First Contact

"The Mad Lemurs of Terra of yesterday are marching so they will have returned tomorrow to assault today." - Tome of Illuminations of the Shattered Mind, Cult of the Defiled One

"The first time someone said to me: 'it's only one human, what difference does it make' I almost drew my sidearm and shot them." - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff

WELCOME BACK, COMMANDER floated on the damaged LCD screen, tiny dead pixels breaking up the block words. The fact it was on the screen and not spoken told the sole female Terran inside the building that everything but text interface was down.

Not that it was surprising, the command center was trashed. Insulating aerogel hung down in strips, the glowstrips were either out, broken into pieces, or hanging from the ceiling like glowing warm taffy. All of the interface devices but the keyboard (which looked like it was two keyboards welded together) and the LCD screen were out. The room smelled of scorched metal and electronics, of vaporized superlubricant and biological supercoolant.

The female Terran looked around and noted that she was on filtered air. She didn't see any hints of daylight through the walls, she was completely sealed in.

She patted herself down quickly and sighed in relief.

She was naked, but at least she was in a female body this time instead of a male, and she was completely unwounded, unlike the last odd drop.

She swigged down a mouthful of Countess Crey Blueberry-Battery Acid Surprise soda, rubbed her face, and took stock of her command center.

The warped, heat damaged, and bubbled plaque on the wall was in the best condition. She could barely make out the logo.

CONFEDERATE MILITARY AUTONOMOUS WAR FACILITY

--CREATE, COMMAND, CONQUER--

Commander Jane Marcus Prastini smiled fiercely, reaching out and typing. A quick status report got errors scattered through it and the system crashed twice, both times rebooting in less than fifteen seconds and chiming out the ancient little tune that computers booted up with for Digital Omnimessiah only knew why.

She drained the can and tossed it into the grinder, making a face when it just clattered and sat on top of the toothed wheels. She grabbed another warm can, typing with one hand, and cracked it open.

Respawn always gave her dry mouth.

The armored deep level data survival core had survived intact, which meant she still had access to all of her templates, the only problem was she'd have to move the templates out of storage, decompress, and decrypt them.

Jane ran through what little menus there were. The computer had defaulted to the basic menu tree/keyboard press mode, bare bones OS without even a GUI or mouse/holopointer interface.

She'd worked with less. That Lanky commander that had shadowed her had pushed her further than even the Mar-gite had. She'd learned quickly.

She knew she wasn't on a Lanky occupied planet. She'd already be under indirect fire attack and electronic warfare assault.

She only had two internal repair drones operational and one of those was on the edge of failure. She set that one to re-establishing her communication links and the other she tasked and prioritized getting the computer systems online.

She blind, deaf, and mute. She was getting telemetry from a single drone and a single fabricator unit in deep storage but no links to the two mechanisms or even her production systems.

She glanced at the time and grimaced. She'd been on planet for almost two hours and had almost nothing to show for it.

Taking another deep swig of the pop, she got up, opened the panel, and removed the emergency toolkit.

She might as well help get the systems online the old way.

-----

Ymetr'k-III, known as H'murd'n to the occupants, was a blue and green jewel in the system. A single protocontinent with large islands scattered through the azure ocean, puffy clouds, and a gentled weather system that had been controlled by satellite systems up to a few days before.

But the problem with weather control systems is that nature doesn't like them.

Now, massive storms were brewing in the oceans, storms were brewing on the super-continent, wind and rain, thunder and lightning, sleet and hail all brought out knives to get revenge for over four million years of being held back.

Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd sat comfortably in the canvas tent. The wind and rain were held back by canvas as well as ballistic/shrapnel/radiation shields attached to the frame. It was warm in the tent, and she sat in one corner watching as the lemurs ran about, laying cable, setting up tables, pulling massive heavy-duty bulky looking computers out of armored and shielded boxes and set them up. They spoke in their own language to one another and Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd was impressed by their efficiency and competence.

Shakras and Naktrix sat silently beside her, Naktrix refilling the lady's wine flute when it reached the quarter mark. Both kept glancing at each other and swallowing nervously, but they made sure they outwardly projected calm aplomb as they sat next to the Lanaktallan high lady.

"Dear," Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd said softly, tapping a lemur who was trying to get a cable plugged in.

The lemur looked up, babbling for a moment. The translator whined and gave out only two words. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Wrong port," Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd said, pointing at a different 256 gold plated pin port. "And it's upside down."

"Aye!" the lemur said, shifting and plugging it in.

The computer immediately whirred to life as the lemur moved away to the armored and shielded box.

Two lemur females came on, moving up to Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd and saluting. One placed a holo-emitter on the table, activated it, and stepped back.

Naktrix moved the bottle of wine out of the way since it was right in the middle of the touch-sensitive context controls.

The world appeared, lots of fuzzy details, but Shakras noted that it was clearing up to high resolution in tight bands that went across the globe at an angle. He knew that meant the lemurs had gotten satellites into orbit.

The lemurs started touching parts, bringing up images of tanks, aerospace fighters, wet-navy vessels, grav-strikers, infantry, maintenance units, supply units, fuel units, all manner of icons. They began touching parts of the map.

Naktrix watched Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd closely as the lemur's babbling was converted to Treana'ad Battle Click and then to Universal Standard, then back again when Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd asked questions.

"I am not a military strategist like my beloved son," Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd said at one point. "All of this is strange and slightly confusing to me," she turned to Shakras. "Does it look acceptable to you, loyal one?"

Shakras leaned forward. "Without knowing the full capabilities of the weapons and vehicles, the type of training they have baked in, I cannot say. I see no glaring strategic errors though."

Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd smiled. "Excellent," she sipped at her wine flute, delicately dipping her front feeding tendrils into the sparkling white wine. "My sons and daughters have often told me that having capable and trusted subordinates is useless is you do not allow them to perform their profession to the best of their skills," she said. She closed her eyes, sighed, and opened them again. "While I can plan a party or host a gala event, I am far out of my depth here and wish that I knew more."

She gave a light titter. "But then, if I knew more, I'd know just enough to not realize how ignorant I am, then I would insist on second guessing all of the professional decisions out of ignorance and pride."

"The Terrans call it micromanaging. It is not a good thing, as in Council society, but rather a bad thing," Shakras said.

"The temptation to do such a thing is quite difficult to resist," Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd said. She held out her wine flute and Naktrix refilled it. Contrary to the way the long, narrow glass look, it held just slightly more than a shotglass.

She sipped her wine again.

"They're the lemurs of Terra," she smiled. "I have faith in their abilities."

-----

Max felt his ship shudder around him as he crashed back into realspace, the massive amounts of energy bleeding off and into the subspace foam, rattling flat surfaces across the entire system. He saw his last message torpedo make the jump to lightspeed and twitched slightly in relief.

While he had performed admirably in the opening hours of the fight, the fact he was a single ship was starting to wear down on him.

His slush was up into the amber, his heat higher than that, his mass tanks were running dry as fast as he could pump them up, something was kicking at the mat-trans system and causing hiccups. So far he'd avoided any hits, his sensors picking up any threats and his spoofers running hot.

But he knew it couldn't last forever.

Max checked the scanners and swore.

They had lost interest in chasing him into the outer system, away from the two planets. He'd headed due "north" and "out" from the stellar mass, pulling the Atrekna for nearly four hours at high speeds.

They'd obviously gotten tired of it and had reversed course when he'd come crashing out.

The good thing he noticed is that the Atrekna didn't appear to have inertial compensators as good as even the old Fourth Republic stuff, more on par with what the Mantids and Treana'ad had had when they first encountered humanity.

Rather than pulling a tight loop to reverse course they had turned their ships back toward the star and gone to full thrust.

Max sat and stared.

Surely, nobody could be that stupid?

He rolled his ship, making a tight loop that made the superstructure groan and the compensators howl, but it was less than three minutes and he was heading straight back the way he came. Normally a ship had to reverse and burn at max thrust to negate the previous momentum then slowly accelerate back the way they came.

Terran compensators and drive systems enabled a ship to pull a tight loop and still maintain its momentum in the new direction.

The Atrekna, seeing Max's ship perform the manuever, yelled out to the Universe the same thing every other species had upon their first encounter with it.

That's not how it works!

[The Universe Liked That]

Max checked the status on his quad barrel rotating C+ cannons.

He had three cracked barrels total, one had a feed jam on the second breach section that was still being cleared by the waldoes, five other barrels were heavily magnetized, and one had a primary fire control system failure.

But he'd be able to put out six C+ rounds a second from the twelve guns if he staggered them right.

They're going to the planets, Max thought to himself, watching as the Atrekna formation reformed itself into two distinct groups with a rear guard of biological ships. I can at least damage their command and control.

There were only eleven of the crystal ships still up and moving and Max dedicated two guns to hammering the rear guard and five for each of the two battlegroups.

He split his missiles and torpedoes between the three groups, which he'd designated into groups.

One by one he got lock tones. C+ guns first. Missile launchers second. Torpedo bays third.

Plasma wave phased motion guns last.

He could see the Atrekna had two choices as their own momentum carried them toward them even as his reversed momentum was letting him accelerate toward them now.

They could keep reversing course and keep their rear decks toward him.

They could cut their drives and swing around to face him, taking his fire on their forward shields and forward armor.

He knew which one Space Force would do.

Which one he would do.

Let's see if you're as good as you think you are, Max thought.

He flushed his mags.

-----

Commander Jane Marcus Prastini jumped back from the sparks as the supercondutor data array suddenly went live, shaking her fingers with a 'yeouch' before sticking them in her mouth. She bent down and grabbed the tool, putting it in the toolkit, and turned to the LCD monitor.

The seeker drone and the fabrication drone were ready to be deployed, being moved from armored deep storage to hull sally port. The creation engine growled and shuddered to life. The radio she'd been listening to gave a squeal and exploded in a shower of sparks and blue smoke. Drone fabrication came back online, and the lights came on in the command center.

She gave a wordless cry of victory and sat down in the chair, reaching out and, careful not to bump the patch cord, opened the fridge, grabbing a cold can of Strawberry-Sour Apple Bingo Cola. She cracked it open one-handed even as she quickly navigated the menus with the other hand, her fingers dancing on the arrow keys.

She glanced at the timer.

She'd been on the surface five hours.

She smiled and set a new clock as the scanner drone and the fabrication drone left their sally ports.

The radio had told her that the Atrekna were attacking the planet.

She reset the menu trees for defensive and twirled her chair in a circle as she got a view around her.

The ocean was a half mile away. There was dirt, rock, and a salt water marsh to the east, with an industrial park with a industrial waste yard to the south-east, and what looked like a forest to the north-east.

She ordered the fabrication drone to start repairing the command chassis, ordered up a queue of six fab-drones and three more seeker drones, and spun in the chair again as the two little spider-drones made the final connection and the supercomputer grudgingly came online.

Jane was still at menu tree levels of control, but she was getting her systems online.

She smiled up at the damaged plaque as she saw the first of the new fabrication drones come online and immediately move to building a fusion reactor.

"Give me enough time, I can cover this planet in guns and armor," she laughed. She cracked her knuckles, took a drink off the Bingo Cola, and set to work.

[The Universe Liked That]

-----

Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd watched the video with interest. It showed cartoon versions of her soldiers driving near buildings and dropping off big squares off of the back of trucks. The squares immediately went to work and within (according to the timer) only a few hours a shelter was built two hundred feet into the bedrock.

"And you can deploy these across the continent?" Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd asked.

"Aye!" the excitable lemur answered, smiling and shaking her head. She had traded in her helmet for a floppy hat with a string that went under her chin.

"And, if you can get enough time, you can hide all two point two billion people in these shelters?" Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd asked.

"Aye!" the lemur said, the smile getting bigger.

Lady Fa'ahmya'ahd thought about it for a moment, closing her eyes and summoning up the memory of Bee-Bee's tenth birthday party. It calmed her, let her focus, and she opened her eyes.

"Do it. Protect the people of this world," she said softly.

The lemur's grin got wider somehow and Naktrix had a sudden vision of the corner's of the lemur's mouth meeting at the back of her head and the top of her head just sliding off.

-----

In the only inhabited orbital station around the planet, the five workers watched the viewscreen as the Atrekna gave up chasing the lemur's ship and turned around, counter-burning to head back toward the inhabited planets.

A proximity alarm went off and everyone turned to the screen.

A blocky and unfinished looking dropship had docked with one of the rings. One of the workers switched cameras when the alert for the external airlock sounded.

They watched, anxiety filling them, as the airlock door slowly rose.

"I wonder who has come calling this time?" the Lanaktallan former Overseer asked, her voice soft and slightly afraid.