Chương 201: Nova Wars - Chapter 157

There are dozens of species in the Confederacy. Every single one of them has been encountered by the Ornislarp Noocracy. Every single one of them has been eaten by the Ornislarp. They are rated by taste, volume, and even if they could survive multiple feedings. Even the young. Far back in the past, before the Second Precursor War, they had even tried the Terrans. They were, to nobody's surprise, toxic. Those who ate them, even cooked, died screaming. After long hours.

They had learned that the only species that could eat Terrans were the Mantid Warrior Caste. And the Terrans had completely obliterated them. The Noocracy had watched the Confederacy. Prodded and probed. Militarily, economically, politically. The Noocracy's leaders looked at the Confederacy as one giant larder that merely needed taken. In a way, the Noocracy understood the Lanaktallan's 'gentling' of other species. They understood the Atrekna's desire for food species.

They understood the Precursor Autonomous War Machine's desire to hoard resources. Except, they understand that the galactic arm spur was just a small part of a galaxy that was one of millions of galaxies in a universe that was still expanding. There was plenty of time to expand to take over the whole galaxy, then the local galactic cluster, then look at the rest. After all, they knew that the gravitational forge that was a singularity created new suns.

The science they had developed themselves as well as what they had scraped from the Confederacy made it so that a singularity could be used to generate stellar masses as well as other galactic matter systems. When the Terrans vanished, the Noocracy made some probing attacks. They were rebuffed from about half of the systems they attacked, but were able to hold onto half of what they took during the cease fire. It went on like that. Grabbing a few dozen, a few score of systems. Hold them.

Test their equipment against the Confederacy. Test military tactics and theory. When it got too hot, sue for a cease-fire and grab as many systems as possible. During that time, the Noocracy spread out 'behind' themselves. Moving up and down from the border with the Confederacy. Any species that could not be 'gentled' (to use the Lanaktallan phrase) and/or was not tasty was eliminated completely. Two out of three species had to be xenocided.

For some reason that Noocracy scientists could never figure out, the Confederacy was completely edible. And delicious. True, some of the larger members had to be eaten young or had to be prepared by a chef, but they were delicious anyway. For tens of thousands of years it went on. Every hundred or so years, snatch out a few systems to keep the Confederacy concentrated on the border, not what was going on deeper in, the other side of the Noocracy.

The cease fire meant that the Confederacy did not expect full trade or permission to explore the entire Noocracy. The last thing the Noocracy wanted was some delicious delicious food species being able to bleat "I need help" at a wandering Confederate. Or, worse, some Confederate finding some of the populations. Over the centuries, over the millennia, the Noocracy had managed to take prisoners. Tens of thousands of them. Moving them so that they were not found.

Taking them from the planets that the Noocracy had attacked to habitable planets further 'back' in the Noocracy. After all, no need for the Confederacy to find out that Pubvians and Skelmark and Hikken were delicious and were kept on 'cattle worlds' further 'back' into the system. The Noocracy finally had a hit of luck. They had found a massive Terran fleet drifting through space, heading in the same direction and at the same speed they had possessed when they had dropped from jumpspace.

They had found it, boarded, and sent their techslaves aboard the fleet. A few years and the fleet was turned around and brought back to the Noocracy prime systems. There's where it all came apart. The foodslaves and the techslaves had seized control of those massive ships with 'obsolete' Terran technology and attacked the Noocracy ships, driving for Confederate space. As if that wasn't bad enough, the Noocracy had heard the same roar that everyone else heard. The return of Terrasol.

A quick discussion had led to the decision. They were from forty-thousand years ago. Who cared what they wanted. The diplomatic assignments were catering to a nearly extinct species with a single stellar system. A nova-strike bomb would fix their little plans. So the word went out to declare war in the way the Noocracy preferred. With direct diplomatic solutions. The Noocracy wasn't concerned. It would take the Confederacy months, maybe years to declare war.

By that time, the Noocracy would either have everything they wanted or would be present to cast their own vote. The knowledge that the Mar-gite were pressuring the Confederacy was no concern. The Noocracy had learned that the Mar-gite were delicious and nutritious if properly prepared, although many liked them raw. To the Ornislarp, everyone else was food. They was only "Eater" and "Eaten/To be eaten", nothing else. They were the eaters. Their biology determined that.

They were extremely resistant to psychic powers, their bodies were thick and leathery across their oval bodies. They had a forward mouth, the bump at the top of the head where their eyes were gave them a full three-sixty view, the three offset rows of eyes determined depth perception and more. They had the small stomach, connected to the mouth, that then led to the larger stomach. The larger stomach had a mouth on the bottom of the body. When the mouth opened, tentacles unrolled and teeth could be applied.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Due to an odd placement of nerves along the 'great stomach', the movement of the stomach in digesting made pleasure along the nerve fiber strands. The Ornislarp had found out early in their evolution that noises of distress and movements of distress from those eaten, as stomach acid poured over them and the acid laced tentacles wrapped around to tear flesh from bone, all made the nerve vibrate pleasantly.

There was only the Eater and those to be Eaten. The cosmos itself had crafted the Ornislarp so that they received pleasure from the sounds and movements of distress from those being digested. Something that they then could broadcast. They were highly immune to others psychic powers, but they had another trick. The nerve fibers absorbed any phasic/psychic distress and allowed the Ornislarp to rebroadcast it. They also emitted pheromones.

Normally, that didn't matter to cross species, but the Ornislarp absorbed other's pheromones and their biology could replicate those pheromones, could release ones that would attack the To Be Eaten, paralyzing them. The Ornislarp knew they were the premiere Eaters of the cosmos. They weren't worried about the Terrans. Which meant, they would not have been worried even if they had known about a certain project. It had been designed and developed with "Death to the Varakson Empire" in mind.

At the end it had been rushed and data was just loaded into the DS matrix without real regard to the origin source. It had been activated by a coded signal given out when the Mosizlak had been activated for the first time in thousands of years. The ship had entered Noocracy space perfectly disguised. It had landed at the starport and been unloaded. The ship had then taken off and moved to the Oort Cloud where it shut down everything but a single deadspace transmitter.

On the planet, the battlesteel shipping crate, old enough for oxidation to have streaked the corners and sides, was moved to a storage facility in the capital. It was then ignored. The city had to activate its defenses, draining power from an already overloaded grid. But it didn't matter if those ancient, forgotten, and possibly abandoned crates sat in the darkness. After all, there was a war on. There was a sound in the darkness. A loud pop as metal gave way.

A camera, old with filmy lenses, moved to track the sound. It was a crack in the side of an ancient cargo container. Mist leaked out of it. A cloud billowed out, hissed out as if the atmosphere inside the container was under pressure. The mist quickly disappated. The camera zoomed in. The ancient computer system alerted the proper authorities that there might be a hazard issue. Ooze ran out of the side. Thick black ooze the ran into the drain. The computer alerted a biohazard. Nothing happened.

Not that the computer knew, it was a dumb system, not even a basic dog-brain VI. Just some lines of code and a sticker. The ooze kept running into the drain. From the pipes in the room that handled halon injection, a drop of thick reddish fluid, like oxygen dependent blood, fell from the halon injector and onto the computer case. More drops followed, creating a small pool. From the pool blood ran and dripped down to the input systems on the backside of the main processing unit housing.

The computer suddenly ran down through the available numbers. It called them fast, auto-dialer style, letting the connection be made just long enough for the handshakes. Just long enough to get max speed, databit number, parity, stopbit, and number sequence. Then the computer hung up. More code crept in through physically unsecured ports as blood dripped on them. A dynamic naming system server woke with a shock and handed over the the response codes, the time to live, the authority sections.

It then got the code and erased the log entry that the other system had spoken to it, then added a line over that deleted line that a hospital had done a ping check. The computer in the storage facility found itself with fast processing speed, more memory...... more blood on the motherboards. Long minutes passed. The computer suddenly shorted out, the magic blue smoke curling up with a faint squeal of splitting capacitors. The drops of blood oozed out, dripped onto the floor, and slid away, scooting under the door.

The blood caught up with the black ooze and vanished into it. The mist hissed out again. The black ooze stopped. The cargo container was flawless, just darker rust along where the crack had been. The floor was clean. After some time the camera quit recording, unaware that the computer it had once dutifully stared at things for was nothing more than carbonized wreckage. The black sludge moved through the pipes, into the sewage systems, into the drains. It found its way down, into a forgotten sub-basement.

Mist hissed up. When it cleared away a black TruGlass™ coffin sat atop of a RealStone™ obelisk. Black ooze turned to cables that snaked into the electrical systems, touched and then melded with forgotten but still usable data cables. Data and power flowed. Dark and terrible runes done in crimson flickered to life on the coffin, streaming across the black glass. Some were etched by a terrible and invisible hand into the stone. Mist filled the coffin. And a shape began to form.

0-0-0-0-0 Hrawkncrrrch was an Ornislarp of rank and power, as well as appetite. He was more than slightly hungry, beginning to feel pain as his long stomach began to rub its sides, as the feeding tentacles began to twist around nothing, and the acid began to drool from the thick rubbery lips pressed together on his underside. Looking around, his implant showed him that most of the creatures had "ESSENTIAL - NOT FOR EATING" tags floating above them or were an Eater like him. He was getting rapidly frustrated.

He had already signaled his personal conveyance, confident that the vehicle would arrive quickly. There! Yes, the two adults were labeled essential. But the four children following them were not. His conveyance stopped and he made his decision as steam began to leak from the storm drain his vehicle had parked under. He hissed to himself and opened his long mouth. Acid spattered the pavement but he paid it no mind. Feeling pleasure and amusement he rushed forward, using his forward arms to knock the two adults away.

The children's scream continued inside his long stomach as the tentacles grabbed them and pulled them in. He mock lunged at the two parents, which were emanating psychic distress as well as audible sounds of distress. He repeated it back at them with the mocking twist of an Eater to a To Be Eaten. Both began wailing even louder as he opened his forward mouth and allowed the sounds of distress from their children to emanate from his forward mouth. Laughing, he turned and climbed into his personal conveyance.

For a moment, as the vehicle pulled away and headed to his workplace, he sat and enjoyed the struggles and cries of distress from his long stomach. They ended far too soon for his liking. Part of him wished he had not been so hungry and could have regulated his acid production and kept his digestive tentacles from wringing the bodies into strips and scraps of flesh and hunks and splinters of bone. He hadn't noticed the slight bitterness to the air as he leaned back and relaxed.

His vehicle arrived soon enough to the parking garage. He coughed slightly before leaving his personal conveyance and headed for the secure elevator, taking it to the correct floor and then to his office on the two hundredth sixty second floor. He took a second to look at the city below him. To admire the lights and the other buildings. He shifted uncomfortably as pressure built inside of him. He opened the lips of his long mouth to let any gas escape that might have built up.

Some drops of acid and slurry fell on the carpet. The pressure increased. He felt like his lung was going to burst. Like his short digestive system was under pressure. It began to feel like something was pressing his brain against his skull. The lights went out in his office. The light outside was bright enough that he could see himself reflected in the macroplas window. His back bulged. Something distended his leathery hide. He tried to screech in pain, but something was squeezing his lung.

He tried to activate his implant. Tried to signal an emergency. The pain was too much. He could see himself swelling. Several of his eyes ruptured. Blackish-green blood ran from his forward mouth. The nerves around his long stomach signaled distress, discomfort, pain.

"Abracapocus..." the sound was muffled. From INSIDE him. He opened his mouth to scream. And exploded in a welter of blood and tissue. A shape knelt on the smooth floor. The blood and tissue steamed, shivered, and melted into black goo that slid across the floor to the kneeling figure. After a long moment it stood up. It placed one pale hand against the macroplas window.

There was no reflection of the long pale face with burning red eyes that surveyed the city as the figure's cloak fell from its shoulder to almost reach the floor.

"Blah bleh blah." HAT WEARING AUNTIE Brrr.... I just felt like someone walked across my grave. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---