chsdbacks Chapter 750: The Inheritor's War
Chapter 750: The Inheritor's War
Chapter 750: The Inheritor's War
Tell them: It is a manner of honor. - Captain Delminta, Hamaroosa Naval Vessel Harvester of Sorrow, Flagship - Two Pinches Combat Fleet, Task Force Delicate Orchid, Operation Iron Piglet, Second Precursor War
The system was a rich one, a system that any species that discovered it would covet. Two dwarf yellow stars in a binary cooperative orbit tandem, nineteen planetary bodies including eight gas giants, two of which were supermassive. There were eight asteroid belts full of resources and a resource thick bean shaped Oort cloud.
It sat one-hundred-sixteen light years beyond the border of the Rim Worlds, deep into the Long Dark.
The Atrekna were present in the system in force. The system was rich in natural resources, with multiple gas giants, including two hypermassive gas giants full of fireice and dihydrogen. The planetoids were rich with rare earth elements and two of them had vast untapped reserves of petroleum to add to the biosoup used to grow slavespawn.
Nearly eight hundred Harvester and Goliath Class autonomous war machines orbited the gas giants. Nearly three thousand Sun Scraper class slavespawn hive-ships orbited the gas giants, their miles long tentacles dropping into the hydrocarbon atmosphere to drink deeply so that the hive-ships could spawn more troops to put into stasis.
The system defenses were thick and heavy. There were nCv cannons on orbit around the planet, massive planetary defense missile systems ringing the planets, combat orbital stations heavily protected by phasic shields. Thousands of aerospace capable slavespawn and autonomous war machines moved in flocks through the stellar system's spaces.
The system was key to the Second Spoked Offensive.
The Overmind was thick and rich, dozens of Overbrains and Omnibrains linked together to form one of the thickest and deepest Overminds the Atrekna possessed in the New Universe.
There were hundreds of thousands of Atrekna on the surface of the two planets in the Green Zone (for the Atrekna). More Atrekna existed on those two planets than had existed in the Old Universe for five hundred million years.
Only a quarter of them had been temporally recovered, the rest had either been born in the New Universe or, in the case of nearly six percent of them, had managed to flee the Old Universe before its collapse.
The Atrekna viewed it as a fortress world.
Anyone who had seen the defenses of the Confederacy's member species's home planets would have burst out laughing.
Still, the Atrekna owned the system. Had owned it and were busy mining it for nearly eighty years local time as the system had been sunk deep.
Other systems, less defended than Prime System Gamma, were beginning to broadcast that they were under attack in force.
The Atrekna in Prime System Gamma did not worry.
Even if the Inheritors knew the system was in possession of the system, the Atrekna were confident that their scanning arrays would detect any force buildup by the Inheritors before they could launch an attack, that would be doomed to fail, upon Prime System Gamma.
Which was why some of the Atrekna researchers were confused by the sudden eruption of giggling particles that spun and wheeled as they shed more of themselves.
Moments later a ship streaked into existence deep in the stellar mass gravity well, appearing in a split second near the outer hypermassive gas giant.
It let loose with a primal scream of rage that shook the entire system.
LET THIS SYSTEM SHUDDER WITH THE WRATH OF THE HAMAROOSAN PEOPLE!
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The Harvester of Sorrow's shields came up instantly, before the hyperspace translation hash fully cleared the system. Hatched irised open to reveal the heavy missile launchers. Gun tubes extended for the C+ cannons and the plasma wave phased motion gun began withdrawing the heavy piston in preparation for a shot.
"Targets, many many targets!" the scanning chief, the Captain's Right Hand Aunt Beeta, sang out. "Autonomous war machines in the Goliath and Harvester Class. Dwellerspawn in the Devourer Class. Unknown ship configurations! Orbital facilities around all orbital bodies!"Follow the latest novels at novelhall.com
"Designate target groups! Tell the flight crews to prepare to launch!" Captain Delminta snapped, her face twisted into a snarl. She pointed out one of the Harvester class vessels orbiting the hypermassive gas giant. "KILL THAT ONE FIRST!"
"Firing main gun!" Sheenla, the Chief Gunnery Officer, called out. She held tight to the two levers embedded in the arms of her crash couch, yanking them backwards then shoving them forward. "FIRING PLASMA WAVE PHASED MOTION CANNON!"
The entire vessel seemed to rock back even though the ship didn't actually move. The massive piston cycled and the huge grooved barrel the ship was built around glowed bright blue for a moment before it vomited out a beam of coherent energy.
The beam crossed six light seconds in less than a second, slamming into the unaware autonomous war machine. It transfixed it for a moment, halos of energy exploding from the top and bottom of the continent sized war machine. Cracks appeared in the hull of the autonomous war machine, spreading out from the impact and glowing with a blue light.
The Harvester exploded.
Several of the baroque ships, daubed pink and white with strange twisted statues on the hull, drove directly at the massive Atrekna command ships, deliberately ramming the Atrekna ships. Once the hulls were interlocked, massive engines made the baroque ship twist in the wound, even as the main engines pushed the ship deeper into the Atrekna vessel.
Once the pink and white vessels stopped twisting, sally ports exploded open and dozens, scores, hundreds of screaming lemur-feline hybrid power armor troops flooded the Atrekna vessels. Plasma fueled fire, heavy gyrojet rounds, and roaring chainswords ripped apart the crews as the lemur-feline hybrids fought to get to the center of the command vessel.
On the bridge of the Harvester of Sorrow it was busy but muted even as Captain Delminta stalked back and forth in front of the main viewscreen, her command stick gripped tightly in her hands. Her face was twisted in a snarl as she designated targets and snapped orders to the Hamaroosan vessels in the Task Force.
In one corner of the screen the Arch-Preceptor and the Holy Inquisitor of Terra both watched her with stern approval on their faces.
"Resistance is collapsing," the Preceptor said, his voice stentorian.
"The desperate take unwise counsel in hopes of pulling victory from defeat," the Inquisitor added, the bridge lights gleaming on the warsteel implants on his face.
"Let them try," Captain Delminta snarled. "We will purge this place in fire and blood."
"As you will," the Preceptor said, nodding.
Unknown to Delminta, the Inquisitor was indeed correct.
On one of the orbiting fortresses the Atrekna were desperately trying to find something, anything, to turn overwhelming defeat into some semblance of victory. The temporal resonance munitions had covered the entire system with a chronotron haze of giggling and splitting particles, making it almost impossible to replicate autonomous war machines or slavespawn or Atrekna that had been spawned in the system. The Atrekna couldn't reach any system or resource that had crossed the system's path, the terrible weapons of the lemur fleet having disrupted that option.
They cast about desperately.
One spotted something.
A spawn.
It had appeared near the outer hypermassive gas giants.
It consulted with the other Atrekna, who agreed that the spawn's massive size would assist it in assaulting the fleet that was rapidly crushing the Atrekna forces.
They joined their power, reached back, and brought forward the single slavespawn they had spotted.
"STATUS CHANGE! TEMPORAL SHIFT IN PROGRESS!" the Temporal Officer called out.
Captain Delminta whirled around. "Talk to me!"
"Source point at the outer gas giant! It's entering realspace and realtime! Visual coming in!"
The image of the temporally replicated Atrekna weapon appeared onscreen.
Captain Delminta stared at the image, her mouth hanging open, her command stick falling from her hands and clattering on the deck.
"Communication coming in, relaying," the communication's officer said.
"Hey, uh, what's happening? Where'd you go?" sounded out from the speakers.
On the screen, thousand mile long tentacles unfurled to extend into the gas giant, was a massive iridescent cephalopod.
"Delminta? Where did you go? Stupid com-nerves, shoulda got a warranty," the young female's voice said.
"ALERT THE CRUSADE! NEGATIVE TARGET! MARK AS FRIENDLY!" Delminta shouted.
"Hey, what's going on?" Sandy asked, staring at the battle around her with city sized eyes. "Uh, did I miss something?"
The universe howled with laughter and entire protogalaxies spun into existence.