First Contact

Chapter 845: Names of the Fallen

"Wait till you see it."

"See what?"

"What a man can do to another man." - Second Global Conflict, TerraSol, Resource Wars Era

"HER ENTIRE FAMILY IS DEAD BECAUSE YOU PICKED THIS FUCKING PLACE OUT OF A HAT!"

"What? Were they, like, psychos or something?"

"PSYCHOS DON'T EXPLODE IN FUCKING SUNLIGHT!" - Unknown, TerraSol, Resource Wars Era

"I fear no man. But that... that... that thing is no man. It is our sins in human form." - Unknown, Resource Wars Era

"We have arrived for your ill advised summons. Such sights we have to show you."

"After the Clownface Nebula Conflict, I just want to feel something again, so lets get to it. You can start with whatever you want, as long as I feel something, anything, anything at all. I just want to feel something again."

"You know what, um... tell you what, we'll be back in a few minutes. Why don't you have a drink and relax, maybe check out this bootleg anime porn or something. Maybe a piece of candy? Tell you what, we'll be right back, we promise." - Hell Raiser LVII - Numbed Flesh

The meeting room was silent. There were only four living beings present, everyone else was a hologram, a digital representation of a staff officer hundreds of miles to dozens of light seconds away from the meeting room.

Less than an hour had gone by, time enough at the speed of modern combat and modern disasters.

"So, it's confirmed?" General Tik-Tak asked, breaking the silence.

Several generals nodded.

"The hypercom wave generator is outside the Sol System, and while it accepts some commands, it is not accepting the self-destruct or emergency shut-down commands," another General said.

"Try to send a signal out. Let Fleet and Confed know they have to shut down the hypercom wave generator from their side," the commander of the Earth Defense Force said.

Everyone nodded and hummed to one another.

Tik-Tak turned from the view as the avatars logged off, looking back out across the desert.

The Digital Omnimessiah help those poor bastards.

-----

Kalki sat in one of the empty chairs in the control room, scratching his goat's back and using the toe of his boot to put the escaped shed hair in a pile. The people in the control room ignored him, something he was just fine with.

"There's no way to shut down the hyperwave generator?" Pete asked.

Two of the technicians shook their heads.

"There is. There has to be, but it's part of the SUDS system. There's a way to shut it down, but we can't find it," Doctor Payne said. She pointed out the window. "The hardware is somewhere on Alpha Layer, we know that."

"That helps very little," Pete said. "That's only about 550 million times the size of the Earth and there's about three dozen of us to search."

"I'm running a keyword search," Doctor Varness said.

Kalki wanted to laugh, but kept silent, still scratching Dancer, who shifted so that the itchy spot right there could be reached.

"The hyperwave generator is an integral part of the SUDS network," Doctor Payne added. "Without it, we're not sure if there will be realtime updating to the SUDS."

Pete closed his eyes, putting his hands on the counter. He checked the timer in his peripheral vision. He'd been awake over 36 hours. Without opening his eyes he reached into his pocket, grabbed a stim, and pulled it out. A piece of skin pulled back, an access cover slid away, and Pete injected the stim through the arterial port in his forearm. It raced through his system as he stood there, thinking.

"All right. We've got to find it," he said. He turned around. "Keyword search will take weeks or months, and that's time they don't have out there. We're already looking at days," he opened his eyes, his pupils contracted.

"Look for where we have an increasing amount of phasic shades appearing. It would be on Alpha Layer, but not on Lightside," Pete said. He tapped the top of a the 2.5D monitor. "It would have generated significant heat, they would have built it on the opposite side, bleed the heat into the nothingness beyond somehow. Check for an increase of phasic shades and massive cooling arrays."

Everyone nodded and Kalki watched as they turned back to their own work.

Peter looked over at Kalki and tilted his head at the doorway. Kalki nodded, heading out the door and into the hallway. He moved over next to the drink machine, Dancer clattering after him. Two pushes of the buttons and Kalki straightened up, holding fizzybrews in his hands.

Pete walked out of the control room, moving up to the drink machine. He stopped, faced it, and put his hands on it. He leaned forward until his forehead was against the machine and held that position for a long time.

Kalki merely watched.

Peter pulled his head back, tendons in his neck standing out, held the position for a second, then slammed his forehead against the vending machine. He held still, then pulled back and repeated the action.

Kalki opened one of the beers as Peter kept slowly repeating the action, long pauses against the vending machine or when his head was pulled back.

After a dozen or so slams, Pete relaxed, slumping slightly against the machine.

"Billions are dead," Pete whispered.

"And you have worked tirelessly to save them," Kalki said.

"Billions more will die," Pete replied, his voice full of anguish.

"Is it any different then when we planet cracked inhabited worlds? Any different than nova-sparking systems that resisted the Imperium's might too strenuously?" Kalki asked.

"We had no choice. It was before we broke the conditioning," Pete said. He pulled his head back and slammed it against the vending machine. "I can't save them."

"No," Kalki said. He reached out, set the unopened bottle on top of the vending machine, and put one hand on the back of his brother's neck. "You can't save them all, brother. It is something I learned in terrible ways. A lesson our brother Enraged Phillip taught me. A lesson our mother the Malevolent Universe spoon fed me from my origins as a goat herder in the Andes Mountains."

"All of this. What good is it if I can't save them," Peter moaned, rocking his head side to side, pressing his face against the vending machine. "We made this, we built this... this... this thing to save them. To save them all."

Dancer made a sad noise and rubbed against Peter's leg, her little tail wagging.

"It is not ours to just command, Pete," Kalki said. "Our Mother gets a say also."

Pete sagged slightly, then straightened up and slammed his head against the vending machine.

This time it wasn't his forehead, instead he drove his face against the vending machine.

"Enough," Kalki said. He tightened his grip on Pete's neck and pulled him back. "Enough flagellation, brother," he said.

Pete stood, slumped, his nose starting to bleed.

"Drink," Kalki ordered. He held out of the fizzybrew and Pete took it, taking a long drink off of it. Kalki let go of Pete's neck.

"You sound like Daxin," Kalki said.

Peter blinked. "I do?"

Kalki nodded. "I have seen Enraged Phillip, Daxin 'The Walking War Crime' Freeborn, Osiris of the Warsteel Flame, agonize over the loss of life just as you are now," Kalki said. He reached up, grabbed the unopened bottle and twisted it open. He took a drink, then poured some in his hand and knelt down, letting Dancing lap at the liquid as he looked up at Peter with a twisted, self-mocking smile. "I was going to planet crack a world rather than expend the effort to invade it. Daxin argued most forcefully against my plan."

Peter took another long swallow as Kalki poured more fizzybrew in his hand and held it out for Dancer to lap at.

"I was caught up in the madness, my mind full of fire and fury, and I rebuffed his arguments at first," Kalki said. He gave a wry chuckle. "But, he changed my mind."

"How?" Pete asked, wiping his mouth.

"By caving in my face with that big right fist of his," Kalki said. He shook his head. "It was a pointed reminder that I was Kalki the Omnicidal but he was, first and foremost, Daxin Freeborn. He sent me away to be healed. He fought his brother rather than consign a world to burn from a planet cracker."

Pete took a long, deep breath, then let it out slowly. "I... I see those numbers rising, Kalki, and they aren't just numbers to me. They're people. People with lives, people with hopes, with dreams, with people who love them. It isn't just numbers, it's people that are dying because I can't stop the shades from propagating through the network and killing them."

Kalki nodded, ruffling the fur on Dancer's head and standing back up.

"I know, brother," Kalki said. He waved a hand. "You say you should do more, you should magically figure out a way to save them all, while you stand inside of what is a technological miracle that most species could not even conceptualize, much less actually create," Kalki took a drink and then gestured with the bottle. "You have worked, tirelessly, to save these people you feel so responsible for."

Kalki put his hand on Peter's shoulder, patting it firmly. "You will figure something out. Whether that is how to bring them all to safety, eliminate the phasic shades, or whatever miracle you perform, you will figure something out."

Kalki gave a wide smile. "I have faith, Peter. Not just in our Father, but in my brothers," he put his hand back on Peter's shoulder. "I have faith in you, brother."

Pete nodded.

"Let's go back in," Kalki said. He made a show of checking his wrist, where bioluminescent numbers glowed softly under the skin. "I'll give you two hours to work. After that, you go to bed. The stim will wear off then and I'll have Bellona tuck you in and sing you a little song so you can take a nap."

Pete shook his head, smiling. "Fuck you, Kalki."

Kalki's laughter echoed down the hallway as Dancer clattered after the two men.

-----

The world was the fourth planet in a system that had been sunk deep. The entire system was heavily fortified, the stellar spaces defended, the planet defended, with slavespawn and servitors heavily armed and replicated repeatedly until there was no way the Inheritors of Madness could take back the system or destroy it.

It was a research and military system.

The protocontinent had been broken up, then the weather calmed and tamed, then the continents seeded with life to become a slavespawn and servitor breeding world. Biological 'foundries' were created. Advanced weapon systems and computing devices were grown.

Crystalline 'castles' were lifted from the earth and research was begun.

The Grand Project was put into motion.

Burn jumpspace and hyperspace by opening self-replicating portals between jumpspace/hyperspace and Hellspace, flooding both hyperatomic planes with the burning fires of the original hyperatomic plane.

It had required new portal research, understanding how the stress points between the dimensions of this universe, this reality, worked in conjunction with each other.

Research had been progressing just fine.

Then it had happened.

Something, somewhere, went terribly wrong.

Terran phasic imprints had flooded the world. Streaming from the psychic networks, erupting from the very flesh of the Overmind network lobes.

Imprints normally just repeated the actions that they had performed right before their death.

But, of course, the Mad Lemurs of Terra couldn't just do what everyone else, in countless universes, multiverses, and realities did.

No, they had be special.

The phasic impressions, the imprints of a lemur's last moments of pain and agony, instead possessed a feral and wrath filled intellect. Filled with pain, agony, and rage, these impressions attacked, spread out from their origin point, and killed.

Worse, they would jump through phasic channels. Transfer through phasic communication lines.

Thousands, then millions of the shades flooded over the planet.

Ones that ran out of victims vanished into the overmind network, to reappear somewhere else on the planet or to jump to the next system.

The slavespawn, the unintelligent ones not much more than base animals without an Atrekna or servitor handler, were undisturbed by the shades.

The intelligent slavespawn, the servitors, and the Atrekna were not so lucky.

The shades flooded down on them.

The more phasic energy, the more shades swept down to kill.

Within hours, days, the world went from an important industrial and breeding node to an empty world full of dimly aware slavespawn and a few shocked and bewildered survivors.

At first, the shades swarmed around the planet, searching for more victims, searching for something to feed that insatiable hunger that filled them.

Then, the survivors heard it.

It wasn't across the overmind network.

It came from somewhere else.

soft blanket warm blanket cuddle blanket one and one is two two and two are four the ocean plays with shells upon the shore fruit is yummy juice is good snacks are good for rumbly tummies naptime is good naptime is nice sleep next to broodmommy and cuddle with each other soft blanket warm blanket naptime sleepytime

It was coming from some of the shades themselves.

The shades quit screaming, quit sweeping across the world, looking for more to kill, more to devour, instead headed for the abandoned crystal lattices that allowed superluminal communication. They began sweeping into the massive crystals and vanishing.

The crystalline structures themselves began singing the songs.

The great Ohm class slavespawn began singing the song softly.

A woman's voice, the voice of a woman who had just barely left childhood and entered adulthood, began to emanate from the crystals.

The shades stopped hunting, stopped searching, and began heading for the crystals, merging with them and vanishing.

Shandaar stood on the edge of the cliff, looking down on the wreckage of one of the crystalline cities that had housed hundreds of thousands of Atrekna only a few days before.

There was only the odd flicker here and there of an isolated phasic shade moving through the street, looking for more victims, looking for more food. They few still in the city were ignoring the song, their hunger, their rage, still filling them beyond thoughts of anything more than death.

It was not the first time she had witnessed the Mad Lemurs of Terra destroy everything in their path.

She did not reach out with her psychic senses. She did not use her psychic power to hold her aloft.

She wore soft slippers, adorned with river seed pearls and twinkling cubic zirconium, standing at the edge on her own two feet.

The wind streamed the long train behind her, the lacy white material snapping in the breeze. The gauzy white veil that covered her face was adorned with embroidery and tiny gems, the edge threading of gold.josei

It was the fifth world she had checked.

It was the fifth Atrekna research world that had fallen to the Mad Lemur's dead.

If there were any survivors, they were few.

Shandaar shook her, and she was a she because she had decided that she was a she, head and adjusted her veil.

For a split second she looked like she was made of tightly woven vibrating multicolored strings.

Then she was gone.

All that remained was the song.

Ave Imperator...

-----

Crashrider yanked the wheel, avoiding the car that had just changed lanes, but the massive cargo truck behind him clipped his bumper, sending the damaged patrol car spinning across three lanes, to hit the guard rail and flip over it.

Crashrider calmly put one hand on his pistol, the other hand on the hilt of his Caught-Tonya blade that had been forged in the fires of Mount DOOM3D, as the car rolled.

It landed on all four tires, two of them blowing out. The car's textures turned orange, into dev-textures, and Crashrider opened the door, stepping out.

He was at a maintenance space at the side of the Maggie's Love Line. Fifteen lanes of traffic in each direction, all moving at high speed. The vehicles whipped by, driven on autopilot, their address packets leading the way on glittering bumpers.

He put his hand against his side and moved forward.

"Digital Omnimessiah help me now," he whispered, coughing slightly.

There was a chiming noise, a 'ta-dah' noise that permeated every vidgame.

Crash turned slowly and stared.

A motorcycle sat by a gap in the railing. It gleamed, chrome and bright candy-apple red paint. It had swooping gold accents. It had the linked eagle's wings on the gas tank. The tires were studded and heavy. The rims were mag wheels, shiny and chrome, the exhaust was sparkling chrome, and the engine was black and oily.

Smiling, Crash limped up to it, putting a hand on it. He could feel the massive turbo engine vibrate beneath his hand as he touched the leather seat.

It was an exact replica of the ARG reward that he had wrecked lifetimes ago, fleeing a Smaug.

"Hello, old friend," Crash said to the motorcycle. He looked up at the lights. "I give thanks to you, in my hour of need, Digital Omnimessiah."

One hand still pressed to his side, he threw his leg over the seat down and sat down, half expecting the cycle to security derez and leave him sitting to pavement.

Instead, the speakers came to live.

"MAH-MAMA WE'RE ALL CRAZY NOW!" sounded out from the speakers.

Crash put his hands on the grips, revving the engine, even as he used one foot to knock back the kickstand. He put both feet on the ground, gripping the front brake even as he popped the clutch. The tire screamed and smoke erupted.

Popping the break and leaning back, Crashrider stood the bike on its back tire as he roared out into traffic. He wove expertly through traffic, the bike roaring and vibrating underneath him. Digital wind whipped his hair, his mirrored eyeshades gleamed in the harsh lights of the Maggie's Love Line tunnel, and his leather trenchcoat snapped around him.

His side hurt, but the pain was far away as he sped down the superluminal line, toward the exit.

He had no idea where he was going. Nobody knew what was on the other side of Maggie's Love.

But to Crashrider it didn't matter.

Only the moment mattered.

It was perfect.

The Last Run.