The battle had been raging for hours, despite the fact that the majority of the combatants were still in the maneuvering phases that had, traditionally, been the opening gambits of any space battle. For every combatant but one geometry and time had always been the initial strategies and weapons. Simple geometry could determine a victor before a single missile was fired in many cases.

Except one combatant had always said "I really want to stab that guy, but he's way over there" whenever someone was out of range and had devoted enormous resources, both material and intellectual, to creating a way to reach out and touch someone no matter how far away they were.

Which was why the Terran guns were pounding the Atrekna lines from literally five light hours away, the rounds hitting within a few seconds of the guns firing. C+ Cannons, C+ Missile Pods, Subspace torpedoes, superstring compressor cannons, temporal resonance cannons, Hammer Drones, Deadspace Particle Cannons, all of them moved thousands of times the speed of light through the their respective dimensions before reentering standard reality to deliver shock and awe.

The Atrekna reeled back from the Terran's fire, only to be hit by the PAWM in the Oort Cloud, who were only a light minute away instead of hours. Caught between the two, the members of the Quorum reached out to their fellows in the First System and did something previously unheard of. They requested reinforcements.

The Atrekna nobility in the First System scoffed in disbelief that the Quorum could be in trouble and overrode the minds of a Conclave to get a look for themselves.

Half of them died when a barrage of missiles detonated not antimatter, nuclear, or atomic warheads, but instead drove massive 'spikes' into the fourth dimension, anchoring it, disrupting the Atrekna attempt to manipulate time to their own advantage.

In a panic the Atrekna of the First System reached out to the Prime System, calling for aid. Nearly the entire Atrekna fleet had deployed to that system, only a Prime Warship and a handful of ancillary vessels left behind.

And they were being destroyed.

The leaders of the Prime System took control of a Conclave, opened their 'eyes', and gazed at the battlefield dimensions away.

IT ALL BELONGS TO US! they whispered to the entire system, phasic energy rippling out from the Prime Warship with such thickness that it was visible to the naked eye.

COME AND TAKE IT! was roared back. An animalistic, primitive, savage roar of rage, wrath, hatred, and cold cruelty. Worse than it had been two thousand years ago on Hesstla. Colder, crueler, more malevolent. Cold logic layered with white hot fury all intermixed with a murderous intent made all the more frightening by the thick layer of desire to reach out and rip and tear at things with their own hands.

It caused the Prime System to recoil, which was all that saved them as another volley of fire hit the Atrekna ships. Even the munitions screamed in hate and wrath, somehow bellowing their rage through the ripples of phasic energy that was laden with cruel intentions.

It took only a short while, years in the Prime System, minutes in the Growing System, for the Atrekna to make their decision, man the ships, and go to the rescue of the Atrekna trapped and being hammered on in the Growing System.

They reached out with their power and opened a wormhole up through the dimensions, reaching for the Growing System and the whirling nightmare of space combat going on.

The Atrekna aboard the Prime Ship felt cold satisfaction. The ferals were clever, not yet regressed, but even they could not stand against the full might of the Atrekna.

The leader of the Conclave, surrounded by the lavender nimbus of his own power, glared at the feral ships, willing them to feel his hate.

He found that he hated the ferals even more than he hated the Herdlings. One of the Conclave had come up with a way to negate the Herdlings.

It had worked before, it would work again.

The leader of the Quorum felt the leader of one of the remaining Conclave's suggestion and passed it to his fellows.

It was possible.

The Herdlings had obviously managed to overcome what had been done to them.

The Atrekna reached out, toward the Herdlings, with psychic tentacles. They could tell the temporal munitions would make it difficult, but it would not be impossible. There were enough Conclaves and enough Phasic Masters to allow the Atrekna to offset the Herdlings.

Aboard the ships of the Great Herd, they had no idea they were about to come under attack from an enemy light hours away as they shifted position, bringing the nCv Cannons back into play against the massive creatures erupting from the nearby gas giants.

"HIT THEM AGAIN!" Cu'udchu'ar bellowed out, pointing with his two left arms at the holotank next to LTC Cricket. "ALL HHC SHIPS! FIRE!"

His memories shuddered, the neural overlay suddenly twisting and shifting in his head, trying to overwhelm his conscious thoughts. He shook his head, feeling another trickle of blood seep through his sinus cavity. He ignored it, turning to his Master Gunner, who was sitting and staring at his console.

"FIRE, CHROME PHILLIP STAB YOUR EYES, FIRE ALL GUNS!" he bellowed out. He didn't know what it meant, but he'd heard Terrans screech that phrase out.

He had to admit, it was satisfying.

His Master Gunnery Mate shook his head, looking back at his console.

"This isn't right. This isn't right at all," Guns said, staring at the console. He unlocked the icons and trays, rapidly moving things around. He brought up new icons, assigning values to them, values that he suddenly needed to know.

"FIRE, DAMN YOU!" Cu'udchu'ar roared, rearing up to slam down his forward hooves, the armored vac-suit boots striking sparks from the deck.

"Reconfiguring, Most High," Guns answered, all four hands moving quickly.

Seeing what was happening, LTC Cricket cocked an ear, listening to her subordinates and her peers. All over the Great Herd Armada the Lanaktallan had suddenly stopped working, freezing in mid-action. Some, nearly 12%, had suffered petite-mal seizures. Four percent had suffered grand-mal seizures, and 1.2% had suffered strokes, some so severe they were better classified as explosive cerebral hemmorages.

"Take over targeting and fire, I'll relay the Most High Cu'udchu'ar's targeting priorities," Cricket transmitted, even as she 'rolled' a tray of warboi eggs to get them ready and give them a taste of the targeting codes coating her palm.

She felt the others respond.

"WORMHOLE DETECTED ON TEMPORAL LENSING!" Smith's gunnery station seven called out.

"Keep an eye on it. Bring up Admiral Thennis's Sucker Punch munitions and stand by to fire," Admiral Smith ordered, stepping back from the holotank after slapping the emergency update button.

The Atrekna watched as their attack went to work, saw the fire of the Grazing Ones, the Herdlings, trickle off to a pittance, and felt cold satisfaction. They reached out again when the fire suddenly started again, mathematically precise and hellishly accurate, ripping and tearing at the Feralspawn.

Cu'udchu'ar felt another trickle on his thoughts, something touching his brain, and whirled around. "Bring up another psychic shield, extend it two kilometers from the hull and crank it up till it sparks the hull!" he shouted at the shield specialist.

"Aye-aye, sir!" the shield specialist called out, his hands moving rapidly. He felt more confident suddenly, no longer fearing the battle, no longer feeling like he was at war with thoughts that weren't his own.

Cricket sent the same order to all ships. There were literally millions of Lanaktallan naval vessels in the system, but fast-cook eVI's had spread to even the smallest vessel, had taken possession of the systems, bringing them to full operating status.

"STATUS CHANGE! ATREKNA DRIVE AND SHIP PROFILES ON TEMPORAL RANGING! ESTIMATED THREE THOUSAND!" Admiral Smith's assistant targeting officer called out. "Designating Tango-Nine!"

"Instruct Division Three, Nine, Thirty-Two, and Forty-Five to launch fast scan torchships," Smith ordered. "Run the cloning banks dry if you have to, I want data on the new fleet."

The Atrekna who had arrived through the wormhole staggered at the sheer violence of temporal and phasic munitions detonating. They overcame their disorientation, reaching out to the others of their kind, joining with them in their collective mind.

The Atrekna reached out again, fuming. They had felt the Herdlings, felt their minds. They checked again, and realized their mistake. The Herdlings had been clever, oh yes they had, but they did not fool the Atrekna who had just arrived.

The Herdlings, the Grazing Ones, were using some kind of psychic defense that made their neural patterns look like their drone caste even as their minds thought along their warrior and leader caste neural paths. They had used drugs to supress their psychic signatures to prevent the Atrekna from targeting them.

Their gambit, their attempt to hide their leaders and warriors beneath a threadbare costume of droneness, had failed.

With a cold feeling of satisfaction at dismantling the illusion, the Atrekna Full Royal Quorum reached out, into the Lanaktallan on the ships, and twisted the tides of time, the flow of tempus, wiping away the veneer of the drone caste to reveal the warrior and leadership castes beneath. It was tougher than they had expected, had required a further reach, but the Atrekna had faced the warrior caste and leadership caste of the Grazing Ones before, so they knew their thoughts and their taste.

They returned the Grazing Ones back to their reality.

In the same way they had reached out to attack the Ferals.

They stripped away the facade, returning them to their leadership and warrior caste.

Cu'udchu'ar went stock still. His pupils dialted until they swallowed the color of his eyes. His muscles trembled. Pain lanced through his brain. His thoughts shifted, warped, twisted. His grey matter went soft and realigned, the neural structures and patterns shifting from just like every other Lanaktallan to those more closely matching the neural template laid into his brain months ago.

For a moment he struggled with the long dead War Stallion whose memories he carried. For a split second he teetered on the brink of losing himself.

The phasic shielding went active.

The Atrekna lost their grip on the Lanaktallan manning the ships of the Great Herd Armada.

Cu'udchu'ar suddenly broke free.

Cu'udchu'ar turned and stared at Cricket.

"Order all ships to activate phasic dampeners and shielding at maximum power, including personal systems," he snapped. He turned and looked at the Feralspawn boiling up out of the gas giants for a moment, watching as dozens of PAWM burst through the Feralspawn lines, shattering them, as they too left the gas giants. He turned back to Cricket. "Get me a channel to your commander."

"Fourth wave of group designated Feralspawn are rising up out of the gas giants and supermassive gas giants," Smith heard a tactical officer call out.

Smith thought fast. Those things were exiting in larger and larger numbers, and with the amount of gas giants and supermassive gas giants in the system, it was becoming an exponential problem.

"Signal from the Great Herd," her commo called out.

"Put it here," Admiral Smith ordered.

The holotank wavered and the image of Cu'udchu'ar appeared.

"Admiral," the Lanaktallan said.

Smith noticed his voice sounded different.

"Yes, Most High?" Admiral Smith asked.

"I have seen the results of your attacks upon Executor and Military systems," Cu'udchu'ar said. Before Smith could ask anything he continued. "In each system, gas giants were ignited so that they burned like a sun for weeks or months."

The Lanaktallan paused for a moment.

"Do you have access to those munitions?" Cu'udchu'ar asked.

Admiral Smith nodded. "It will take around two hours to unpack them, but yes."

Cu'udchu'ar nodded in return. "We have no choice. We must destroy or disrupt the gas giants or the Devourers and the autonomous war machines will overwhelm us."

"I'll order units to start processing the munitions," Smith said.

Cu'udchu'ar vanished and Smith frowned. The Lanaktallan had sounded different, almost looked different, from her earlier interactions.

"Ma'am! Type I and Type-II PAWMs are fleeing the battlefield, they're breaking contact and entering jumpspace," one of Smith's tactical stations called out.

"Redirect fire from the Type-I and the Type-II to the Atrekna ships," Smith said. She tapped the tank. "Get me Naval Ordnance Command."

She set about arranging for the units in range to start producing weapons.

If worse came to worse...

...she'd novaspark the stellar masses.