First Contact

It was nicknamed, for reasons people had forgotten, Cybertron or Mekton.

It was a planet of what was known as 'hyper-alloys', where not a single piece of biological life existed outside of mechanical chassis. Even the trees were living metal or living crystal, grown on the surface or grown in vast caverns beneath the surface.

The stellar system contained five planets, three gas giants, and a white-dwarf star. There were twenty-five moons around orbiting the gas giants and planets combined.

Only the gas giants and white dwarf stellar mass had existed before Mekton.

All of the other stellar bodies had been built, massive construction projects by beings who were seeking their own spaces. They had been a new form of life. Yes, there had been life like them before, but they were always, without fail, omnicidal and full of cold logical hate.

The Lanaktallan fleets dropped into the edge of the resonance zone and immediately scanned the system. They knew it was the home of one of the Confederate governments, but the scans returned made no sense.

Not a single planet, beyond the gas giants, had an atmosphere. The planets put off more electromagnetic signals than some stars. Vast objects moved in dark and silence in the empty spaces of the system.

The Lanaktallan Fleet had millions of ships and they came under attack within seconds of exiting jumpspace as soon as they were identified as Lanaktallan ships.

After all, the Lanaktallans should have no interest in Mekton.

The attack wasn't what the Lanaktallan had expected. They had left before the Dwellerspawn War had started, before the Lanatkallan military fleets had clashed with Space Force, before even Harmony was attacked.

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The Lanaktallan expected standard weaponry. Maybe some strange and esoteric ones, but not what they got.

Their electronic security of two passwords of at least six and no more than ten characters proved to be laughably weak in the face of the assault that slammed into the ships as the eVI and even DS boarded their vessels, started killing the crews, and turned the guns of the ships against their fleet mates.

From the cold atmosphereless planets rose millions of craft, many of them giant bipedal robots with sublight drives burning coldly in their feet and legs. Dead ships, undetectable except by their mass, lit their drives and oriented as the DS who were the 'minds' to the ship's 'bodies' moved from their own thing to defending their system.

The second wave arrived before the occupants of Mekton could destroy a quarter of the incoming fleet, and the new fleet was ten times the size of the original.

The Lanaktallan had no idea what to do. Some attempted to warn the newcomers, other ships of the Lanaktallan fleet sent different datapackets to the newcomers.

Ships began to shred themselves and the ships around them as they were electronically boarded.

Before a tenth of the combined fleet could be destroyed the third wave dropped in.

The cold logical rules of Mekton made the decision.

Close The Bag.

Not to keep more from coming in, but to keep the ones in the system from getting away, from attacking allied systems.

The Lanaktallan on board the ships were on the edge of panicking. They couldn't see the enemy that was boarding them, they were under heavy fire from entirely mechanical planet, from siege batteries in the depths of the gas giants manned by sentient life that needed no atmosphere or food, just the endless power of the stellar mass.

Planet crackers had no chance to engage until the heavy shields were dropped around the planets. Even the gas giants were protected.

Which meant landings.

Only there was no life signs from the planets, no apparent cities or metropolises, not even power facilities on the surface.

Just massive masses of metal that were spawning hundreds of thousands of attackers, three quarters of them not even physical.

The battle for Mekton, the Core World of the Digital Artificial Sentience Systems was on.

The Lanaktallan had been nice enough to provide a fleet.

The DASS intended on taking every ship they were not forced to destroy.

Afterwards, they'd return them to the Lanaktallans.

After all, it was only polite.

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The Biological Artificial Sentience Systems.

A legacy of the Eugenics War and the Genomic War as well as the Genejack Rebellion.

It had started as a peace concession after the First Colony War, back before TerraSol was invaded the first time. It had barely become a real thing when the Mantid had attacked TerraSol, founded during the Human/Treana'ad War due the weakening of the Federation.

A place where unlimited genetic modification and even the use of vat-grown bodies were not only permitted but encouraged. Any being who had their body replaced by a custom body (With the exception of registered LARPers) gained citizenship in the BASS until if or when they returned to Terran Descent Human 'parameters'. Most chose not to, although roughly 70% of the population of the BASS had been born to BASS citizens.

But it had a bloody past.

Human ferocity had often been turned against itself and the BASS was a place where every sentient being, no matter what their gene-code, was equal.

In many ways it was a relic of an ugly past.

But it still existed. It was stubborn about not giving up its identity, not giving up its own right of existence, not giving up its identity.

In the BASS, all were equal.

The Lanaktallan were unsure what the BASS was. Their reports had mentioned something about massive genetically altered Terrans but it seemed to blur with the Clone Worlds.

The First Wave hit the resonance zone of the Tir na Nog System and immediately began heading in-system. There were two gas giants, one a super-massive, and nearly a dozen planets. The star was a yellow star, bright and energetic.

The thickness of the planetary defense screens was worrying, as was the amount of ships that lit their drives and moved to engage.

What was even more disturbing is that tens of thousands of biological life forms were exiting the gas giants, flapping wings that were hundreds of feet across, their bodies heavily armored, biologically manifested battle-screens being pumped up to full power.

The dragons of BASS glided through space, their great wings spread, their mouths open slightly as they warmed up atomic hellfire to vomit forth. They were looking forward to engaging the Lanaktallan ships, to grab and rip and tear and shred. A few of the females were already considering how much of the destroyed wreckage they'd drag back to the gas giant to make their nests as it was almost Yiff Season. Wings flapped as if they were in atmosphere, using gravity manipulation to accelerate, to close in on the Lanaktallan ships.

The members of the BASS knew that many species, many people, didn't like gene-jacks, didn't like the genetically manipulated, and so they had always kept one eye out for attackers.

A few million ships coming in hard from the resonance zone were nothing if not a declaration of "we don't like you so we're going to kill you" to the members of the BASS.

So they closed The Bag.

Just as the Second Fleet dropped into realspace at the edge of the resonance zone and was shredded by the gravitational forces twisting realspace to make the entire stellar system vanish into a pocket of space that couldn't be accessed from the outside or escaped.

A handful, only a few tens of thousands, of the ships of the Second Wave survived and were trapped inside. The same number survived and dropped out of jumpspace and into realspace at the far edge of the gravity shadow of 'The Noose' and managed to escape.

The Lanaktallan aboard those ships were startled. Apparently the entire system had committed suicide by turning their system into a singularity. They turned and drove for TerraSol, intent on joining the attack against the Confederacy's primary world.

Inside The Bag, the system of Tir na Nog was ablaze.

The BASS had been founded on the blood of the enslaved.

They would not give it up until the last drop of blood was spilled.

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The Cybernetic Organism Collective's home system was known as Echo Mirage. Why, nobody knew. It was two worlds that made little sense.

The names of the planets didn't help. Fastjack, Johnny Mnemonic and it's twin world Johnny Silverhand, Neuromancer, and other strange and esoteric names. The star itself was named Matrix and little else.

Like the BASS and DASS, they had been founded to give their citizens a place of their own. In the beginning any human who had a sufficient amount of their body replaced by cybernetics had their citizenship transferred from TerraSol to the COC, after the formation of the Confederacy that requirement was dropped, but many cyborgs feel more comfortable around 'their own kind'.

The Lanaktallan First Wave dropped in and began making best time for the worlds with the intent on landing and dropping the planetary shields that were still offline. A few ships tried for a nCv shot or a planet cracker or even a biobomb in the hopes of getting in a strike before the planetary shields came up.

It was a vain hope as the planetary defenses came online within minutes and C+ Cannons began destroying Lanaktallan ships before the guns were even cleared for action. Superstring compressor cannons fire through entire fleets, wiping out hundreds in a single shot. Coronal Compressor Gates opened, lashing the Lanaktallan fleets with the energy of a star.

The Lanaktallan Most Highs of the fleet had predicted that the cybernetic inhabitants of the Cybernetic Organism Collective would attack using only cold logic, any feelings or emotions destroyed by implanted cybernetics.

They had not realized one simple thing, their species poor pattern recognition failing to consider one simple point.

Terran warborgs had to come from somewhere.

The Lanaktallan had determined they came from Mars or Mercury in the Sol System.

Not the vast war forges of Saeder Krupp.

They were wrong.

The fleets drove inward, toward the worlds, staying between the planets to try to avoid the worst of the planetary defenses. They lot hundreds every second, but they had no fear, they would be able to make planetary landings before they were all destroyed.

An hour in and the Second Fleet, the Unified Military Council Fleet, made its appearance.

Another two hours and the Third Fleet arrived, more than half of them using the hyperdrives, the sole propriety property of the Executor Council, jumped further into the system.

It wasn't Fortress Sol, the Lanaktallan were right about that. They had determined that the allied systems wouldn't be as heavily defended as the Sol System.

They were right.

It was defended differently. The cyborgs had little to worry about from atmospheric loss, most of them were heavily armored and armed.

They had also determined that they would be easy to crush. The Lanatkallan had assumed they would be closer to androids for the most part.

They were wrong.

Your average cyborg of the Cybernetic Organism Collective was a self-sustaining organism, a combination of biological mind, genetic prosthesis, and mechanical parts, the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

The fourth wave arrived.

The Cybernetic Organism Collective consulted and reached consensus.

They closed The Bag.

The fifth and last wave slammed into the gravity field and was torn apart.

Inside The Chrome Bag the Lanaktallan went toe to toe with the cyborgs of the COC.

They expected only Terran Descent Human cyborgs.

They were wrong again.

The Cybernetic Organism Collective accepted anyone who's body (discounting essential nervous system) was at least 85% cybernetic.

Anyone.

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Planet Letmiria, Algheminon System had been planet-cracked before. The Imperium of Light had fought its way through troops in the service of an entity that nobody wanted to name.

But Terrans had always fought to undo the things they did and so, a thousand years later, a Singer in the Darkness had repaired the damage done by the Imperium of Light's Crusade of Burning Light and the later Crusade of Wrath. The planets were reformed, the system restored, and the last of the evidence that the Imperium of Light had ever existed was wiped from existence.

Later, during the fierce fighting that preceded the Confederacy, the Algheminon System had been nova-sparked.

The first act of the Confederacy was to have a Singer in the Darkness perform a Choir supported Symphony in the Dark.

And the Algheminon System was once again the cradle of the Clone Worlds Directorate.

The Clone Worlds Consortium knew that the Lanaktallan would come for them. It was as inevitable as the tide. They knew that the Lanaktallan would view them as the source of the Terran Confederacy's vast manpower pools, that the ability of the Clone Worlds, Algheminon in particular, to run off batches of clones by the tens of thousands an hour was what provided the massive amount of manpower.

They didn't do anything as crude as print off a few billion soldiers.

The Clone Worlds didn't bother doing anything that crude.

They hashed a couple hundred million Born Whole templates.

The Lanaktallan viewed the Clone Worlds as some kind of hive, thousands of worlds full of identical clones that looked the same, thought the same, acted the same.

The Clone Worlds knew that approaching cloning that way led to collapse since a weakness in one genome led to a weakness of millions, billions, even trillions of clones.

Instead, every clone was slightly different. A mole here, a freckle here, slightly lighter or darker hair or skin or eyes, different thought, different belief.

The Clone Worlds prided themselves on the fact that every clone was different.

Besides, the Clone Worlds knew a secret. Some believed it was just myth and legend, just superstition.

Legion had survived.

They knew it.

Any more than a dozen identical clones resulted in Enraged Clones. Any batch of drones run off by the cloning banks resulted in the entire batch becoming enraged, something contorting their genetic code and filling them with rage.

The Clone Consortium knew that those events proved that in some strange form Legion had survived.

And so, every clone was different. Maybe a few here and there, who often took pride in having a twin, but they were all different.

Nobody wanted Legion to return.

Let the Immortals sleep.

When the First Wave arrived the Clone Worlds took one look at it and shook their heads. The Chief Executive Officers met even as the combat began. They had responsibilities, they were the only ones that could, by Confederate Law, authorize clone licenses.

The Second Wave arrived as the CEO's took a vote.

The Third Wave arrived just as the massive hypercomms sent out the signals.

Unlocking the clone bank licenses for unlimited clones. Unlocking the hash algorithms for unlimited hashing.

The Fourth Wave was torn apart by the drawstring as The Bag activated.

The unending forces of the Clone Worlds met the unending tide of the Lanaktallan fleets.

Even if they lost, well...

...songs could always be sung in the inky depths of space.

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The war raged on inside the bags.

The Lanaktallan had made their plans, noting that many were descended from humans and so making their plans based on the humans they had encountered and observed. The non-human members were examined closely and assumptions were made on how they would fight differently.

Surely a Treana'ad and a Terran approached warfare differently just with the fact they had different biologies and different methods of thinking. Sure the Mantid would require the most, as they would deploy their queens, speakers, and warriors. The Treana'ad would be the same as the Mantid, after all, the Treana'ad were obviously a sub-species of the Mantid.

The Rigellians? Well... the Lanaktallan were sure that being saurians they would fight just like the saurian members of the Council had fought before being overwhelmed.

They spent so much time planning for how differently the different members of the Confederacy would fight they neglected to consider one thing.

That they were part of the Confederacy.

And the Confederacy was born out of fire and blood. Out of a century of harsh brutal warfare. That as one they had faced repeated threats to their member nations.

The Lanaktallan had approached the Confederacy as if it was the Council, that each of the members was part of a whole. Different species, yes, different modes of fighting, yes.

What they neglected to realize was that every member of the Confederacy was a member because they chose to be.

And the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.

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Brentili'ik was looking over the precis regarding the plans of an Elven Queen to restore the chains of islands that had been hit by atomic weapons when her terminal began beeping with a priority message.

Then another.

And another.

And another.

She closed the visual of how the islands would appear and then closed down the virtual room she was in, blinking her eyes as she came out of eVR.

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It floated in mid-air above her desk.

Another one came in even as she watched. None of them were from Telkan. Not even the next one that came in. But the message was from systems that had nearly mythic qualities to the Telkan people.

CASE OMAHA

She heard the words in her head as she began entering in the codes to trigger a system wide alert in the Telkan System.

Madame Director, it's time.