First Contact

"EVEN IN DEATH I AM FILLED WITH WRATH!" the massive mechanized warrior roared out, leveling one arm to spew fire out onto the jungle. The other arm fired heavy 30mm warsteel jacketed mass reactive anti-matter shells into the boiling mass of insects that charged it. Colored in red, white, and blue, it blared out "Rossiya – svyashchennaya nasha derzhava, Rossiya – lyubimaya nasha strana" on its speakers as it stomped forward into its own conflagration, uncaring of the temperatures that bore no threat to its warsteel armor.

"TELKAN IS NOT YET LOST!" Vuxten yelled. 471 on his back flashed rude icons at the dwellerspawn that screamed and threw themselves at the patrol. His armor was flashing heat warnings but 471 was holding off on ejecting the thermal core until the last minute, when Vuxten would grab it and throw it into the jungle like a grenade.

He had slept almost 18 hours, nine of those hours held tightly by his wife, who had left him a note to be careful. There had also been a video from his broodcarriers and podlings, the rest of his family singing a song to him about how brave and smart the podlings were and how much they loved him.

His armored boot came down on an insect that stood halfway up his shin, crushing it beneath his stride as he clamped down the trigger of the heavy autocannon he was carrying. Firing made his armor shudder but he'd gotten used to it over the last five hours of fighting.

It was more than just kill the insects now.

It was kill the jungle itself.

"BURN IT WITH HOLY FIRE, SISTERS!" one of the three female humans with the patrol screamed out, and all three laid into the thick jungle with the flame weapons they carried.

Vuxten had stopped wondering why they didn't wear helmets, he'd noticed that the more powerful the human was the less likely they'd wear a helmet. It made macabre sense to Vuxten.

He also doubted they had any choice but to scream. None of the new Terrans in heavy plated armor seemed to be able to keep from roaring, screaming, bellowing, howling. Standing in between two of them could feel like you were being pummeled by soft pillowy fists that got harder and harder until one of them screamed out a warcry. The warcry would feel like a hard smash against Vuxten's core but then the fists would be softer again.

He understood where the rage, the madness came from, standing on the soil of Telkan, the birthplace of his people where first the Overseers had planted a boot on their face and then the dwellerspawn had arrived to erase his little people completely.

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The next two steps took him into a clearing and he stopped, looking at what was in front of him.

Eight, no, nine broodcarriers were sitting on the carpet of moss. Around them was a good score half-grown podlings, all looking at him with wide eyes. Several of the podlings stood up and started to toddle toward him, arms held out to be picked up. Two broodcarriers started moving toward him on all fours.

Vuxten screamed in wordless rage as he fired off three rounds for the 40mm grenade launcher on his shoulder, ejected the thermal core, grabbed it, and slung it into the clearing.

The nearest podling, still smiling and holding up its hands, unlimbered a half dozen crab-legs from behind it as mandibles unfolded from its smiling mouth. The two broodcarriers erupted tentacles from their backs even as they vomited up a half-dozen slimy tentacles from their mouths.

--evil evil evil-- 471 flashed.

The 40mm grenades went off, filling the clearing with white phosphorus, the thermal core exploded in a wash of superheated coolant, washing the clearing with fire.

"How did you know, brother?" one of the big plated Terrans asked.

"The broodcarriers weren't singing and would never allow podlings to run to strangers who might be dangerous," Vuxten said, shaking his hand to cool off his gauntlet.

Vuxten grabbed the rear trigger handle of the heavy gun. "Move out," he grated from between clenched teeth.

"Move out," Trucker ordered, spitting tobacco over the side of Cry Little Sister as the battle-screens started to spin up to standby power.

The techs had done good work, restoring the massive main battle tank to full service. The tracks had been replaced along with the outside port-side running gear and road wheels, cracked armor had been replaced, his stocks reloaded, and the two blown out nano-forges had been replaced. The techs had worked on it for almost twelve straight hours and it showed.

Cry Little Sister had taken a beating but she hadn't failed.

Behind him the rest of Third Armor Division (Old Metal) moved out, incendiary rounds packed in the ammo lockers.

Take back our planet, echoed in his mind. The words of the tiny but fierce Madame Director of the two habitable planets.

Daxin moved forward, the Dread Ones at either side of him, their undying living dead bodies inside the massive armored chassis. He could hear the singing in his mind still, louder now, soothing, like warm oil on goosebumped chilled flesh. Fido was next to him, breathing flame from his jaws, cooking and burning the massive creature that had begun to rise up out of the dirt.

Daxin's armored war chassis whined and hissed as he stomped through the jungle, his chainsword in one hand, emblazoned with the names of his wife and two daughters on the blade in still molten warsteel, his heavy magack bolter in the other fist, carved and inlaid.

He didn't need to think, didn't need to do anything but let the memories wash over him as he fought furiously next to two living dead men he had once served beside on the dusty sandy desert of Anthill.

He was able to lose himself in the memories.

And see his wife and daughters again.

On Telkan-2 First Cavalry Division and Second Armor Division rolled out from the logistics bases, armed with weapons from the 13th Gas & Flame (Atomic) Regiment. All of VII Corps was hard at work or sleeping the sleep of the exhausted.

Ekret was face down in his bunk at Fire Base Viper, snoring, the hovertanks of 1st Recon Division sparkling with the shine of welders as the techs worked on the scout tanks.

In orbit General Nodra'ak, V Corps Commanding, stared at the holotank displaying Telkan-1 and Telkan-2, beside him General Fredrick P. Franks XVII, VII Corps Commanding, chewed on a piece of gum as he looked at the icons of his units moving out across the entire planet. Admiral Howell stood across from the two men, staring at his own holotank.

"Got close on Telkan-1," Franks commented.

"Naw, Trucker had it under control," Smokey-No said, lighting a cigarette and carefully putting away his cigarette pack and lighter.

Franks snorted. "They wanted ol' Tic-Tak badly, didn't they?"

"Indeed they did. Only the timely intervention of our wrath filled friends kept General Takilikakik from earning his Combat Action Badge and all of us from becoming a laughing stock," Howells said. "Can you imagine being the commander so careless that event occurred on your watch?"

"Could you imagine that Board of Inquiry?" Franks snorted. "It'd be all 'so let us get this straight, you had 3rd Armor, 8th Infantry, and 1st Recon and your operational plans still resulted in Tik-Tac being personally exposed to enemy fire?' with everyone in the audience glaring at you."

Howell shook his head. "You might as well just throw yourself into a black hole."

"Even the best ice cream wouldn't help you with the ladies when that got out," Smokey-No said.

Down on the ground General Takilikakik stared at his displays. The nano-forges and creation engines were cooling, deslushing. He tapped at the support units, bringing up size, duties, how long they'd been working, and put 2/3rds of them on a 12 hour rest period. The other 1/3 he set to repairing and reloading the support unit's own vehicles and victuals.

There had been twelve hours that the Enraged Ones had held the lines while the units of V Corps had rotated. Now, halve of the combat arms units were heading back out to engage in combat, twenty-five percent had been relegated to manning the lines, and the other 25% were on relaxation, after which they'd exchange places with the ones manning the lines.

The genetic warfare units were making landfall, their creation engines and nano-forges loaded with the templates they'd need to fight on their battlefields. Two biomass ships had arrived and were currently configuring the biomass for local use.

The Elven High Queen was being psychically linked to her full press Royal Court and two sets of Queens with their own Courts, one for Telkan-1 and one for Telkan-2. She was already 'dreaming', linked in to the weather satellites, being shown how the planet had previously looked, how it should look.

General Takilikakik moved over to one of the seats and sat down, taking the time to rub his face with his hands. His fingers trembled with fatigue as he felt dried sweat and grime under his palms. He heard someone clear their throat and looked up.

"When was the last time you slept?" Brentili'ik asked the portly human.

Tic-Tak glanced at the clock then down at the date-stamp below it.

"If it is has been so long that you must do math to figure it out, you have been awake too long, General," Brentili'ik stated firmly, putting her fists on her hips and lifting her chin. "Allow your second to relieve you and get some rest."

General "Tic-Tak" Takilikakik opened his mouth to protest but ended up yawning.

One of his officers, Major Patel, helped Tic-Tak get up, guiding the protesting officer to his quarters.

Tic-Tak sat down on his narrow bunk and stared at his boots.

He had survived another fight without men having to rely on his combat skills and possibly dying when the universe would have revealed he had none.

His fingers only shook a little as he undid his boots at how close it had come to that disastrous outcome.

His pistol sat in its holster, still unused, tossed on his desk and under his sweat stained tunic he had put on, clean, four days ago and tossed aside when things had gotten tense three days ago.

------------------------

CONFED-ADMIN

All right, let's try this.

>CONFED-ADMIN HAS ENABLED ADMIN CONTROLS

>>DISCONNECT ALL(GESTALT)

>>>>>

>>>>

>>>

>>

>FINISHED

OK, can everyone hear me?

//////

MANTID>Yes. This is weird. Like a huge part of me is missing. I don't like it.

TREANA'AD> Yeah, this isn't clumsy at all.

CONFED-ADMIN>Quit your bitching. We need to find out what's going on before you guys lose it.

CYBORG>All right, I'll run a low level che

warm podling soft broodmommy yummy fruit tasty snack over under around and through, bunny ears and one runs around the stump and through the hole and bunny ears on your shoes red fish one fish two fish blue fish smart podling clever podling

ck on the deeper channels.

MANTID>How can this be happening?

SAURIAN>You know, wasn't this built on the old network backbone?

CONFED-ADMIN>Yeah. It's impossible to disconnect Sol-Net even though it's all scrambled up.

TREANA'AD>How? Why can't you?

CONFED-ADMIN>Because of the subspace wavelength we hav

sleep little podling don't be afraid sleep in the nest broodmommy made if that nest is lonely and cold broodmommy will give you a stuffy to hold

e to use is, well, um, the one that used to be used.

CYBORG>Initial interlocks and exchangers look good. I'm not seeing any leakage. I'm going to check the network datastreams themselves.

RIGEL>So, you can't run the gestalts without using the old channels?

CONFED-ADMIN>No. Not with the distances involved. I mean, look at our chatroom, we're in a set of artificially generated bubbles in non-euclidean non-einsteinium space.

MANTID>I've never really understood how this works beyond

very good little podlings those are the blue blocks now go to the toybox and get all the yellow balls and bring them to broodmommy there's plenty to share and then we'll have snack and a nappy time for smart clever little podlings

just being told 'it just works' by anyone who knows how it works.

CONFED-ADMIN>I don't get it either.

RIGEL>So, those old channels, that's old Sol-Net and SoulNet, right?

CONFED-ADMIN>Yeah, but we have filters to prevent that from leaking over into us.

DIGITAL>Well, it hasn't been working too well lately.

TREANA'AD>Maybe it's Daxin?

BIOBOYS>No, he's been around since the Glassing. If it was him, we'd have constantly had this problem.

CYBORG>OK. Um, you guys aren't going to like where this leakage is from.

TELKAN>Please don't let it be me.

MANTID>Oh hell, just tell us. This can't get any weirder.

CYBORG>The Sleeping Ones.

.....

....

...

..

.

CYBORG>They're singing.

CYBORG>With the Telkan broodcarriers and the podlings.

CYBORG>It's faint, but it's there.

CONFED-ADMIN>They're awake? Please tell me they're not dreaming again.

CYBORG>No. They're still asleep. They aren't dreaming exactly. They're hearing the broodcarrier song and singing along with it.

DIGITAL>That's impossible. They don't even have datalinks. How can the network pick up their singing? You made a mistake.

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CYBORG>Do you want to check the core lines yourself?

DIGITAL>No, no, that's OK.

CONFED-ADMIN>Are they... are they in pain?

CYBORG>No, actually. They aren't.

hush little podlings no nightmares or scary dream broodmommy will lay with you while she sings