First Contact

Chapter 926: Edge of Twilight

There has been much killing. There will be much more. The Medicine Man is dancing, calling us to war. We are brave and we are not afraid to die. - Take Witk Warrior King, Age of Expansion, Terra-Sol

Just when you think you have seen every terrible thing, every horror, that the Terrans can visit upon you, they reach back into their bag and yank out something even more horrible, something more terrible.

That they then throw on you while they laugh hysterically. - V'Kretok, Treana'ad Warrior, speaking on the War of Terran Aggression, -15 PG.

The graveyards are full of beings that 'had a plan' the couldn't fail.

Just look at the graveyards of our "heroes" that followed a plan that couldn't fail. - Wemterran Road Priest

The Atrekna were, to put it lightly, annoyed.

The combat kept slacking off every ten hours or so, taking roughly a half hour to reinforce positions, pump out more combat vehicles, then go back on the offensive.

They could not figure out what the pattern was.

What they did know is one simple thing.

Unlike every other species, time and grinding warfare seemed to strengthen the lemurs.

Normally, it was only the Atrekna who grew stronger as time went by. As the tides of time gained depth and breadth, allowing the Atrekna a deeper pool of servitors and war material to temporally replicate.

The lemurs gained strength as time went on without temporal replication.

Their automated factories put out more and more war material. Their resource gathering, focusing on water, foliage, and petroleum, only intensified. Defenses thickened in depth and breadth, covering not only more physical space, but shutting down the Atrekna's ability to effect the area with their vast temporal powers.

The Atrekna were at a loss to explain how such a young species had such mastery of chronotrons and temporal mechanics.

They never paused to look at the fact that nearly all of the Terran systems were attack and defense systems.

The Atrekna found that the lemurs were using missiles with warheads carrying a payload of energetic chronotrons and tachyons, to detonate over the slavespawn and servitor breeding and training areas.

Effectively preventing the Atrekna from replicating that which was effected.

STOP DOING THAT, LEMURS!

The tanks and aircraft were initially crude. Rolled steel armor, aluminum airframes, combustion engines. The weaponry had been ballistic rifles and the troops had only worn cloth uniforms.

A month later and the tanks were sporting battlesteel laminate, the airframes were made with duralloy, the weaponry was still kinetic energy but was terrifyingly effective.

A month after that the tanks were both tracked and graviton hover, the aircraft had broadened into grav-strikers, fast attack fighters, areospace fighters, with a myriad of roles.

The infantry was armored, in some case wearing power armor or piloting warmeks.

The weapons were still kinetic.

The Atrekna had long ago stopped mocking or laughing at kinetic weaponry.

The Atrekna found themselves pushed back even further.

STOP DOING THAT, LEMURS!

The Atrekna began suffering Lemur breakthroughs of the line. Their slavespawn were being obliterated, as sheer savagery and primal instincts were no match for interlocked fields of fire, sustained artillery in depth, high altitude bombing runs, close air support, and heavy armor.

The Atrekna had been sure that the lemurs would just kill all the servitors when they overran the servitor warrens.

Instead, the warrens were put under guard and the servitors allowed to exist peacefully.

Servitors started throwing down their weapons and surrendering, defecting, and in the case of two huge warrens, attacking the guarding Atrekna and then allowing the lemurs to move in and post guards.

Even the slavespawn seemd to like the lemurs.

Slavespawn that stayed away from the lines, the more even tempered slavespawn that weren't interested in fighting unless pushed, were just left alone. The lemurs made sure that the massive Ohm Class servitors had phasic and psionic disruptors attached to them, then left alone.

The Atrekna's combat and warfare ability kept dropping with each warren taken, each spawning ground destroyed or yanked away from the Atrekna.

Many arguments and discussions took place about the fact the lemurs kept taking away the servitor and slavespawn areas and then doing absolutely nothing with them.

Some argued that the point was to simply take them away from the Atrekna so that the Atrekna did not possess them.

But that was foolish. What would the waste of resources entailed in snatching the areas from the Atrekna's grasp accomplish if all the lemurs did was toss the areas away.

Surely, the lemurs had some dastardly plot that the Atrekna would surely figure out.

But the lemurs kept taking away servitor and slavespawn areas.

STOP DOING THAT, LEMURS!

The Atrekna had thought they had understood the lemurs tactics when the realized just how hard the lemur was pushing in a single sector. The strategy was obvious. Take that sector, then they would be able to use the mountains as a natural barrier.

The Atrekna had responded by stiffening resistance and allocating more resources.

Then the lemur had attacked from the ocean!

That infuriated the Atrekna, who summoned their starships and spaceborne slavespawn to finally come to the planet's aid. (Hopefully, there were no dead Terrans lurking around...)

That's when it turned out that the lemur had anticipated this and unveiled previously hidden space combat systems.

STOP DOING THAT, LEMURS!

The Atrekna were getting seriously tired of the lemurs.

Didn't the lemurs know that the Atrekna were the premiere predator? The apex of everything in the universe? That the Atrekna were the pinnacle of the universes? All the universes? Known and unknown!

HOW DARE THE LEMURS DEFY THEM!

It wasn't until the Atrekna started being directly targeted that the Atrekna realized that the lemurs might not share the belief in the Atrekna's superiority.

First, the lemurs took that smaller section of the X.

Then they assaulted the coasts and took them away from the Atrekna.

The Atrekna twisted their feeding tentacles and ground their grinding plates as they watched more of the damnable lemur command centers roll out of the surf, tracks spewing mud and rock as the seawater poured off of them. The command centers immediately dug in and more defenses started springing up.

It was nearly three months into the fight when one Atrekna asked a simple question.

"Why are we not targeting the command centers?"

It was answered: "Because we can't get close enough, you fool!"

The Atrekna pointed out that for a few split seconds, the mobile command center did not have any temporal protections.

Why, the Atrekna asked, don't we just temporally reproduce the beach without the lemur vehicle?

The others all stared.

Temporal replication was to bring stuff forward, not get rid of it.

The Atrekna asked another simple question: Why not?

The rest of the Convention just stared at the Atrekna, nervously shuffling at the sudden appearance of an insane one in their midst.

"That would eliminate the resources that the lemur attack and command vehicle represents should we take it or seize the debris is becomes upon our victory. Such a loss of resources is an anathema to our purpose."

The Atrekna stared at the psionic hologram for a long moment, then turned back to the Convention.

"Have we been successful at seizing debris or the vehicle?" the Atrekna asked.

The others conferred.

One turned back to the crazed one.

"No?"

Two Atrekna demanded the insane one turn and bare the flesh of its back to them so that everyone present could examine the Atrekna's flesh for the telltale insect bites of one of the dreaded Cult of the Defiled One.

The Atrekna shrugged and did so.

The others examined closely.

No bites.

They all clustered back up, the insane one a little ways away from the others.

"Why don't we just replicate the beach without the lemurs?" the insane one asked.

"We shall test it," one of the Convention proclaimed.

The others all nodded.

Yes. Yes. Testing it would be good.

The insane one held up one hand and screeched for them to stop.

The others slowly turned and looked at it.

"Should we do it once, the insane lemurs will surely develop a counter or notice that we took care of what might be a slight oversight. It is only a few tenths of a second, which is not much of a window," the insane Atrekna stated.

It pointed at the map.

"We should do it to any lemur controlled area that does not have sufficient temporal protections," the maddened one stated.

"In what order?" a Convention member asked.

The insane one spread out his hands. "Why, no order."

"Then how?"

"All at once," the insane one said.

The Convention all stared at one another and then at the crazed one.

"Without testing until we have perfected the method?" the asked as one.

The insane one wiggled his feeding tentacles thoughtfully.

"No."

The others fell to arguing. Finally they turned to the insane one.

"If we perform the action the required amount of times to perfect it, the lemur will also witness what we do and develop counters to the new tactic, rendering it useless before we can use it," they said.

The insane one nodded.

"Yes."

The Atrekna set about tasks.

The universe giggled, spinning several nebula into existence.

-----

Commander Jane shook her head, reaching out automatically to pull open the mini-fridge and grab the first cold can her fingers touched. Still keeping her eyes closed, she rubbed the can across her forehead, letting the cold can rub across her heated flesh.

She's crashed out, bled out from a cerebral hemorrhage, but it had taken nearly two hours for the medicomp to notice and recycle her, and another eight attempts to get her to wake up and pass the cognitive tests.

Jane looked over everything.

It was quiet. There was still some pressure, but she'd forced the Atrekna away from the X-shaped mountain chains by nearly five hundred miles. That gave her autominers nearly unfettered access to the rare earths at the base of the mountains and in some of the more hilly and mountainous terrains.

She was still running on the ragged edge for energy production. She was barely at 101% of max load capacity and as she watched it ticked up to 102.238% then back down to 100.8173% of max load.

She tabbed up a few workers, ordering up a pair of massive thorium reactors, making sure the air defense and point defense systems as well as the battlescreens would be fully in place before her worker machines even laid the foundation of the reactors.

She'd learned that her first year when she hadn't paid attention and her opponent kept wiping out the foundation, damaging and destroying valuable construction bots as they kept rushing in to build the massive foundation of the reactor complex.

Looking over the status boards, Jane frowned.

For the last sixty-three hours, there had been no new activity that was not reinforcing previous battle lines.

In several places, artillery and rocket attacks had slacked off.

A sudden hunch made her spam "Take Cover" orders across all of her units, including her construction bots.

She had barely managed to do so when hundreds of points where her reach wasn't quite established, or in rear areas in strange thin slices, suddenly wavered.

Jane tensed, waiting for the sudden attack of replicated troops and war machines.

Instead, pristine wilderness sat there.

She blinked a few times, then got recon drones back up.

It had been restored. Not just to previous of her arrival, but even further back.

The lithium salt flats, which were nearly depleted when Jane had taken them, were so thick the sand was bluish. The thorium crystal fields were back with such thickness that she couldn't even see the ground.

She stopped in mid-queue arrangement, quickly wiping out her orders to seed the entire area within her zone of control with temporal stabilization systems.

She pulled her hand back.

Curiously, she feathered the temporal stabilization fields over several areas that had completely depleted resources, then turned them off.

Within an hour, all of those zones were reverted to pre-war status.

Smiling, she got out a chocolate and frosting roll, ripping off the wrapper and jamming it in her mouth, chewing with a big grin.

She repeated it in several other places where the resources were gone and she had little more than unreclaimed piping and conveyor belts.

The ground rippled and steadied to prior to her resource extraction.

Her conveyors, inop autominers, and other material were all gone.

But the resources were back.

Laughing, she began giving orders.

------

"Observe. The lemur has lost critical infrastructure," the Convention said.

The insane one looked for a long time.

"Does the lemur use tritium-dioxide crystal matrixes in its creations? Or lithium salt?" it asked.

"It's a lemur, who knows?" several of the Conclave answered.

"We have damaged the lemurs ability to temporally protect its territory!" several of the Convention broadcast eagerly.

The Convention crowded together, gathering and merging their power.

At last they could effect the lemur!

The terrain wavered, lemur machinery vanishing.

The insane one studied it slowly.

"VICTORY IS OURS!" one of the Cabals within the Convention broadcast.

"Uh..." the insane one said, standing alone.

"What?" several Ancient Ones asked.

"Did anyone else notice that every single area seemed to possess resources?" it asked.

"More damage! Several large areas have suddenly suffered shielding collapses!" another Cabal cried out.

The Atrekna rushed forward to assist one another in reverting the terrain to pre-lemur status.

The sole insane one wiggled its feeding tentacles nervously.

"Uh..."

"Silence!" the others ordered.

The terrain shimmered and the lemur machinery was replaced by tar sands in one area.

"BEHOLD!" the Atrekan cried out.

"I think we're being deceived somehow," the insane one said.

"Your idea was excellent. Seek not to gain even more recognition," the Ancient Ones chided the insane one.

"This is a bad idea. You should all ensure that there are no possible resources for the lemur to use," the insane one counseled.

"There! More shielding fluctuations! ATTACK!"

The insane one slowly backed out of the room.

His people weren't known for pattern recognition, but it appeared, mind you, just appeared, that every replication and restoration seemed to bring up depleted resources.

-----

Jane smiled.

She realized she could only pull the same trick so many times. Even a race with as poor pattern recognition as the Atrekna and the Lanaktallan would eventually figure it out.

She'd need to jam their ability to restore the landscape.

But it had given her time to do it in style.

Jane checked the levels. They were all ready, having silently absorbed solar radiation until their charge banks were full.

Closing one eye, she twiddled two fingers on the keyboard before pointing her fingers like a gun at one of the monitors.

The Solar Oscillating Laser sattelites, repurposed to temporal resonance cannon shots, all fired.

"BANG!" she yelled, then spun her chair around, laughing.

As far as the Atrekna were concerned, the entire planet heaved as the coordinated SOL systems all fired disruptor, resonance, and shockwave munitions.

The entire planet flared white for an instant.

And the universe started laughing.