Tell them: It is a manner of honor. - Captain Delminta, Hamaroosa Naval Vessel Harvester of Sorrow, Flagship - Two Pinches Combat Fleet, Task Force Delicate Orchid, Operation Iron Piglet, Second Precursor War

The system was a rich one, a system that any species that discovered it would covet. Two dwarf yellow stars in a binary cooperative orbit tandem, nineteen planetary bodies including eight gas giants, two of which were supermassive. There were eight asteroid belts full of resources and a resource thick bean shaped Oort cloud.

It sat one-hundred-sixteen light years beyond the border of the Rim Worlds, deep into the Long Dark.

The Atrekna were present in the system in force. The system was rich in natural resources, with multiple gas giants, including two hypermassive gas giants full of fireice and dihydrogen. The planetoids were rich with rare earth elements and two of them had vast untapped reserves of petroleum to add to the biosoup used to grow slavespawn.

Nearly eight hundred Harvester and Goliath Class autonomous war machines orbited the gas giants. Nearly three thousand Sun Scraper class slavespawn hive-ships orbited the gas giants, their miles long tentacles dropping into the hydrocarbon atmosphere to drink deeply so that the hive-ships could spawn more troops to put into stasis.

The system defenses were thick and heavy. There were nCv cannons on orbit around the planet, massive planetary defense missile systems ringing the planets, combat orbital stations heavily protected by phasic shields. Thousands of aerospace capable slavespawn and autonomous war machines moved in flocks through the stellar system's spaces.

The system was key to the Second Spoked Offensive.

The Overmind was thick and rich, dozens of Overbrains and Omnibrains linked together to form one of the thickest and deepest Overminds the Atrekna possessed in the New Universe.

There were hundreds of thousands of Atrekna on the surface of the two planets in the Green Zone (for the Atrekna). More Atrekna existed on those two planets than had existed in the Old Universe for five hundred million years.

Only a quarter of them had been temporally recovered, the rest had either been born in the New Universe or, in the case of nearly six percent of them, had managed to flee the Old Universe before its collapse.

The Atrekna viewed it as a fortress world.

Anyone who had seen the defenses of the Confederacy's member species's home planets would have burst out laughing.

Still, the Atrekna owned the system. Had owned it and were busy mining it for nearly eighty years local time as the system had been sunk deep.

Other systems, less defended than Prime System Gamma, were beginning to broadcast that they were under attack in force.

The Atrekna in Prime System Gamma did not worry.

Even if the Inheritors knew the system was in possession of the system, the Atrekna were confident that their scanning arrays would detect any force buildup by the Inheritors before they could launch an attack, that would be doomed to fail, upon Prime System Gamma.

Which was why some of the Atrekna researchers were confused by the sudden eruption of giggling particles that spun and wheeled as they shed more of themselves.

Moments later a ship streaked into existence deep in the stellar mass gravity well, appearing in a split second near the outer hypermassive gas giant.

It let loose with a primal scream of rage that shook the entire system.

LET THIS SYSTEM SHUDDER WITH THE WRATH OF THE HAMAROOSAN PEOPLE!

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The Harvester of Sorrow's shields came up instantly, before the hyperspace translation hash fully cleared the system. Hatched irised open to reveal the heavy missile launchers. Gun tubes extended for the C+ cannons and the plasma wave phased motion gun began withdrawing the heavy piston in preparation for a shot.

"Targets, many many targets!" the scanning chief, the Captain's Right Hand Aunt Beeta, sang out. "Autonomous war machines in the Goliath and Harvester Class. Dwellerspawn in the Devourer Class. Unknown ship configurations! Orbital facilities around all orbital bodies!"

"Designate target groups! Tell the flight crews to prepare to launch!" Captain Delminta snapped, her face twisted into a snarl. She pointed out one of the Harvester class vessels orbiting the hypermassive gas giant. "KILL THAT ONE FIRST!"

"Firing main gun!" Sheenla, the Chief Gunnery Officer, called out. She held tight to the two levers embedded in the arms of her crash couch, yanking them backwards then shoving them forward. "FIRING PLASMA WAVE PHASED MOTION CANNON!"

The entire vessel seemed to rock back even though the ship didn't actually move. The massive piston cycled and the huge grooved barrel the ship was built around glowed bright blue for a moment before it vomited out a beam of coherent energy.

The beam crossed six light seconds in less than a second, slamming into the unaware autonomous war machine. It transfixed it for a moment, halos of energy exploding from the top and bottom of the continent sized war machine. Cracks appeared in the hull of the autonomous war machine, spreading out from the impact and glowing with a blue light.

The Harvester exploded.

"FIRST BLOOD IS OURS! SIGNAL THE CRUSADE!" Delminta roared out, jumping to her feet. She knew she should be in her crash couch but her rage, her fury, demanded she stand on the bridge. She pointed her command stick at the symbols of enemy vessels. "Wipe these alien scum from the face of the universe!"

Before the Atrekna could react to the appearance of the solo vessel, could completely absorb that the vessel had destroyed a Harvester with one shot (even though it had been unpowered), the large ship suddenly shed hundreds of missile pods and launched hundreds of aerospace fighters. The massive C+ cannons fired, the shell entering hyperspace for a split second before dropping out, checking its targeting, and jumping back into hyperspace.

In less than a second the C+ shells cross light hours to strike slavespawn hive-ships that were floating, dormant, around the inner gas giants, their gauzy wings extended to feed off of the stellar radiation.

The first battery tore the targeted hive-ship apart.

The missile pods jumped to hyperspace, exited near an autonomous war machine facility, and fired dozens of missiles each before converting the pod itself into a C+ round.

The war machines and the facility began to break up.

Before the Atrekna could even begin to do much more than knee jerk reactions the entire situation changed.

Massive fiery lines appeared in space around the system, dozens of point sources. Shadowy, skeletal black fingers pushed from the inside of the columns of fire. Metal screeched with a scream that carried through space and made the hulls of the Atrekna craft shiver as the claws pushed the columns wider. A massive skull of black metal thrust from each portal, which had fire spiral away from it like blood spilled.

YOUR DOOM HAS ARRIVED

sounded out across the system like the clanging of a cracked iron bell.

The skulls exploded as baroque and twisted ships slammed out of the boiling hellpits and into realspace. Black chains were wrapped around the ships and stretched out from the Hellspace portals for hundreds of miles before the links shattered and the ships lunged forward.

THE CRUSADE OF WRATH HAS FOUND YOU GUILTY OF HERESY

More ships streamed in through the Hellspace ruptures even as the first through brought up heavy shielding that streamed with twisted and exotic runic script, even as the original arrival fired its C+ cannons again.

The Atrekna vessels were beginning to react but the invaders had caught the equivalent of a fleet at anchor in port.

The baroque ships were massive, bristling with weapons that were firing rapidly, and launching parasite craft even as they drove in-system, the newest arrivals shattering the black iron chains holding them back.

With the clang of rusting iron doors the Hellspace portals vanished.

The Atrekna were reeling from the psychic assault of what sounded like a thousand lemurs singing hymns of terrible melodies with choruses that made those Atrekna who attempted to decipher them plunge their own feeding tentacles into their eyes.

The system was a bloodbath as the invading ships kept up an increasing rate of fire that simple ship mass versus mass and energy output stated was impossible.

The aerospace fighter parasite craft made micro-jumps into the system in entire squadrons, attacking the orbital facilities and swooping down on the heavy system defense missile launchers before the crews could even get targeting lock.

Construction and fabrication facilities were blotted away by atomic weaponry and worse. The system rang like a bell as a dozen Martial Order of Terra ships fired superstring compressor cannons and destroyed AWM craft that had not yet powered up their shields.

The Atrekna were desperately grasping at anything to turn the tide of the battle. The sheer speed and fury was one thing, but the insane screaming from every mind aboard the twisted baroque ships, the howls of fury from the other ships kept battering at them.

That's not to say the attackers went without casualties. Aerospace fighters exploded. A light cruiser took several hundred nCv cannon hits, its shields failed and dozens of traincar sized slugs hit it amidships. It broke in half and the forward end exploded. A destroyer ate several thousand bomb pumped x-ray laser warheads and vanished in a boiling cloud of atomic fury. A battleship took a hundred hits to the forward bow and began to tumble.

But each casualty seemed to spur the attackers to more and more furious action.

As the hours stretched on the invaders pushed further and further into the system, wiping out orbital facilities, wiping out autonomous war machines, blotting away slavespawn vessels.

It was an orgy of mutual slaughter.

When the drop pods were fired at the surface of the inhabitable planets and the Mad Lemurs of Terra, clad in terrible power armor, stomped forth to kill anything they set eyes upon, marching through atomic blasts and orbital strikes, the flames lighting their armor and dim compared to the burning red of their eyes, the Atrekna became desperate.

Losing the system meant severe damage to the buildup for the Second Spoked Offensive.

Massive armored warmeks strode across the surface of the planet, destroying anything close by. Even orbital strikes did little to the massive meks, just forcing the pilots to navigate through debris clouds and hurricanes of ash and cinders as they tromped forward to the crystalline fortresses. Power armor clad infantry, led by units three times the size of their subordinates, advanced across burning plains of ash and through cities that were little more than hurricane wind fueled conflagrations.

Aerospace fighters got in knife fight close to rake their targets with powerful particle beam projectors or hammer the target with snub nosed rapidfire nCv cannons, often disgorging shoals of missiles that raked and tore at the targets.

Several of the baroque ships, daubed pink and white with strange twisted statues on the hull, drove directly at the massive Atrekna command ships, deliberately ramming the Atrekna ships. Once the hulls were interlocked, massive engines made the baroque ship twist in the wound, even as the main engines pushed the ship deeper into the Atrekna vessel.

Once the pink and white vessels stopped twisting, sally ports exploded open and dozens, scores, hundreds of screaming lemur-feline hybrid power armor troops flooded the Atrekna vessels. Plasma fueled fire, heavy gyrojet rounds, and roaring chainswords ripped apart the crews as the lemur-feline hybrids fought to get to the center of the command vessel.

On the bridge of the Harvester of Sorrow it was busy but muted even as Captain Delminta stalked back and forth in front of the main viewscreen, her command stick gripped tightly in her hands. Her face was twisted in a snarl as she designated targets and snapped orders to the Hamaroosan vessels in the Task Force.

In one corner of the screen the Arch-Preceptor and the Holy Inquisitor of Terra both watched her with stern approval on their faces.

"Resistance is collapsing," the Preceptor said, his voice stentorian.

"The desperate take unwise counsel in hopes of pulling victory from defeat," the Inquisitor added, the bridge lights gleaming on the warsteel implants on his face.

"Let them try," Captain Delminta snarled. "We will purge this place in fire and blood."

"As you will," the Preceptor said, nodding.

Unknown to Delminta, the Inquisitor was indeed correct.

On one of the orbiting fortresses the Atrekna were desperately trying to find something, anything, to turn overwhelming defeat into some semblance of victory. The temporal resonance munitions had covered the entire system with a chronotron haze of giggling and splitting particles, making it almost impossible to replicate autonomous war machines or slavespawn or Atrekna that had been spawned in the system. The Atrekna couldn't reach any system or resource that had crossed the system's path, the terrible weapons of the lemur fleet having disrupted that option.

They cast about desperately.

One spotted something.

A spawn.

It had appeared near the outer hypermassive gas giants.

It consulted with the other Atrekna, who agreed that the spawn's massive size would assist it in assaulting the fleet that was rapidly crushing the Atrekna forces.

They joined their power, reached back, and brought forward the single slavespawn they had spotted.

"STATUS CHANGE! TEMPORAL SHIFT IN PROGRESS!" the Temporal Officer called out.

Captain Delminta whirled around. "Talk to me!"

"Source point at the outer gas giant! It's entering realspace and realtime! Visual coming in!"

The image of the temporally replicated Atrekna weapon appeared onscreen.

Captain Delminta stared at the image, her mouth hanging open, her command stick falling from her hands and clattering on the deck.

"Communication coming in, relaying," the communication's officer said.

"Hey, uh, what's happening? Where'd you go?" sounded out from the speakers.

On the screen, thousand mile long tentacles unfurled to extend into the gas giant, was a massive iridescent cephalopod.

"Delminta? Where did you go? Stupid com-nerves, shoulda got a warranty," the young female's voice said.

"ALERT THE CRUSADE! NEGATIVE TARGET! MARK AS FRIENDLY!" Delminta shouted.

"Hey, what's going on?" Sandy asked, staring at the battle around her with city sized eyes. "Uh, did I miss something?"

The universe howled with laughter and entire protogalaxies spun into existence.