First Contact

To understand why the Mad Lemurs of Terra are so successful at their endevours one must embrace a fundemental truth about them.

They are, every single one of them, by the standards of every other species in the known universe, psychopathic murderers.

Yes, even the nice one who bought you stimbrew when you were cold and tired. Yes, even the frail elderly one in the apartment down the hall.

All of them.

Without exception.

Beneath that thin veneer of civility and sophistication and empathy is a psychopathic killer who would burn your entire world to ashes if you so much as inconvienced them the wrong way.

Don't believe me?

Then reflect upon this.

Even dead, Terrans can still kill. - Philosopher De-epthu'unknmo'o, 45 Post-C3.

He had been born in a servitor creche. He knew neither mother nor father, raised as a slave and cattle species, seeing others of his species taken away to feed the never ending appetites of the masters. His had been a life of tending slavespawn and cleaning the resin warrens that his kind lived and worked within.

Two years ago he had been chosen, trained to use a shard rifle and to wear armor, and sent into combat against the Inheritors of Madness.

Seventeen times he had personally faced the Inheritors.

He had lost sixteen times.

He had been killed fifteen times.

Once had been a draw, and he had just been glad that he had not been killed.

The next day, the Inheritors had charged his position and a giant insect clad in body armor had sawed him in half with a chainsword.

The last time, he had been part of the few that had escaped.

Rather than return home to the dimly lit planet of his birth, the resin warrens he had grown up in, or even just eaten by the masters, he had been taken to another planet and made to guard the masters, carrying a shard pistol and wearing thin armor.

When he had been chosen for the next mission, he had been startled by the armor. Biomechanical armor that protected him, increased his strength, gave him manipulator tentacles he could control with his mind, gave him the ability to run and leap and jump with extended legs. It was comfortable and sustained him.

His weapon had been upgraded to one of the new hypervelocity shard rifles where the crystalline shards exploded when they hit something solid.

He trained with other servitors, all in armor, and with slavespawn.

For three days he trained with the masters, learning how to augment their powers with the power in his suit, how to follow their direct commands (as if he didn't know that already), and how to move with them to protect them (something else he already knew) as they were projected into his mind.

Then he was put inside a pod, the membrane closed over him, and the fluid filled it. He had inhaled the fluid and then remembered nothing until he was coughing the fluid out as the ship closed on the planet.

Now, he was doing nothing more than laying on the floor, gasping. His comlink, a phasic linkage to the other combat suits, was full of nothing but screaming. He cut it off, still gasping.

An Atrekna screamed loudly as it was pulled apart, pieces of it shoved into jaws full of crushing and cutting teeth that chewed cartilage and meat alike.

The sprinting figures had tackled the Atrekna, slavespawn, and servitors around him, one of them knocking him down, sprawling, on the floor, despite his suit's enhanced strength and great weight. The others were carried off the side of the walkway, plunging over fifteen meters to the floor. Atrekna who had attempted to hover backwards found themselves under assault by the figures, who threw themselves off the walkway and into the empty air, hands outstretched, to grab the Atrekna and pull them down.

The servitor lifted his head in time to see another wave pass by, leaping out into empty space, screeching as they jumped.

The screech was barely audible over the klaxons and ringing bells.

Two other servitors lifted their heads, then three others.

He made a motion, telling them to switch comlink channels and to keep down.

Another wave came out, jumping into space, trying to reach the masters, who were hovering away from the edge of the walkway.

He looked over the edge, down to the floor.

The Masters, slavespawn, and his fellow servitors were fighting a swarm of lemurs. More were rushing out of the other shops, shattering the doors and windows, throwing themselves through the smartglass, macroplas, and doorways.

All of them screeching.

He rolled onto his stomach and started crawling away, using his elbows for leverage, staying down, kicking with the powerful legs of the armor.

Five of his brethren followed him.

Less then ten feet and he was up, sprinting down the dark walkway, the others following him.

Macroplas exploded and the lemurs burst out from the dark shop, screeching, reaching out for him, but he was already past. The ones behind him twisted and dodged, the sheer velocity of the lemurs, all of them with torn faces, carried them over the edge to the floor fifteen meters below.

One was unlucky and a sprinting lemur hit them square, throwing both over the edge.

A half dozen lemurs screeched and jumped after them.

He cut the doomed servitor out of the commo link even as it started to scream.

"Drop a grenade!" he shouted.

The one at the back armed and dropped a fusion grenade, which lay there, flashing and beeping for nearly five seconds.

A score of lemurs ran by it, screeching, following him and the other servitors.

It went off, a snap as the H3 fused and ripped apart the walkway for ten meters to either side.

His 360 vision let him see lemurs trying to jump the gap.

He was startled that some managed it.

"Keep running!" he yelled over the comlink, leaning forward, putting on more speed. The three jointed legs pumped wildly as he moved faster and faster.

"But the masters," one of the other servitors said.

"Can fight for themselves!" he answered.

A lemur came hurtling out of the window, showering them both with shattered macroplas. He managed to spear it with the two barbed bladearms folded into the thorax of his armor, lifting the lemur up off the ground.

It was heavier than it had any right to be, as if there were no air pockets inside the thoracic cavity or abdomen, as if its bones were solid instead of properly hollow. The bladearms felt like they were ripping through thick fibrous material even as they slid into the lemurs chest.

The lemur snarled, snapping its teeth, its eyes a dull red.

He used a hand to push its head back. His fingers shredded its face, tearing away tissue, revealing the skull.

Blood only oozed.

The horrific stab wounds didn't seem to bother the lemur, the shredding of its face didn't seem to bother it. It just grabbed at him and tried to rip away handfuls of the armor to jam into its clattering jaws.

He threw it to the side, staggering, and sped back up, trying to keep up the pace.

He knew he got lucky.

He could see the far end of the huge vault now. Large windows showing the dark night outside.

And hundreds of red eyes running along the far wall, heading toward the corner, which would lead them straight at him and the remainder of the strike force.

He furrowed his brow. Thinking was hard, not something his kind did well. Thinking was for masters.

If he kept running forward, he would run into the oncoming horde of lemurs.

If he stopped, the lemurs chasing them would catch up.

If he jumped over the edge, his armor's legs could take the shock, the lemurs on the ground floor would swarm them.

He looked up.

The roof was metal, endosteel from the looks of it.

He flexed a muscle that didn't exist and the plasma caster on his shoulder unlimbered and fired a single shot at the roof. The plasma shrieked through the air, hit the roof, and detonated. Metal vaporized and shattered, stone burned as the lime in the ferrocrete caught fire.

But there was a hole left.

It was twenty meters up, but he could make it.

"JUMP!" he ordered, following his own instructions.

He made it through the hole, sailing through, to land on the roof. One, then another followed. The third misjudged, slammed into the roof, and fell to the floor, where they lay there stunned long enough to get swarmed by lemurs, which pulled them apart while they screamed.

He cut them out of the channel as the last two made the jump.

They stood there, under the stars, for a long moment, just breathing heavy. They were all tired, the high levels of exertion leaving their muscles aching.

He was glad they had trained so hard.

"Rest here," he said. He looked around.

The roof was covered with large blocky machinery, preventing any clear field of view. The edges of the roof were fenced off with interwoven steel wire, with barbed wire on the top. There was an upraised section, where a circle with an "H" rune on it covered the majority of the upraised section.

"They attacked like insects, like animals," one of the survivors gasped.

"They had no concept of self-preservation, just tackled everyone over the side, killing both," another said, panting. They broke the seal on their armor, the living biomechanical suit unfolding around their head and shoulders.

"I did not ever consider that a creature capable of building such things as this would be so mindlessly aggressive," he said. He checked his rifle.

He didn't remember firing half of his ammunition in the magazine.

"What were those?" one of the survivors asked.

"Lemurs. I think," he said, looking at the one that had spoken. "I heard one of the masters scream the word 'lemurs' right before they tackled us. The masters said this is a lemur world."

"They also said that the lemurs were all dead," another added, breaking the seal on their armor. The armor folded down to reveal their fuzzy body. They had a large head, large eyes, thin neck, spindly arms, narrow shoulders, and a narrow torso. They let their tongue hang out, panting.

"Looked alive to me," another said after they opened their suits.

He remembered the way the lemur ignored injuries. How the lemur had terrible bite marks on their body. How they were cold to the touch.

How they didn't bleed.

"I... I think they are dead," he said.

The others all looked at him.

"Is your mind defective? They were alive. You saw them come at us, heard them scream," one said.

"I injured one. It did not bleed. Its body was cold. It did not react to the injuries and instead kept trying to bite me," he said.

"You must be mistaken. It was conf..." another started to say.

The skylight shattered as a master exploded out of the building, surrounded by a globe of their own power.

A dozen lemurs held on, the skin and clothing pressing against the globe charring. They pushed through the arms, grabbing at the master, who screamed as they touched it with hands that were covered in burnt skin and muscle.

One managed to grab the master's chitin armor, pulling it backwards.

More grabbed on.

The globe swung upside down.

He lifted his rifle, aiming it, and fired at the lemurs, confident that the hypervelocity crystals wouldn't penetrate the master's protective globe.

The shards shrieked as they thudded into the bodies of the lemurs. Black fluid sprayed, limbs blew off. Three were blown in half, their lower body falling back into the building, one with loops of digestive tract still connected.

Still the lemurs tried to get at the master, who was screaming as part of its chitin armor was torn away, the lemur pulling it from the globe to chew on it.

The others joined.

Torsos started falling as limbs were blown away.

He saw it.

One of the lemurs took a shard through the head, from side to side, with a spray of corroded looking brain matter.

The lemur just went limp, dropping from the globe.

The lemurs were cleared from the globe and the master hung there, upside down, touching itself all over.

There was a screech from below.

"Check the roof. Look for access doors. Jam or block them," he ordered.

The master righted itself and floated over, lowering down next to him.

The rest of the survivors just sealed their armor back up and bounded away.

He saw one jump behind a large set of block of machinery and not jump back up.

The master lowered the globe of power. With a motion, it unfolded his armor, leaving him naked from the waist up.

**you ran** it accused them.

"Yes, oh great one," he said. "It was an ambush. I am trained to push through the ambush."

**you left us behind you are to protect us** the master said.

"I followed training, oh great master," he said.

The master moved up, reaching out with its hands and putting them on his shoulders.

He had never realized how cold and clammy the master's hands felt.

**I have use for you coward** the master said.

He felt the master's mind overwhelm his. He felt bliss, floating on a cloud of ecstasy. He stared up at the master, who he knew only wanted the best for him and was about to gift him far beyond any others.

He was chosen and it filled him with bliss.

The master turned him around, so that he faced the dark skyline of the city, only a few lights here and there blinking.

He felt the tentacles around the master's mouth wrap around his head. Felt the tips of the barbed spikes dig into his face.

It was bliss.

He felt the puckered orifice start to widen.

FWEEP

Gore sprayed out.

The tentacles went limp. The hands fell from his shoulders.

The bliss stopped and he was filled with terror as it swept through him that the master was about to devour his brain.

He turned around and looked.

The top of the Master's head was missing.

He looked up and saw one of the surviving servitors lowering their rifle.

"No more," they said.