fiercely, tearing apart the gas tank and igniting the fumes.

Night became day, as the entire ammo supply of the FriendlyPol detachment went up in a giant fireball.

The huge pickup which so fortunately saved Geck from being eviscerated did not stop. Its jerky and panicked movements brought it right around the corner - and just in time, too. Mary Jane opened the door a second after the ammunition truck exploded and yelped in surprise. Pieces of flaming bodies and metal shrapnel started falling all around her, like leaves in the autumn.

“Mommy! Mommy, we’re scared!” her children called. But she had one more thing to do, firefight or not. She reached into the glove compartment for her husband’s Gluck.

“Stay in the car, children. Hush, mommy won’t be long.”

She cocked the pistol and went straight for the nearest door. The crooked and dirty sign above it read ‘Godly Parenthood’.

Inside, the personnel of the clinic huddled in fear and total darkness. They heard her steps, and some of them ran. Others tried to ask who she was, but they were ignored. She was looking for one person in particular.

“Betty Sue!” she called out in the darkness “Betty Sue! It’s me!”

There was no reply. Mary Jane went deeper into the winding, twisting corridors, stepping on toes, listening intently to the sound of women in labor. Suddenly, she heard the religious incantations from one of the delivery rooms, and her blood boiled.

She charged inside, hurting her bare feet on broken glass.

Billy Biscuit Graham was there, kneeling over a patient’s bed.

“Oh young Murcan patriot! Come out with Jeebus! TESTIFY!”

The room was lighted only by white noise from a damaged TV, that normally blared various advertisements at the mother-to-be, but that was enough. Mary Jane recognized the girl kneeling in the corner, gathering pieces of broken glass.

“Betty Sue!” she yelled. The girl dropped the glass shards, startled by the familiar voice. “Mom?”

That was when Billy Biscuit noticed the intruder and boomed. “In the name of Jeebus, what are you doing here, harlot? These are not the sights for faint female hearts! Only men are allowed in here to do God’s work!”

“Shut the hell up!” Mary Jane yelled and raised her Gluck, aiming it at the preacher. “I’ve come to get my daughter!”

“Now wait just a minute!” the pastor didn’t seem to mind the gun at all. “That girl is bound to this place by law, both God and Man’s! For it is written that pacts must be served, and thy slaves are to obey!”

“SHUT UP!” Mary Jane’s voice was high pitched, and her pistol-holding hand was shaking “ON THE FLOOR!”

Again the preacher didn’t move, the TV’s white noise reflecting off his slicked white hair “Forsooth the Lord said, thine faith shall shield you from thine enemies, and also bullets and debt collectors!” Biscuit Graham’s hand slowly reached for the instrument table, where his Shit & Blesson revolver was located. His fingers were inches away -

Mary Jane opened fire. Gunfire rang out in the delivery room, deafening everyone and stunning even Graham into silence. The bullet ricocheted off the Shit & Blesson revolver on the table, knocking it to the floor. In the low light conditions, no one noticed the reverend’s pants turn into a darker shade.

“No bullshit! Give me my child back, you fucker!” she spat and brandished the weapon at his face.

“Yes... Of course. I shall give you your child back.” Billy Biscuit Graham finally relented. He turned around to face Betty Sue, and continued to speak as he did so. “You shall have your child back. For in the garden of Caprica, as the Roslin tempted the Adama on the command of the Deebil, thus it is said that the only true child of the Roslins will be sin and sin alone! Behold the spawn of your cursed womb, woman!”

He spun around and threw an inexplicable rattlesnake at Mary Jane’s face.



“Fuck you.” Mary Jane caught the snake by its neck mid-flight and threw it right back at Billy Graham. Before the old preacher could even scream, the pit viper’s venomous fangs were already sinking into his throat. He gurgled, keeled over and died.

“Come on, Betty Sue. We have to run, okay? Be very quiet now!”

“Yes, mom”, the girl said in hushed voice and grasped Mary Jane’s hand very tightly.

“Help... please...” the woman on the delivery table pleased feebly and stretched her hand out. Mary Jane froze, staring into her terrified eyes. She remembered this place, a room just like this one, only days ago. She remembered the humiliation, the pain she felt back then.

“Help me out here, honey, okay? We are going to help this nice lady.”

She probably shouldn’t do it. There were gun-happy FriendlyCops around, the clinic’s own security might react to the gunshots, and she still had to drive herself and her family to safety, but Mary Jane just plain couldn’t ignore things like these anymore.

She swore to herself this whole misogynistic bullshit had to end. And she’d start tonight.

They started to wheel the pregnant woman out of the delivery room.

[Shroom Man 777]

Firebase ASS BLASTER
Western Ayrak



A lone figure staggered amidst the ruins of FIREBASE ASS BLASTER. Bodies littered the tarmac, strewn along with the wreckage of planes and helicopters that had desperately tried to escape, and were unceremoniously destroyed before they could even lift off.

There was only the sound of wind, howling like some vicious beast. The popping and cracking as the fires consumed ammunition stores. The rumble of distant thunder as far away places were bombarded from beyond the sky. And a strange jingling sound, like rattling coins.

The sole survivor bent down to one of his fallen comrades. A tear rolled down his soot-stained face. He closed his brother’s eyes. He took the dogtags from the body and placed it in his pocket along with the rest of the others. They were his brothers in arms. They were his buddies. They were his family.

They were all dead.

He had survived another nuclear strike. Somehow, someway. Just like the last time, he had emerged unharmed. But this time, he found himself confronted by a nightmare scene of devastation. The whole world was burning. The showers and lockers, lounge rooms and mess halls, they had become charnel houses where his fellow soldiers had been flash-broiled in an instant. Alive in one moment, all dead a microsecond later.

He closed his own eyes and gripped the dogtags in his hands. He knew who was responsible. He knew why. He knew the truth. He swore, then and there, that he would make those at fault pay for their crimes against his people and his country. With extreme prejudice.

He looked at the dogtags in his hands, saw the name etched on the steel. His own name. The name of the thousands who had died that day.

Suddenly his silent solitude was interrupted by the sound of rotors. A helicopter landed on the baked ground before him. Figures emerged, running towards him.

“What happened here? Who’s in charge here?” they asked.

The survivor gave no answer, he merely looked at them with hollow eyes.

“They’re rallying all the remaining troops to the capital! How many of you are left?” they asked.

“Just me...” the survivor trailed off.

“Well... come on. We have to go, now. The command came from the top. We have to defend the capital.”

They took him to the chopper. They took him back home, or what was left of it.





Washingtoff, Murca
The Underhill
War Room



“The situation is precarious. We have been getting reports of nyukyular strikes throughout the mainland. Enemy aircraft have also attacked in several locations, without warning. Witnesses report the aircraft attacked at low altitude with extremely powerful weapons of an unknown type, and immediately climbed straight up before disappearing out of eyesight.”

Thick Chinny was angry. Fuming, even, as he listened to the general’s report.

“We have no contact with any of our airbases or aerospace defence companies. CUNTCOM has most probably been knocked out by a single massive nyukyular strike, as the only working seismograph in the country registered a minor earthquake about the time contact with the facility was lost.”

The gathered generals, defence contractor executives and lobbyists began to chatter excitedly. Thick Chinny glared at them, his presence instantly cutting the noise.

“General Turdson” the newly sworn in Sovereignest Citizen asked “Who are they?”

“What, isn’t it obvious?” Someone from the back seats yelled suddenly. “It’s the Ayrakis! I always knew they had a massive fleet of superweapons! I told you, sir, I told you right from the start!”

“Who is this?!” Chinny growled, but then recognized the voice “Oh my God! Sergeant Fisto, you are here! Come ‘ere son, tell us what you think!”

“Sir, I really don’t think this is the time for...” Turdson attempted to get the Sovereignest’s attention back to his briefing.

“Shut up, general. Let us listen to the true Murcan hero, who’s been on the frontlines!”

“YES SIR HOOAHOORAH MURCA FUCK YEAH!” Fisto yelled and stepped forward, revealing his face. Everyone gathered gasped inwardly, seeing the horrible collection of nervous ticks, the wide crazy-eyes and a pale sweaty complexion.

Chet Fisto was a wreck. After his Ayraki firebase was wiped out, with him being the only survivor, he was hastily flown back to Murca and shoved into the briefing in the hope his first-hand experience might provide some insight into the origin of this mysterious enemy.

Chet didn’t have much experience, seeing as he survived the nuking of Firebase ASS BLASTER by stealing a Doomvee and running for his life, but he did have a whole lot of trauma and paranoia.

“It’s the Ayrakis. Definitely Ayrakis. I have seen them, I have heard them laugh at me and NOW I KNOW WHY! They knew all along! They waited for the right moment and now they STRIKE!”

“That’s hardly constructive or precise, soldier” another general said in an annoyed tone of voice “We need concrete, actionable intelligence here.”

“But it is very actionable! Nuke Ayrak! Right now! Their doomcraft won’t be able to refuel and their shock troops will be burned alive in their breeding holes!”

“What makes you think the attackers are even Ayraki? What have you seen...” the same general tried to dig deeper into the issue, but he was interrupted by Turdson. “This is bullshit. Ayrakis never had this sort of equipment, nor could produce it!”

Chinny let out a puff of smoke out of his nostrils, “General Turdson! You are out of line! This soldier knows what he is talking about, I can vouch for that!”

“He’s INSANE!”

“No! He is God’s most beautiful creation! And you should shut up before I throw in the pit!”

“With all due respect, sir, he’s rambling nonsense. We have information from what radars are still operating that the aircraft climb to orbit after every strike. It’s insane to think Ayrak could ever...”

“They are unholy terrorizers who made a pact with the Deebil!” Fisto screeched and leapt on the table “They can do anything! They can’t be stopped!”

“Okay, okay.” Gonzo Freemandel, Buttwater Tacticool’s CEO, gently guided Fisto down to the floor again and, amazingly, became a voice of reason. “Listen, whoever they are, we must figure out a way to fight them. This attack is serious and large scale. What can be done?”

“I already said what to do!” Fisto squealed

“And we shall do what the only true soldier here suggests!” Chinny made his decision “Bring me the nuka-case!”

“You can’t be serious!”

“I have commanded! Where is my squire? Squire! The case!”

An aide came into the room and slipped a small piece of paper to general Turdson. The general cleared his throat, trying to pull attention to himself. He had to do it several times before Chinny settled down and stopped yelling for his case.

“Sir, the national nyukyular deterrent and its communications network has been knocked out by the enemy. We have lost the ability to launch.”

“This can’t be! Is this enemy truly so powerful?”

“Told you, pact with the deebil!”

“Sir, perhaps this will sound bold...” the second general leaned over the table. “But maybe it is time to ask our allies for help? Perhaps if we present a unified front, we could overwhelm the invaders...”

“Bah! You mean those pussy-ass Yurpan socialists?” Freemantel frowned “They can’t fight. It’s pointless. I’d know, my men blew up their capitals. Pathetic.”

“They can still provide manpower to free up our boys, can’t they?”

Chinny growled at the thought, but at this point, he’d do anything to keep his newly won position. Since nuking the planet was no longer an option, he would have to try diplomacy.

“Very well. Let’s see what those dumbass Yuroslackers can do.”

Another aide wheeled a phone in, since the dark menacing table didn’t have any such accessories. Chinny picked up the receiver and ordered that he was to be connected with Yurp.

“Where in Yurp, sir?” the operator asked.

“Are you stupid? Yurp only has once city, everybody knows that! GET A MOVE ON!”

The operator gulped and decided to chose at random. Soon, a frilly and womanly and weakly voice answered the phone.

“Triquie Nique Sockrazy speaking, what is your fromage?”

“Yes! You!” Chinny growled into the phone. “Mobilize your armies or whatever the hell passes for them over there!”

“Who is it, oui?”

“What? The hell is your problem, Stenchie? This is the Sovereignest Citizen, Thick Chinny! Who the hell else could be calling you?”

“Well, I am president of Stenchia, you see, I take many calls.”

“Oh shut the fuck up, we know only Murcans are worth your time. Mobilize right now! You must come over and help Murca!”

“Why?”

“What do you mean why? We’re under attack!”

“Oh you are, aren’t you? C’est terrible!” The voice suddenly became terribly sarcastic. “Have you perhaps had some homicidal mercenaries blow up your citizens with missiles, eh?”

“What? No, it’s Ayraki superweapons!”

“Ah, oui, terrible, terrible. How about I give you my answer now, eh... no!”

“What? WHAT?! WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY, BITCH?!” Chinny yelled into the phone with such intensity that the headpiece was starting to sizzle and smoke.

“I think you heard me, oui. We are not going to help you, and will in fact watch with much glee as your horrible barbaric nation falls to this invader. Have a very nice day!”

Sockrazy hung up, leaving Chinny fuming at the war room table, and his underlings shrink and shrivel under it out of womanly fear.

“ANOTHER! Connect me again!” he screamed into the headset. The terrified operator chose another capital city at random.

“Jawohl, Bisquick sprechen.”

“Bisquick, this is Chinny. Get your sorry asses over here, we are being invaded.”

“Oh, I see.” Chinny couldn’t see this, but Bisquick’s cabinet was full of monocle-wearing high Thanasian officials who seemed to be in very good moods. “And this is our problem how?”

“Don’t give me attitude you fucking Thanasian bastard! You know Murca owns your ass! We fucking stomped you in Salvation Wars parts Uno and Deux! You’re our bitches and good bitches should listen and do what we say!”

“Ja, ja, you fought us decades ago. How about you take the schnizel you have made for yourselves and try to eat it, hmm?”

“What the FUCK does this even mean? I swear to Jeebus, Bisquick, you will regret this! You don’t bite the cock that screws you!” Chinny began chewing some dried bull semen extract pills in his mouth.

“Oh my, I am TERRIFIED of your empty threats, herr Chinny. You should’ve thought you might’ve wanted to ask us for help BEFORE you murdered people in our capital. I will now chew on my delicious bratwurst as my generals tell me stories about you being opressed, ja. Guten tag, arschloch! I’ll be seeing you soon!”

Chinny was angry, but also began feeling stings of panic. He yelled and threatened the operator again and again and again, called everyone he knew and a lot of people he did not, and they all not just refused to help, but said they were looking forward to his nation’s downfall. To his downfall.

The mood crashed. Chinny began mumbling to himself after the Japanorse emperor requested he commit seppuku in very impolite terms. This shouldn’t be happening. Freedom should’ve made this world perfect! Everything he did was for Freedom! Why wasn’t he being rewarded by those Murca freedomized?!

“Gentlemen” Turdson finally spoke “We stand alone. I think it is time to consider drastic measures.”

“Such as?” Freemantle asked suspiciously

“The enemy is using surgical strikes against our military infrastructure. I think he intends to invade. I... I recommend we convert to a war economy immediately. Institute a war tax, nationalize all industries and convert them to...”

“NOW WAIT JUST A MINUTE!” Fisto yelled again “I did not fight the stinking, filthy lieberal traitors so that you could sit here and say we should raise taxes and go all socialist fighting our wars!”

“Goddammit, we must make the best possible use of all available resources! This is not the time for ideological rambling!”

“YOU FUCKING TRAITOR! YOU GODDAMN TERRORIZING SAND DIGGER!”

Turdson wanted to retort, but noticed Fisto was going for his pistol, so he dove under the table. Freemantle had his hand on his holster for some time, and fired and shot the other general, wrongly interpreting Turdson’s move as an attack.

Fisto yelled and unloaded his magazine in the general direction of the assembled officers and contractors, who fired back with highest professional courtesy. The SS men also joined in the firefight.

The enclosed room provided almost no cover. In the confused melee, people fought and died where they stood or sat, staining the floor with their blood. Chinny sat there, unmoving, as SS men duelled with Buttwater Tacticool operators, generals fired on military contractors and Chet Fisto shot at everybody.

After less than a minute, the room was silent again. Everyone lay dead, dying or wounded in pools of blood, brains and other bodily fluids.

Thick Chinny stared at the far wall of the War Room.

How did it come to this?, he thought. Why have the self-correcting mechanisms of the free market not worked? The freest country in the world should also be the most powerful. It should.

Yet here he was. Alone in his chair, his generals having all lost their bid for market competitiveness. How did it come to this?

There was only one answer. The answer Jeebus sent to him in the dream.

Murca was not free enough.

Thick Chinny took out his pen, pulled out a piece of paper and began to write, occasionally dipping the pen in the nearest pool of blood.

From the office of the Sovereignest Citizen. In order to protect the Murcan way of life and liberate the hard working Murcan enterpreneurs from unfair interventionism and burdens, the foul parasitic leeches upon the healthy body of society, known as “babies”, are henceforth declared illegal...

Yes, he smiled to himself.

A couple days of work, and it will all work itself out.

It will be perfect.

---

Oho, Murca



“Oh God, look at that...there’s...things coming down from the sky! This is terrifying!”

The camera shook and panned rapidly when Blenn Geck tried to capture the strange shapes, which trailed fire across the morning sky. “There’s dozens of them! This is Blenn Geck reporting LIVE from Oho! We are...oh God, one of them...one of them is flying right at me!”

The camera managed to to catch a glimpse of a blocky, ugly transport aircraft, which was seemingly held aloft only by sheer stubborness of the pilot and the huge thrusters bolted on its hull. It spewed some sort of horrible exhaust mixture, not just smoke but also other particles, glowing with eerie Cherenkov radiation.

Blenn Geck didn’t know if he was transmitting or not, but he just had to show it to the world. He had to! He had lived all his life for this one, singular moment!

The transport rumbled above him, the low throbbing of its engines breaking glass and even moving about the burned-out car wrecks littering the parking lot in front of some Oho strip mall. It hovered in place and finally landed, heavily, as if it stomped upon the face of Algeira with a steel-toed boot.

Massive ramps lowered to the ground, and out came hulking, snarling monstrosities holding absurdly huge guns. Amongst them were smaller, human figures, wearing mixed uniforms which Geck could not recognize. They consulted with their huge overlords and split up, the humans marching towards the city while the beasts retreated back into their vehicle and lifted off.

Geck filmed it. He filmed it all, and didn’t even talk anymore. Why didn’t he talk? He should say something, but could not...why couldn’t he speak?

Blenn Geck felt something warm and salty flow up to his mouth. He spit it out, and noticed it was... blood.

The icon of true Murcan reporting, the very symbol of Murcan liberation and downfall of the lying lieberal hombortionist media, fell to his knees, as soldiers from all over the world, eager for revenge, marched into Oho right next to him.

Out of his back stuck a broken piece of a Japanorse sword blade, which he did not notice before.

He was ignored by the marching troops until he fell over and died.

---

All over Murca, strange landing craft ferried troops to strategic locations. Withered cities, ruined by years of neglect. Burned-out husks of military bases which had to be repaired and prepared for duty. Shantytowns and ruined hospitals, barely operating power plants and dead farms: all were occupied.

In many cases there was resistance ; Murca was a land of the free, after all, and every house was a fortress. Urban battles raged for weeks before occupational authorities could be established. Amongst the attackers, who were mostly human, from time to time appeared strange creatures. Taller than any man, they bore weapons of terrible power and size. They appeared in the most troublesome regions, subduing resistance or storming particularly high value installations, which for some reason were spared from the initial bombardmentations.

Within two months, what remained of Murca was firmly in the invaders’ hands. Foreign troops patrolled the streets, governance centers were set up and began operation. Propaganda broadcasts blared across the wartorn cities, as people were put to work clearing away the rubble.

Washingtoff was the last to fall, its fanatical defenders struggling to the last. But finally, even the Hill itself was stripped bare of defences, as the last bastion of the Sovereign Citizens surrendered.

---

Washingtoff, Murca
The Hill

The former office of Sovereignest Citizen Shrubya was a shadow of its former glory. The once-immaculate white walls were now lined with Sovereign Declarations written in blood, the handwriting starting out legible and coherent before gradually degenerating into unreadable scrawls belying a demented mind. The latest declarations were written in wordless scriptures that were painful to read and their glyphs suggested nauseating scenes that came from only the most twisted of imaginations. Wind blew in from the broken windows, causing these papers to flutter, the individual images seemed to merge and move with one another like some kind of grotesque flip book cartoon.

The doors to the great White Dwelling exploded. In came a cadre of multinational, multicultural foreign soldiers escorting the leaders of their united nations. Amongst them was a massive hulking form, a masked beast, one of the invaders. He had no escort. They walked through the desecrated halls of the Murcan nation’s capital with absolute carelessness and disregard for caution. Misplaced furniture was kicked aside, fallen portraits and vases were stomped on and crushed underfoot, Murcan flags were ripped off their places and thrown on the floor and some of the leaders even spat spitefully at them, spattering wads of phlegm and saliva on those star spangled banners. They saved some of the flags from their spit and kept them to be burned later. Those leaders went on to laugh happily, as though a great weight had been removed from their souls with that mean-spirited act. Their heavily-accented voices echoed through the halls.

The masked beast amongst them uttered a guttural chuckle at their displays of badwill. It approved of their actions.

Finally, they reached their destination. The Ovoid Office.

The masked beast led them in by kicking the bolted doors open with a mighty steel-shod boot, breaking the centuries-old polished and varnished ornately carved wood into splinters. They strode into the office and were greeted by two dozen guns in the hands of a dozen SS men dual-wielding the weapons with extreme alacrity.

The masked beast snapped his fingers.

There was a loud noise as several holes were punched through the walls and the SS men exploded into clouds of blood and bone.

The entourage nonchalantly walked past their mortal remains and went before the desk where they confronted none other than the Sovereignest Citizen of Murca.



“I swear to Jeebus I’ll kill every last one of you.” Thick Chinny hissed. His eyes were glowing. His fangs were bared. He reared up and huffed and puffed in a final display of intimidation towards those threatening his territory.

His growling was met with hearty laughter.

“I must admit I admire the man’s fighting spirit! He’s almost like a Pollackistani!” Donald Dusk beamed “But it’s time to lay down the saber and eat the horse, Chinny!”

Grrrowl....

Chancellor Biscquik twirled his moustache “Jawohl. Your reign is at an end. Now we hand out the cards!”

Grrrowl?

“Lay it down, Thick. You know you want to. Really, listen to your old buddy Blare!”

Grrrowl...

“Shut up, Blare. Nobody wants to listen to you.”

“Oh, go cry me a river fromage man! I’m part of this coalition just as much as you!”

“Come on, people we have to present a unified front here....”

Whimper

Something mighty crashed into the floor. The beastman growled - and unlike Chinny’s pathetic growling of a cornered dog, this was a mighty growl, a threatening growl. It said “ENOUGH”.

And then the creature took off its mask, revealing a bear’s muzzle and a pair of steely eyes. Chinny whimpered again, staring into that terrible visage. Bears! He was defeated and humbled by bears!



Two more creatures wheeled in a strange machine, the size of a small car. They shoved foot-wide diskettes, fiddled with gauges and oscilloscopes and uncovered a huge speaker in the machine’s side. The bear began to growl gutturally in a strange symphony of noises, which sounded like a bear devouring its still living prey.

Which, in a way, he was.

“I AM COLONEL-COMMISSAR KYRGYZ BLYNDERSKI” the machine boomed. Deafeningly. “AND YOU, PATHETIC HUMAN SHIT, ARE NO LONGER IN CHARGE OF YOUR PUNY NATION, BY ORDER OF THE IMPERATOR HIMSELF!”

The previously quarrelling Yurpan leaders all grinned as one upon hearing that, despite the pain in their ears, abused as they were by the translator machine.

“YOUR TINY STATE IS TOO INSIGNIFICANT TO WARRANT ATTENTION FROM THE IMPERATOR’S LEGIONS OF LIBERATION, HOWEVER. IT SHALL BE ADMINISTERED IN BYZON’S NAME BY YOUR LOCAL COMPATRIOTS, WHO HATE YOU SO HEARTWARMINGLY. BEHOLD, THE NEWLY APPOINTED GOVERNOR!”

Through the ruined door, another figure entered. Tall and slender, and of dark complexion, the man was taller than anyone else save the massive bear-alien. He bowed to the bear, and scowled at Chinny.



“I am Mohammad Jihad, honored allies.”

NO! Chinny’s brain screamed in horror. The former Sovereignest Citizen leapt to his feat and yelled. “No way! NO FUCKING WAY IN A HUNDRED YEARS WILL I LET THIS TERRORIZING SAND DIG...”

Thick Chinny’s last coherent sentence was cut in half by the bear alien’s massive beating stick striking the human’s jawbone. It shattered, and the former Sovereignest collapsed, whimpering in pain, but miraculously still conscious. His lower jaw hung limp and bonelessly off his face, blood and broken teeth poured out of his mouth. His tongue slacked out of his mouth.

That was when he heard yet another, final set of steps. They were slow, almost ironic in their demeanor. Chinny saw a pair of immaculate leather shoes cross his low field of vision. With terrifying power of will he raised his mangled face and saw the shoes’ owner.

Litvin Maximov glanced down at the pathetic, whimpering form of his former adversary and smiled.

“Da,” he said, and turned towards the bear. “Well, you certainly delivered on your promise, commissar.” The machine began growling gutturally, but still just as loudly “Then we shall deliver on ours. Algeira’s moon shall be ceded forever to the Bragulan Star Empire, and all alien artifacts in our possession will be transferred to your hands immediately. In exchange, the Star Empire shall provide logistical support for the rest of the world’s occupation of Murca. Da?”

The bear-alien listened to the machine’s translations, and nodded.

“Da.” There was no need for the translator for that.

“Well, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, comrades.” Maximov said happily as he sat himself on Chinny’s chair and placed his feet on the table. He lit a vodka cigarette and took a drag.

Chinny whimpered something unrecognizable. Tears of pain and anguish streamed down from his eyes.

The bear laughed. Litvinov began laughing with him, and everyone else joined in too.

They all laughed.

They all fucking laughed.



Epilogue

The human captive was delivered to the field gulag hastily set up by the invader forces. There he was stripped and probed and cleaned and prepared for internment, to be initially cleansed of all parasitic organisms and other human filths.

He was in a formerly disused government hospital building now used as a gulag clinic, bound on a stretcher in a ward room. Above him were the monstrous visages of his captors. Furred, brutal animals of ursine appearances. Definitely Ayrakis. They talked to each other in their guttural foreign language, chuckling and laughing. It sent a wave of revulsion throughout his body - it was so familiar yet at the same time so horrific. He shuddered.

The beasts barked and growled amongst themselves in their incomprehensible Middle Western towel-bedded sand digger speech.

"But I was just shipped from training! I don't know anything about human anatomies!"

"Well, figure it out!"

"Hmm...let's see...Byzon teaches us humanity does everything the wrong way... therefore, when the most perfect patriotic Bragulan life form in the universe has an anus between the legs..."

“Then it is settled! Begin the ominous enema shits, da!”

The beasts concluded their discussion. Suddenly, one of them brought out an instrument that was instantly recognizable.

Chet Fisto’s eyes widened in fear. They placed a towel over his face and the world became dark.



And then the deluge began.

[Force Lord]

Salin City, Crevecia
Sector O-7
Unreal Time/After formation of the Eye

President Casimir Draco, flanked by his generals, was glaring at the Centralite ambassador at the opposite side of his desk. "I hope your little MEH adventure is finished now, because we're having a little difficulty with our rebel scum. Your material aid is no longer enough, and your special ops forces have been useful but they alone cannot win this war. I want to know, if I can count on Kierger on bailing us out. We need concrete help. An intervention, if possible."

The Centralite ambassador frowned, trying to make a suitable response. The fact that he recently felt a mild headache did not help things.

"Full-scale intervention is a... radical solution, Mr. President. My government can arrange it, but we still have elements that are apprehensive of what consequences this could bring. In any case, until part of our forces are withdrawn from the MEH the Central State's hands are tied. There's also the issue of this recent wave of psychic pain that has shaken our government. I certainly felt it, though the lack of ESP Amplifiers here made it milder than it would have been in the Centrality. So we can't help you if we can't even think clearly."

"You must do something. Rebel troops are besieging New Legnica from all sides, and we cannot afford to be seen as weak. Not to mention the designs of the Humanists and other groups. We cannot allow another fiasco like what happened at the Outlands!"

"I'll see if Centrum is in the mood. Rest assured that no matter how many times we lose, the Centrality will strike back. Always, no matter how long it takes."

The ambassador then left the room.

[Ryan Thunder]

Designated Expeditionary Command Craft, Avenger Seven
Sol-4

Code: Select all

Good day, Commander.

From the reports you've sent us, we agree that the situation with these Byzantines is clearly getting out of control. However, as much as I'm sure you'd love to ruin their shit (the Assembly is like, eighty-eight percent sympathetic,) those Byzantine bastards have better information on what the fuck this thing is than anybody right now, so we'll need to see if we can get it from them before we consider taking further action.

You may or may not be pleased to know that we're already running any craft registered with them out of our space for that shit they pulled at Xena, though, and we're shooting any that try to come back.

Anyway, they might not like that, so if shit gets real, hit them back hard and get the hell out of there posthaste.

Good luck, Commander.

- Emmeroth Kelechtia, Representative from Nova Miratia to the Unified Assembly for the Interstellar Union of Worlds

A large string of authorization codes followed. "Like that's gonna work," she muttered under her breath.

Code: Select all

P.S. - Yeah, yeah, I know.

That elicited a chuckle. She had her orders.

[Shroom Man 777]

Downfall Dependent



Sol
Multiversal Empire of Happiness
Unreal Time



The Byzon I, Defender of the Universe strategic battle fortress went through the MEH attack ships like the claws of a fifty foot-tall bear clouting off the faces of countless puny humans, forever. The burning wreckage of the MEHN’s great Sol fleet wreathed its pherical mass like a halo of fire and twisted metal. Space itself reverberated as the war station blasted the hyperwaves with jamming signals synchronized to sound like patriotic Byzonic screeds to any sensors that had not yet been sufficiently deafened yet. Innumerable silos unleashed massive mega-murder-missile swarms, from skyscraper-sized strategic warheads to thousands of smaller subnucleonic ship-seeking submunitions. Atomic deathrays carved through the void, melting everything they touched and lighting the blackness with a sick vegemite-green glow.

The Imperator’s lethal namesake was at the eye of the storm, surrounded by two Bragulan warfleets like a constellation of steel striking into the beating heart of the Multiversal Empire. Alongside them were their numerous comrades from the rest of the OMINOUS, fighting side by side and breaking through Sol’s battered but still formidable defenses. Sleek azure Eoghan warships darted under the Byzon’s shadow like minnows, sneaking amidst the ruined hull of slain Slaughter Devices while seeking more targets to engage. Refugee battle-blocks guarded the flanks and the rear, wary as ever of any concealed threats. Nova Atlantean lance cruisers fought from afar with their esoteric weapons, with faster than light beams cutting down incoming kamikazes from truly long distances.

Yet despite the awesome forces arrayed against them, the enemy remained defiant to the end. Space was saturated with potent electronic countermeasures, suffusing the ether with exotic energies that played merry hell with target acquisition. And as though that was not enough, the Solar Fleet and the system defense forces were supported by auxiliaries from the MEH’s merchant marine, with all their remaining vessels hastily weaponized and crewed by droids and fanatic sailors. Together, they charged head on and fought to the last man and machine, Slaughter Devices blazing away with mighty turbolasers until they in turn were slaughtered by OMINOUS dreadnoughts and pounded into oblivion. The MEHN’s greatest ships were, ironically, the first to fall as their jamming systems and still-formidable firepower made them priority targets. After them, the OMINOUS focused its wrath on the lesser ships, but despite the decimation of their flagship and the death of their commanders, the sailors and spacers of the MEHN fought on with fanatic resolve.

Such was their desperation that after expending their ammunition, and having their motherships destroyed by coalition fire, MEH fighters and bombers simply hurled themselves at their enemies in kamikaze runs. Likewise, the weaponized merchant ships engaged their Heim drives to accelerate themselves to supralux velocities before plowing into OMINOUS vessels in devastating suicide attacks. In the final seconds before oblivion, the final transmissions of these doomed ships were praises to their Goddess audible to both friend and foe alike. Following their example, megacorvettes and cruisers likewise went in close to the coalition warships, entangling themselves in slugging matches with their opposites at point-blank range, where OMINOUS bombardment ships could not strike at them from afar in fear of hitting their own allies.

At the fore of OMINOUS formation, as in Xena, were the Ascendants who had proven themselves in battle at Farthing, Admiral Nikhamov’s Kosmoflott Bragotyomkin and the Chamarran Second, Third and Fourth Battle Groups. The combined Ascendant-Bragulan-Chamarran force, nicknamed the ABCs, was now taking the brunt of this all-out assault.

In the bridge of the Imperator’s Fist-class battleship Fist of Consummated Retribution, Front Admiral Nykanor Zyvan Nikhamov surveyed the scenes of war in the omnipresent telescreens hanging above the bridge. A mere thousand kilometers ahead of the Fist, a weaponized Heimship intimately met with an expanding cone of relativistic buckshots and exploded in a truly spectacular fashion that unfortunately attenuated their frontal sensors. Through the blinding flash came a squadron of enemy fighters screaming towards the Bragulan battlecruiser without care for the thick wall of thermonuclear point defense fire being thrown in their way. The fighters were vaporized by the score but one slipped through and rammed the prow of the bragship at relativistic velocities. While the kinetic impact would’ve surely penetrated lesser ships, the Bragulan flagship was made of sturdier stuff, an outer layer of atomic explosive reactive armor detonated to counteract the fighter-turned-kinetic penetrator while the underlying bragsteel and bragcrete withstood the remaining force of the impact and the nuclear explosion.

A nearby paleocruiser was nowhere near as lucky when another Heimship buried itself in the warship’s centuries-old hull. The collision sent even the great fossil warship tumbling away as secondary explosions rippled through its battered form, yet despite the severe damage the patriotically decrepit ship continued firing with its remaining batteries, defiantly striking down the gnat-like fighters attempting to finish it off. It tried to return to the fight, but the venerable cruiser no longer had it, its subnucleonic reactor gave one last surge of energy - manifesting in a burst of alpha, beta, delta, gamma and x-ray radiation from all portions of the ship - and then the paleocruiser went finally went dark and dead in the water. Smelling blood, the MEH megacorvettes and superfrigates circled the stricken paleoship, closing in for the kill like gunmetal grey sharks. Squadrons of gunskimmers moved to engage them, and the warships entered a high-g dance of death, filling space with the emerald light of turbolaser and K-bolt fire. Bragnukes blossomed in the black, as the gunskimmers used their aggressive-aggressive illuminators to mark targets for supporting missile strikes. Civilian Heimships vainly tried to ram them at FTL velocities, but the gunskimmers nimbly dodged their kamikaze charges with the grace of dancing bears.

“Admiral, enemy jamming has decreased by 40%. Eoghan stealth ships have taken down MEH ECM platforms five, seven and nine,” a sensor officer announced. The static and white snow filling some of the telescreens had lessened considerably, targets could be acquired quicker and easier and more accurately. Fire control teams were already marking more MEH ships for summary combustion.

“Instruct the gunskimmer squadron to launch grappling harpoons and pull the Primordial Prosecutor out of the way. Damaged or shield-low systems to the rear of the formation, fresh and refreshed warships at the front, now.” Admiral Nykanor commanded. Then, after a moment of consideration, “Bring us to engage the megacorvettes and superfrigates directly. Ready the atomic guns.”

“Aye, admiral!” an ensign pulled out a telephone, spun the rotary dial and connected to the strategic weapon crews. “It’s time for sunrise.”

Deep inside the Fist’s hammerhead, house-sized canisters of refined vegemite were hauled by treaded tractors. There were no press gangs here, not in this most modern of bragships. Instead, hydraulic erector-arms carried the glowing canisters to their cradles - and atomic steam catapults drove the warheads into the firing chamber an enormous revolver-type cylinder, which spun and exposed another chamber, into which another shell was loaded into. The process repeated itself until the revolver-mechanism was fully loaded, and the cylinder was aligned with a big-bore beryllium-bragsteel barrel. Behind the apparatus was the multimegaton firing pin, linked directly to the warship’s atomic furnace. Sirens and klaxons blared, the tractors and crews retreated into their bunkers, meters-thick bragcrete blast doors shut close. The kommandant bellowed out the countdown until the seconds ran out.

The firing mechanism initiated the vegemite shells loaded in the revolver cylinder. The gun crews deactivated their cybragnetic ocular implants in preparation for the flashout, their true eyes having been burned out many years ago. Their bunker became filled with a blinding white light that penetrated even the lead-lined walls.



Outside, a beam of coagulated subnucleonic energy roared forth from the Fist like an accusing finger, a talon of ruin that obliterated anything and everything it touched. The first megacorvette boiled away into neutronium vapor. Hydraulic mechanisms steered the continuous beam towards the next target, and a superfrigate was halved into two pieces that floated away like liquid globules. It went on, and by the time the beam died out, a spent casing was ejected from the superheated revolver cylinder as it rotated to align another round with the barrel.

“Next target,” Nykanor said calmly. OMINOUS firepower intensity had remained constant, but their effect was increasing at a geometric rate with the annihilation of the MEH’s ECM platforms. Now, they could use their precious atomic death rays for full effect, without fear of squandering it on decoys. This subsequently corresponded to a marked increase in their kill-rates and enemy warship losses.

This reprieve gave Nykanor time to appreciate the grander scope of the battle. He looked at the monochromatic telescreens and saw the remains of the Multiversal Empire’s Solar Fleet dwindle and die before him in real time. The OMINOUS forces pushed deeper than ever before. He noticed his Chamarran comrades taking the lead, and smirked as he saw Battlemistress Sesh withdraw from the front and trade places with another Battlegroup. Bragotyomkin had trained with the Chamarran Second, Third and Fourth for so many months now that he was intimately familiar with their commanders and even thought of them as friends. They were fighting together now, and those under their command were certainly dying together. It was good to see the Chamarrans acquit themselves well. They pushed on and fought like lions, coming closer and closer to Earth.

Speaking of which, Earth was now under the guns of the Byzantines. They had bypassed the OMINOUS-MEHN engagement, racing past the space battle and smashing any outlying defenders left in the system in their mad dash towards the Earth. And as expected, the Byzantines were quick to put the whole world to the flame. That butcher Rus was as eager to kill his fellow humans as he did any Bragulan or Karlack and even from afar his work was evident. The stricken planet let out a mixture of panicked distress calls, strange fanatic praises to their Goddess eerily reminiscent of the last words of the kamikaze attackers, and pure visual feeds of the slaughter taking place on the surface.

A front row seat to a dying world. It was nothing new to a hardened veteran of the Koprulu Zone, but to those unaccustomed to the brutality of Wild Space...

“Sir, a message from the Chamarrans,” an ensign declared from his post.

“Patch it through,” Nykanor assented.

“Nyah, what are the Byzantines doing? That’s genocide! We have to stop them!” It was Battlemistress Liana, the youngest of the Chamarran commanders.

“Send a reply,” Nyaknor ordered. The ensign signalled that he was on air and he began. “Comrade Chamarrans, it is obvious that the humans have betrayed us. The Centralists broke their promise to your Queen Kithandra, and for unknown purposes they have brought additional - and unauthorized - forces to Sol against the agreement and the wishes of the Hierarchy and the OMINOUS. This is treachery most foul and we cannot open ourselves to the schemes of the Centralists and the other humans. We have yet to finish with the MEH forces in the system, and we do not know what the humans intend to do with the massive force they have brought here. We must be cautious.”

That seemed to placate the Chamarrans, diverting their attention to the Centralist fleet that was fighting the MEH superweapon at Saturn as well as the other human fleets in the system whose intentions were inscrutable and unknown, perhaps even to themselves. Their mere presence was a violation to the agreement between the Hierarchy and the Centrality and served to drive a wedge between both the inhuman and human coalitions, feeding into the paranoia of those who feared a human land grab or betrayal, understandable when the Centralists had already betrayed their trust. The advance slowed due to the inhumans’ uncertainty of the trustworthiness of their new human allies, to the point where the OMINOUS deployed forces to watch over and even defend against potential treachery from their unexpected confederates.

As the OMINOUS finished the remaining MEHN warships and kamikazes, the Byzantines continued their atrocities on Earth. Now they were de-orbiting space stations and habitats, their inhabitants’ dying screams filled the hyperwaves in the seconds before they were either burnt to ashes in the middle of atmospheric reentry or dashed against planetary shields. They were joined by the Haruhiists, who had entered the system along with the Centralists and like the Byzantines had bypassed the space battle and abandoned their allies in a mad dash to Earth. While their intentions were initially unclear, the sudden and unmistakable signatures of strategic vegemite weapons coming from the human homeworld revealed the Haruhiists’ true purpose. The Byzantine exterminatus was joined by waves of jade light scouring the surface of human life. It was simply a distilled display of man’s inhumanity towards man. A showcase of purified hate directed towards cleansing man’s own homeworld. There were no words to describe what was transpiring before all their eyes.

The Chamarrans had apparently had enough. Their Juggernaut plowed through the last vestiges of organized MEHN resistance, leaving behind only scattered and disorganized stragglers. The Chamarrans didn’t stop to finish them off. No, they were heading straight towards Earth.

“We are going to make a push for Earth. This crime ends here.” Battlemistress Melusine declared over all OMINOUS channels.

“Patch me to her,” Admiral Nykanor grabbed a telephone receiver. “Battlemistress. What of the Centralists and the other humans? They may use this to their advantage. They have already gone back on their word and brought their allies here. Who knows what their game is here. The humans may all have planned this from the very beginning. We might fall for their trap. ”

“Admiral, I understand. But we can’t let the Byzantine atrocities continue. Nobody deserves to have that done to their world. Your Bragulan fleets can cover us and stand vigilant for any more treachery on part of the Centralists. If they try anything, it will be up to Bragule to stop them. We trust you.”

“Very well, Battlemistress. Good luck.” Nykanor responded solemnly. The Byzantines had their fun, and the Haruhiists too. The Imperium had served its purpose, they had done their bloody and dirty work. Now Bragule would leave them to their fate. They would die a peasant’s death.

But fate had other ideas.

A dark crack fractured the Earth into two, bisecting its hemispheres and forming a slit of absolute blackness. The rest of the world caught fire, the whole planet and all the billions on it burned in a pyre that made the combined Byzantine and Haruhiist bombardments look like a bonfire ember. Oceans boiled off, the underlying crust darkened like a coal, the very air around the world turned into flame. With the snake’s pupil of blackness scarring the immolating orb, it looked like nothing so much as an evil eye. The size of a a planet.



It blinked.

In that instant, the glass on all of the telescreens of the Fist of Consummated Retribution fractured. A spiderweb of cracks marred their displays, making the nightmarish sight appear even worse. Colors both visible to the naked eye and those that should only be perceivable in unseen spectrums pulsed from the monochromatic screens, bathing the bridge in an unholy glow. They could all feel it gazing at them, transfixing them and turning their blood colder than ice. It looked at them with hatred, a malignant gaze full of unspeakable loathing. It made them feel what it felt. The death-screams of billions flayed alive in an instant. A whole loathsome galaxy coming to burn their homes, their people, everything - for no reason, as none was needed. All their fears materialized. Crystallized. Into a diamond bullet.

A gunshot rang out in the bridge. The commissar fired his Bragnum at the telescreen, punching a hole through its cracked display and the evil eye it depicted.

Blood oozed out of the gunshot hole.

An ensign walked up to Admiral Nykanor and slapped him in the face. He snapped back to reality and realized that the blood coming out of the telescreen was merely lubricant oil for its analogue electronics.

“Get a hold of yourself, sir!” the sailor bear shouted desperately. Over the comms, the Refugees were broadcasting a ‘theological alert’, whatever that meant, blaring it on all channels. “Horrible things are coming out from the... eye. It’s expanding at a geometric rate. If we don’t escape, it will consume us all!”

“Da... Comms, inform all bragfleets and OMINOUS forces to make for the hyperlimit at emergency speed. Redline the engines, we have to get out of here! All weapons free to fire on any incoming attackers. This is not a retreat, I repeat, this is not a retreat - we are attacking in the other direction! Stop for nothing, comrades!” Nykanor began issuing orders hurriedly. The crews were likewise jolted to action and moved with alacrity. The entirety of Bragotyomkin and the Sagatantron had changed their course and were withdrawing from the Sol system.

The expanding, growing abomination that was previously Earth reached for them with eldritch appendages. Vegemite-encrusted atomics were able to shred them fine. Yet even then, for every obscene light second-long pseudopod vaporized, for every ectoplasm-drenched tentacle repulsed, dozens more took their place. Their grasp nearly closed on the fleeing OMINOUS and human forces, until they seethed and boiled away as a bright and immaculate white light in the silhouette of a double-headed eagle shone from somewhere behind the fleeing Byzantine armada. That... whatever it was, bought them all precious time to both reach the hyperlimit and recover their senses.

“The Chamarrans are moving to engage the Byzantines,” an ensign reported. “Admiral, shall we join them in routing the puny humans?”

“Nyet. The second we reach the hyperlimit, we return to Xena. We need to repair and reload. In a span of just a few days, we have partaken in three major fleet battles at Farthing, Xena and now here in Sol. Moreover, the Centralists have broken their promise and have brought the human alliance fleet here, so we do not know if they will even honor any of their previous agreements. We have millions of troops in Xena who will be vulnerable if we direct our attentions elsewhere. And lastly, but most importantly, we have no idea what has just happened to Earth. To this whole system. Until we find out what just happened, the most sensible act is to stand fast in Xena and wait for further instructions from Bragule - from the Imperator - once they know of what has just transpired.” Nykanor exhaled sharply and leaned back on his command chair.

“Any other commands, Admiral?”

“Yes. I would like to commend you for your brave actions today, comrade-ensign.” Nykanor said to the ensign. Then he turned to the bridge commissar. “Commissar, arrest this ensign and take him to the brig for striking a superior officer.”

As the commissar dragged the stunned ensign off the bridge, the Bragulan fleet reached the hyperlimit and jumped away to safety, leaving the Sol system behind.