Chương 203: Nova Wars - Chapter 159

Wake up, you're scaring Buggy-Mommy! Hurt them. Hurt them as they have hurt us. Kill them. Kill them as they have killed our soft children. Avenge them! Avenge our soft children upon the UNIVERSE! - War Matron Lek<pop>Tek, The Days of the Sour Cone It's just a step to the left And then a jump to the right You put your hands on your hips - Final Transmission from Genkarkak Prime, source unknown We have learned from the best.

Now come and see for we have such sights to show you - Treana'ad Gestalt, Mar-gite Siege of Cygnus Orion TELKAN FORGE WORLDS Can I talk to you? ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS You can, that doesn't mean I'll listen. To be honest, I really don't care about your moral nagging. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TELKAN FORGE WORLDS You're not concerned? The vote to unleash end of times weapons was entirely passed. We didn't even get a vote. We don't even know the criteria to be able to have a vote!

We've been members as long as Leebaw, why did they get a vote and we didn't? Allowing the Terrans to release their stellar destruction weapons without any oversight sounds like a recipe for disaster! They don't know... ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS Let me stop you right there, chief. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TELKAN FORGE WORLDS What? ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS You assume I care what you have to say about this subject. Your assumption is in error and you've made an ass of you and umption.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TELKAN FORGE WORLDS We can't even be sure whatever weapons they have left over from the Precursor War or whatever will even be effective, much less if they can deploy them. They're a single... ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS Again, let me stop you right there, chief. Did you honestly think that the Solarians, or rather, the Earthlings, were the only ones to develop stellar destruction weapons?

You're in here moralizing it up to me till you're blue in the face and your whiskers fall off thinking that only the Earthlings have SDWs? <chuckles without mirth> Wait till you see what sis is going to bring to the party. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TELKAN FORGE WORLDS Against the Mar-gite, I understand. But against the Ornislarp? Their slave races are going to be killed too. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS It's a malevolent universe, kid. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TELKAN FORGE WORLDS Don't call me kid.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS I'll call you whatever the fuck I want. NICKSERV>TELK HAS BEEN RENAMED DIKS Walk around with that for a while and think about how stupid you are to try to confront me. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- DISEMBODIED DICK ENJOYER That's not funny! ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS It's positively hilarious to me. You've been a little full of yourself the past eight or nine thousand years.

Maybe sit down and realize that you aren't the end all be all of martial might in the Confederacy. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- DICKS UNTIL THE END OF TIME ENJOYER Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Terrans are back. You've said that. Change my header back. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS Fucking make me, bitch. Enjoy this... ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- DIKS has been kicked from the server (Eat a bowl of amphibian dicks, mammal) DIKS has logged on Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

DIKS has been autokicked from the server: 4321 Minute Ban TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS Now, where was I? Oh, yeah! ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- Slathrek was an intelligence analyst third class. After his initial training it looked like he was going to have an amazing career. He shot up the ranks, got slots at all the right schools, gained all the good awards, and had the best postings. Then he miscalculated. It turned out that the general did care what his spouse got up to.

And that the group chat was not as secure as Slathrek had thought and the general himself had watched Slathrek copulate with his wife in full 480p to the mocking jeers of Slathrek's peers and their encouragement on his 'sow hunt'. That was the end of his fast track. He found himself getting bad postings. Found that he wasn't able to get the slots to requalify in his primo schoolings. Found himself getting bad missions.

Slathrek discovered that it was very easy to be top of the heap and accomplish award earning things when you were stationed with a unit that was a showcase at a station that was the goal of everyone in the service. He found himself working with equipment that was five or six generations obsolete compared to the 'old stuff' he'd used in his other units. He found himself working with software cobbled together from the input of eight or nine lowest bidders. His career didn't come to a sudden halt.

Slathrek slid backwards. Which is why someone with dozens of awards for excellent, intelligence special warfare tabs, and all the other glitz, gongs, ribbons, and stipes, was sitting at the tactical analysis console of a cruiser that had a warsteel mark four hull, a reactor that had run to granite over a dozen times, and had been in service longer than some species had mastered fire.

And of course, with the war on, the cruiser, one Mister Invisible's Galloping Delights, had been shifted from a routine pirate patrol to the Ornislarp theater and told to watch some of the military systems. Which is why the Mister was sitting in empty space, currently attempting to emulate nothing, not even a hole in space, watching the Ornislarp bring in massive amounts of materials, step up their mining efforts, and put dozens of ships into production. All they could do was watch.

While the Mister had amazing (by fourteen thousand years prior standards) sensor suite, its weapons weren't exactly up to par for any time period. It wasn't designed to slug it out, it was designed to watch other people slug it out, record it, sneak away with it, then watch the replay in the Day Room while eating popcorn. Which didn't change the fact that Slathrek was bored out of his skull. He shifted slightly and a blip appeared on his console. He bent forward, looking at it. Dark matter puddle manifesting.

Small one, only a few thousand kilometers across, he thought. He logged it and leaned back. That happened fairly frequently. They appeared then kind of, for lack of a better concept, evaporated away. Slathrek was pretty sure that there were astrophysicists who could explain it to him but to be honest, well, he didn't care.

"Status change. Dark matter manifestation," Slathrek reported. Captain Delfalk looked over.

"Keep an eye on it."

"Yes, sir," Slathrek said. He went back to looking at the instruments. The board recorded the dark matter blob, floating in space, as just a wobbling pearl of matter. Bored, Slathrek zoomed in on it. Right as it seemed to split open. From inside slid massive ships.

"STATUS..." Slathrek called out. The Captain's head whipped around. A high pitched breathy female Terran voice sounded from around.

"Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no no no no!" sounded out.

"... CHANGE!" Slathrek said. Dark matter sprayed for tens of thousands of kilometers, bursting into flame some how.

"Remember..." sounded out and echoed. A ship emerged, then another, then another.

"CONTACTS! ONE, TWO, THREE CONTACTS!" he called out. The lights went from dim blue lights to dim red lights. The claxon sounded. Slathrek slapped his face shield closed.

"Get me an ID, tactical," the Captain snapped, his voice having an odd echoing sound across the wiring.

"MY BOYFRIEND'S BACK AND YOU'RE GONNA BE IN TROUBLE!" roared out, a female voice full of vengeful vindication.

"Diner music puts ID at 60% probability of Treana'ad vessels," Slathrek called out. He made a tossing motion. The ships appeared in the holotank. Hooks, barbs, broken columns, what looked like giant hot-rod cars smashed into the hulls. The engines burned with a dull red fire. It looked like one side was stamped with bladearm patterns. He remembered someone saying that no two bladearms were alike, although he couldn't remember who, when, or where.

"Bladarm and vehicle patterns match with Treana'ad. ID at 80%. Confidence is high," he stated.

"Any ID on what class of ships?" the Captain asked.

"Negative. No transponders," Slathrek stated.

"Keep on it."

"Designating Bogey-One-Alpha through Bogey-One-Charlie," Slathrek said.

"Hellcore signatures detected. They aren't even running shielded, they aren't even trying to hide," Slathrek stated.

"They've breaking formation, making least times for the two industrial planets and one of the hypermassives."

"All hands, all hands, stage two silent running, All hands, all hands, stage two silent running," came the female puntimat voice over the wired intercom. Slathrek knew that meant the reactor would be dropped to warm status, the air would be pumped out, the majority of electronics would go cold. An opponent would have to literally slam into the Mister to find it.

"IT'S MY PARTY AND I'LL KILL IF I WANT TO, KILL IF I WANT TO, KILL IF I WANT TO!" sounded out, the female's voice was victorious and carried a layer of viciousness Slathrek had never heard before. The sentry ships moved immediately to engage all three ships. Slathrek watched as the sentry ships were wiped straight out. He aimed visual sensors to get a better look. All he had was a rapid sparkle of graviton energy and then nothing.

Slathrek watched as one of the ships reached one of the planets first, still fighting sentry ships. As near as he could tell, the Treana'ad vessels had taken no damage.

"Bogey-one-bravo is firing," he stated. He worked to refine his data on the passive instruments and sensors.

"It looks like six shots," he moved the data to the holotank. The icon to warn him that the atmosphere was being pumped out flickered on the inside of his visor. In the holotank the planet appeared. The shots were at each pole. Not magenetic, but spin based. Then at the equator, ninety degrees from the other shots.

"Do we have visual on shot results?" the Captain asked.

"Negative. Lightspeed lag is one hundred eighty two point one seconds. Compensating," Slathrek said. He adjusted the feed.

"Permission to deploy passive sensor array nineteen." The Captain sat for a long moment.

"Agreed." Slathrek knew it would take roughly fifteen minutes for the array to fully deploy, so he busied himself with what data he could see.

"Sentry forces are engaging Bogey-One elements," Slathrek said. His console beeped at he sat straight up.

"STATUS CHANGE!" he called out, lifting his hand at the same time as he activated the pinpoint red flasher on his console.

"Talk to me," the Captain said.

"The planet..." Slathrek swallowed.

"It just broke apart. Gravity sensors are going crazy."

"Get me data," the Captain said quietly. The Treana'ad ships reached the hypermassive and the other planet. The ship at the solid planet did the same firing pattern. Both poles, four points at the equator. The ship at the hypermassive fired a single shot. A massive pool of dark matter began forming and the Treana'ad ship vanished into it. Ten minutes later Slathrek blinked rapidly and swallowed in disbelief.

"STATUS CHANGE!" he called out, throwing the gravity image to the holotank. The dark matter pool near the hypermassive gas giant has rapidly expanded until it was literally a half million kilometers across. What was being shown in the pool was an impossibility. The dark matter rippled and bladearm tips extended out. The bladearms slid out and then a gigantic Treana'ad head emerged from the dark matter.

"DELICIOUS DELICIOUS GAS GIANT!" roared out. Two minutes later the passive sensor lag caught up. The Treana'ad bladearms stabbed deep into the gas giant, shattering the orbital shipyards. The gas giant was lifted, its two hundred thousand kilometer diameter transfixed. The Treana'ad head ducked down and a straw connected the Treana'ad head and the hypermassive giant. There was a loud slurping sound that rattled every surface of the Mister. Slathrek noticed that the stellar mass flared.

The polar solar winds suddenly cut off and his board detected a graviton inversion from the star. The slurping sound stopped. There was a loud burp. The stellar mass flashed.

"Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no no no no!" sounded out. The stellar mass, formerly a slightly dull reddish yellow, now burned bright and hot yellow-orange. The Treana'ad head and bladearms withdrew into the dark matter, which began to rapidly evaporate. The second planet, a massive industrial world, suddenly broke apart. Both ships suddenly dropped into dark matter puddles and vanished.

"Plot a course. As soon as we scrape the data, I want us out and near a hypercom," the Captain said.

"Aye, sir," the Navigator said. Long minutes passed. Finally, the data started streaming in. Slathrek took a good look at it, swallowed in disbelief, and passed it to the Captain. The Captain watched the visual, closed his terminal, and ordered the ship to go to light speed. Slathrek stared at the image as it played out the same on the second planet. Huge Treana'ad made landfall. Each of them easily two kilometers high. Hundreds of them. All drawn up in lines, like a wide spaced block formation.

They were all black with burning red eyes. Chains hung from their cracked and damaged carapaces. They each had a guidon on their back, the flag displaying the face of a Terran child. They began to dance, a stomping dance that had massive footpads slam against the ground. Earthquakes started. The seas heaved and churned. Mountains crumbled. The mantle churned and twisted. The core began to break up. The planet began to break apart. The giant Treana'ad all vanished. Slathrek watched it twice.

Then he ordered himself a bottle of Black Twisted Tail whiskey and got blind drunk before passing out in the forward galley. RIGEL Nice one. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS I've just started. Hurt my moomoos, will you? ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- HAT WEARING AUNTIE Ours have been deployed. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- >DIKS HAS JOINED THE SERVER >DIKS HAS BEEN AUTOKICKED: BAN FOR 138 MINUTES HAT WEARING AUNTIE You gonna lift his ban? ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS Nope.

He wants to act like a dick, I'll label him a dick. Try to lecture me. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- HAT WEARING AUNTIE Fair enough. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS--- LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL We have deployed the Choir of Jawnconnor to avenge the moomoos and the ducks. ---NOTHING FOLLOWS---