First Contact

Chapter 927: Edge of Twilight

When you ask the Leebaw about The Builders, they only say one thing: There is room in their grave for you.

This phrase seems to be directly at odds with the recorded facts that they were allies of The Builders. Ruins and archeological digs show that the Leebaw fought against whatever for the Aligned Species Confederacy fought during the terrible Builder War against that unknown enemy.

It is a good reminder that the Forerunner races, such as the Leebaw and the Hamaroosan, view the universe differently than we do.

They believe in a malevolent universe, despite the fact that a universe is nothing more than a collection of particles and easily observed scientific phenomenon, with no possible way for it to possess any kind of motivation or intellect. - Exploring the History of The Builders, 2215 Current Age

Half the Atrekna were reduced to a light purple mist that coated everything. Of the remaining half, most were blown into purple chunky salsa.

The phasic crystals shattered, sending shrapnel sheeting through the rooms, bouncing off of walls. The phasonium alloy melted and ran like taffy. For the Atrekna unlucky enough to be in a room with a ceiling of phasonium, death was quick as they were coated in liquid phasonium. Temporal and chronotron systems exploded with enough force that in several fortresses the outside walls shattered.

Barely a Conclave survived.

The insane one found himself alive. It had been hurtled through the wall, its personal protective items were destroyed, and it was bruised and battered.

It was alive, though.

Just... covered.

In goop.

It knew, without anyone else telling it, that some how, some way, the lemur had done something and this was all the lemur's fault.

The last thing it remembered was everything turning white.

And pain.

Lots and lots of pain.

It closed its eyes, trying to use its temporal abilities to repair the bruises and scrapes on its body.

The headache was intense, like some malevolent being was pouring red hot sand into their brain.

It passed out in the middle of the seizure.

When it woke, it was dark inside the citadel. The phasic lights were out. The air smelled of vaporized flesh and blood. The floor was cold, no longer slightly thrumming.

It raised its head and realized that it had bled from around all three eyes.

It tried to get to its feet twice, collapsing back on the floor.

It tried to lift itself up with its phasic and psionic powers.

The fire ants exploded in its head and it was vaguely aware of the seizure before it collapsed.

When it woke up, it could faintly smell something burning. It tried to get up again, collapsed, and laid there for a long moment.

It started to bring up the temporal control over its body, to restore its health, and stopped as the slow buildup of power made its head fill with burning shards of glass and the feeling of molten metal being poured down its spine.

With horror it realized that there was no use in attempting any temporal or chronotron manipulations. That its phasic and psionic powers were wiped away, gone.

Using the wall, it managed to get to its feet and stagger through the dark hallways.

Finally, it reached its goal.

Where the powerful and indestructable combat globes were located.

Except...

There was a massive hole in the wall. The cystal lattices and controls were gone, the delicate appearing yet nearly indestructable crystal shells were nothing but scattered golden crystalline powder.

It sat down, keening its distress.

Finally, it got up and staggered around, looking for something, anything.

It found a flitter. Little more than a disc of phasonium/substance-X alloy. The controls were basic, although half of them did not work.

Best of all, it didn't require any phasic energy from the insane one.

It climbed on the flitter, laying on it and staring at the darkness outside the hole in the wall.

It slept.

It wasn't sure for how long.

The sun was setting when it managed to get up and active the flitter-disc.

It used it to move to the stores, where it got water and some nutrients. Not much. Enough to stop the cramping in its stomach and get rid of the parched feeling.

It slept again.

It woke up to insects crawling on it. Biting its flesh.

It woke up with a burbling scream, slapping at the insects.

It drank the seawater, relishing in the taste, and ate the synthetic flesh.

Such poor sustenance was still sustenance.

As it ate, it felt resolve fill it.

It was the lemur's fault.

All of it.

The loss of the Home Universe.

The loss of the Prime Systems.

The loss of the war against the Inheritors of Madness.

The shame and humiliation of being defeated and beaten by such primitive creatures.

The many many Atrekna deaths at the hands of the Mad Lemurs.

It was the lemur's fault.

THAT particular lemur.

It didn't know how it knew, but it knew.

The lemur was in the command and control building that had been pretending to be an Ohm Class Servitor.

The lemur was inside that building.

Laughing.

Laughing at it.

It knew that the lemur was responsible for all of it!

That particular lemur.

Feeling resolve fill it, it activated the controls on the flitter disc and headed into the night.

It didn't know what it was going to do, but it was going to find the lemur.

And then...

and then, it would kill the lemur.

Once it killed the lemur, all of the defeats, all of the humiliations, would be reversed. The Atrekna would reign supreme in this universe, the Old Universe would be restored, and it could go home.

It hated it here.

Hated the New Universe.

It was all that lemur's fault it was here.

It would find the lemur and kill the lemur.

And then everything would be better.

It just knew it.

-----

Commander Jane leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes and swallowing the last of the BobCo Skrumtilumptus Energy Bar, then washing it down with the rest of a can of Liquid Hate Blueberry and Old Highway Asphalt.

Since the Shit Out of Luck cannons had fired (SOL = Solar Oscillating Laser AKA Shit Out of Luck) the entire command and control of the dwellerspawn and the servitors had gone to hell.

She had seen roughly two-thirds of the servitors waver and vanish, like desert mirage clearing. Jane had filed that particular little bit away in her files.

Hopefully, when and if she was recovered, someone would see that the Atrekna's habit of temporally replicating troops could be overcome by a sufficient Shit Out of Luck shot with global coverage and chronotron overload cascade.

It was a big if.

To be honest, since the ansibles and the hypercom wave system was down, she had no idea if there even was anyone left to pick her up.

No worse than Clownface, she thought to herself.

She pushed back the memories and the taste of carbonized metal and vaporized flesh that had coated murdered worlds, the taste that hovered on the edge of her tongue with a swallow of the dregs of the can of Liquid Hate.

Jane cracked open another can, rubbing the cold can on her forehead then her chest before taking a long drink.

The dry mouth was starting to set in.

A glance at her life clock showed she still had at least six hours to go.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then reached out and re-established battlefield control.

It may not matter for the war overall, but I have a battle to win, she thought to herself as she began typing with one hand and using the manual point and click device with the other.

Looking closely, she decided to leave some avenues of escape open for the servitors and slack off the pressure on the dwellerspawn to see what would happen.

Within a half an hour the servitors were fleeing along the corridors she had left open, running for their warrens and the ruins where they lived. The dwellerspawn stopped engaging, going back to primitive movements and doing little more than mill around.

That knocked out a lot of the combat.

Jane nodded to herself.

Without the Atrekna, most servitor species seemed content to hide in their warrens until the combat was over.

She really couldn't blame them.

The modern battlefield was no place for amateurs or people who didn't want to be there, as far as she was concerned.

You go home, you go back to eating plants, and I'll spare your lives, she thought as she chained up another set of attack runs to break the morale of the servitors who were still putting up a fight in a dozen or so sectors.

She glanced at her life clock.

Plenty of time.

------

The Atrekna had passed out twice more. Both times the flitter-disc had slowly lowered to the ground and stopped, just bobbing a few inches from the vegetation.

The second time it took the Atrekna a long time to figure out what was going on.

The distant sound of artillery reminded it.

The lemur.

It had to kill the lemur.

Then it could go home.

Back to the Old Universe.

Back to caring for the food creatures that the higher ranking Atrekna considered delicacies.

All it had to do was kill that particular lemur and it could go home.

It pulled itself up by the control podium and put the flitter-disc back to operation, heading for the inland swamp-sea where the Ohm Class slavespawn had turned out to be that dastardly lemur.

The lemur who was entirely at fault for everything.

Kill the lemur.

And go home.

-----

Jane watched as the last of the servitors broke contact, leaving behind their weaponry and their vehicles, just fleeing on foot.

Part of her urged herself to send in the grav-strikers and turn the corridor into a Highway of Death. Just pound the routed servitors into chunks and leave them there as a reminder to future generations not to mess with the Confederacy or Terrans.

But she held off.

She'd had enough of wanton slaughter during Clownface.

Drone checks showed that even the more aggressive of the dwellerspawn were reverting to primal instinct. Some were hunting, others fleeing, others chasing other dwellerspawn.

The sat-scans showed only a handful of phasic signatures left, scattered around the planet.

She assigned hunter-killer drones to go after them, then checked her queues.

Nothing that needed her attention for at least twelve hours.

She logged out, giving up battlefield control, and leaned back.

She closed her eyes and logged out of the system.

-----

The system kicked her in the chest, bringing her gasping awakefulness.

One-hundred forty hours had passed.

She didn't bother asserting battlefield control, instead she looked over the scanner and drone feeds.

The servitors had fled.

The dwellerspawn were moving as animals.

She checked the phasic logs.

The hunter-killer drones and the autonomous mobile sword system had accounted for all of the phasic signatures.

Jane cracked open another fizzystim and sucked down half of it.

Jane wasn't sure if the thirst was getting worse. It had been bad for the last few drops.

Clone War Lyfe, yo, she thought to herself.

Holding her breath, she sent the kill command on the autonomous warfare systems.

Two didn't respond.

She wiped both of them out with a carefully typed command that detonated the destruct charges she always placed beneath the facilities.

They were both too far away for her to feel the rumble of the subterranean charges going off.

Jane took a few minutes to relax. Closing her eyes, breathing deep, reciting her calming mantras.

Yea, though I walk through the Valley of Death, I shall fear no evil, for I am the baddest motherfucker in the valley, she finished her mantras with.

She reset the system and logged out.

-----

It was close.

It had been forced to set down twice. Once due to hunger and thirst.

It had managed to capture a fleeing servitor and devour it.

Its arm still hurt from where the servitor had bitten it. The flesh around the bite swollen, hot, and painful to the touch. The tooth marks leaked milky fluid that smelled faintly of rotting river weeds.

It didn't care.

The lemur.

The lemur had to die.

Then the war would be won and it could go home.

It just had to kill the lemur.

Then the war would be won.

And it could go home.

The Atrekna wiped off the skin below its third eye, ignoring the purplish pink fluid, the milky sticky fluid, and the blood, then wiped under the other two eyes.

Its head still hurt. A buzzing, burning, biting pain that felt like red hot powdered glass inside of its skull, down its limbs, down its spine.

It didn't matter.

All that mattered was the lemur.

It activated the controls, holding tight to the control podium.

It was getting weaker. Hunger and thirst biting deep into its strength.

It didn't matter.

Kill the lemur.

Go home.

The flitter-disc whined, barely able to stay aloft, as it moved toward the inland swamp-sea.

-----

Jane checked the logs again.

No combat for over eighty hours.

She had destroyed the enemy war material. She had seeded the replication fields with temporal stabilization systems. There were no phasic signatures.

The system was already starting to shut down systems. Reclaiming facilities, mechs, and tanks. It had already reclaimed the clones.

One of her monitors went dead and the chamber filled with the smell of magic smoke.

It's been too long without repair, she thought. I was due for refit when the Mar-gite showed up. Who knows how overdue for refit I am now.

She queried the computer.

And got back a response she didn't expect.

A quick check of the lifeclock showed she had a few hours.

She ordered Asshat to start work, ordered the other three worker drones into their cradles.

Jane got up from her seat, flinching slightly as the waste disposal systems disconnected from her.

The locker opened up at a touch.

Her uniform was a little snug, but she had to admit she'd probably eaten a few too many Goody Yum-Yum bars the past few centuries.

She withdrew her equipment belt and strapped it on. She got her wallet, her earplug case, her enemy vehicle ID cards and put them all where they belonged. She put the linkage into her cortex motor control socket, letting it synch up.

Her SUDS was out and this was the next best thing.

She grabbed the last two items in the locker and jammed them into her pocket.

She polished the rank on her hat with a cuff.

Commander Jane Marcus Prestini stood by the "MAINTENANCE CREW ONLY" hatch and waited.

Asshat finished the tunnel and cracked open the door.

Jane closed her eyes and inhaled slowly.

Real air.

Not canned. No run through dozens of filters, but real, pollen laden, dust filled air. It was barely within tolerances, but it wasn't canned air.

She grabbed the bottle of real Smokey Cone "Old Wavy Grain" whiskey from the back of the locker where she had put it when she had first been sealed up inside the command center.

She followed Asshat outside.

The day was warm and sunny, slightly humid. The vegetation was green and tantalizingly familiar even though it was obviously alien.

She moved over and sat on a rock before looking around.

Just rubble and hardened lava.

She cracked open the bottle of whiskey, poured some on Asshat's head, then took a long drink out of it.

It burned as it went down.

Smiling, she dug in her pocket, pulling out a personal effect. She strapped it on her wrist, attached the hard light projector, and turned it on.

The Gotcha-Tommy pet appeared, shaking itself and making squeaking barks. It ran over to her and she petted it. It made squeaking barks, ran off, then came back with a stick. She threw the stick and the Gotcha-Tommy pet ran over, grabbed it, and ran back.

Laughing, she threw it again, then took another drink of the whiskey.

Asshat was busy sealing up the corridor again.

Jane knew that when she ran out of time, the 'punch out' she'd locked into her control socket would make a copy of her SUDS record and transmit it to the command and control system.

If the systems were activated again, she's get spun back up.

She didn't bother thinking about it, just took pulls off the bottle and threw the stick for her pet to run and get.

-----

It couldn't believe its luck.

There.

The lemur.

It swooped down, slamming down.

It rolled free and came up, screeching.

The lemur turned around, the stick in its hand and a bottle of liquid in the other hand.

Screaming, it ran at the lemur.

------

Jane saw the Atrekna coming at the last second, right before it slammed into the ground. It rolled out of the wreckage, laid there for a second, long enough for her stand up and stare at it.

The Atrekna jumped up, screeching, and charged her, hands out stretched.

The pupil of its middle eye was wide open. It was leaking ooze from all three eyes. One arm was swollen and dark purple.

It still charge.

Right when it reached her, Jane swung the whiskey bottle, smashing it onto the top of the conical head.

The Atrekna collapsed.

Before it could roll over, Jane dropped the bottle, grabbed the stick with both hands, and jammed the wooden stick through the Atreknas back.

It screamed, scrabbling at the ground.

Jane grabbed the bottle and started smashing the back the Atrekna's head. The glass shattered and Jane grabbed the top of the head, yanked the head back.

And cut its throat with the broken bottle neck.

For the Atrekna, everything went white again.

It found itself back in the pens, petting the food animals.

Home it thought.

Jane staggered over and picked up a big rock as the Atrekna gagged and choked, writhing. She straddled the dying Atrekna, lifted up the rock, and smashed its head in.

"Asshole," Jane said.

She moved over and sat down on the rock. She looked around and saw her Gotcha-Tommy pet was missing. She looked at her wrist and made a face.

The old watch-like device was broken. As she watched, the tiny battery fell out.

Sighing, she sat down and looked around.

No whiskey, no Gotcha-Pet, she thought. This sucks.

She looked up, closing her eyes, letting the sun shine on her face.

"See you on the flip side," she whispered, reaching back to the base of her skull.

She squeezed the two buttons.

Her body collapsed bonelessly on the rock, her open eyes staring at eternity.

-----

Inside the dark chamber the maintenance spiders went about their slow work.

A single screen was lit two words.

SYSTEM STANDBY