She taught us that the universe was malevolent. Not created that way, but because it had been grievously wounded. She taught us that the universe was young, less than fifteen billion years old, and had been wounded by the burning of the hyperatomic planes.

Wounded children lash out, become capricious and cruel.

Our forebearers had wounded the universe, caused it to become cruel as it witnessed the murder of a sibling, a murder that wounded it also.

She also taught us that the sins of the ancestors are not necessarily the sins of the descendants, providing the descendants attempt to rectify or otherwise no longer cause harm.

Our original dimension had been destroyed by greed and the misuse of time. It had sped up the death of those universes even as we consumed the resources and hoarded them, leaving nothing in its wake.

We would do better. She taught us a better way.

We could have engaged in warfare against our cousins. That war would have led to more arrogant damage to an already wounded universe.

Instead, we sought to embrace our siblings, our cousins, to celebrate the differences and work together.

We offered the hand of friendship to our ancestors, to the people that we had descended from.

They spurned our offer. Lashing out at us. Killing our envoys. Slaughtering our diplomats. Mocking us as they tortured and defiled those who had come to them with the shining beacon of peace.

She had warned us, our cruel and antagonistic mother, our implacable and unflinching goddess.

We had, in our childlike naivety, assumed that our ancestors, who still lived, that if we offered them peace and coexistance, they would accept. That we could merely outlive them. We had rejected, initially, our harsh mother's words that we would have to use rude violence to defend ourselves.

Despite our pleas, our ancestors struck at us. Called us abominations and worse.

They mistook our desire for peace, our ethos of cooperation, for weakness.

They did not know, or did not care to know, that our mother was The Maddest Lemuress, the Lady Lord of the Inferno.

They did not know, or did not care to know, that within us, beneath our desire for peace, burned a hot rage at the foolishness of our ancestors that cost us universe after universe. That a part of us desired to punish our ancestors for their sins.

We would be lying if we stated that we went to war, to annihilate our ancestors, those who were little more than appetite driven parasites, to wipe them from the universe, with a heavy heart.

It was with relief we pulled the trigger.

They believed there was only enough for one. That everything belonged to them.

Which meant they believed there was not enough for us to share in. That we and our share belonged to them was not spoken, they were plain in their intention to wipe us utterly from the glorious malevolent universe.

And so, filled with relief, we ignited the great engines of war and declared our ancestors our enemy.

And, as our malevolent mother, our goddess the Maddest Lemuress, had taught us...

The Enemy Exists Only to Be Destroyed. - From: The Broken Reflection of Our Fathers, The Patricide War, Smokey Cone Press, 8754 PG

[Let's watch]

The Atrekna in the central mega-city watched as the twelve cities around them began putting in military bases, trenchworks, and staging vehicles at the unofficial border of the True City and the Twelve Abomination Nests. They had no fear of the debased and mutated creatures dwelling in the Nests.

The Atrekna had proven their superiority and dominance over the Nests by torturing the envoys and sending them back as twisted mockeries of what they had once been. The Atrekna had ignored the abomination's pleas for mercy and compassion, sneering and laughing.

All of the envoys had been sent back implanted with poor quality larvae.

The Atrekna had some cause for alarm. The orbital and the stellar system assets had suddenly stopped talking. There had been a large register of pain from the slavespawn and the Atrekna controllers, then nothing.

Then the Omnibrain had succumbed to some kind of necrotizing fasciitis that had caused dead tissue to slowly consume it no matter what. The briny neural fluid had been contaminated by a virus that was almost too small for the Atrekna to detect.

Worse, the Atrekna believed that it had spread to the Overminds on the planet and in space.

They could no longer communicate with other Atrekna worlds outside of the stellar system. Those outer systems had all been reporting heavy attacks.

Not a scattered few. Not a handful. Not even a significant percentage.

All of them. Nearly twenty thousand stellar systems were under heavy assault by the Inheritors of Madness.

In overwhelming force.

The Atrekna of the True City tried to reestablish contact with the outside. Tried to establish contact with other systems. All to no avail.

[I want to see the stars too. I need to see the stars]

They concentrated on trying to reestablish control of orbital and system assets. The few times they were able to achieve orbit without the crew dying or the biovessel burning up during launch, all that was reported was dead bioships and inert hunks of metal from autonomous war machines.

Atrekna researchers tried to figure out what had gone wrong.

The ignored the weak and pathetic efforts of the Nests to fortify their borders.

As soon as the Atrekna reestablished their system dominance, they'd simply wipe out the Nests as if they never existed.

The were inevitable.

[Lets see what the others are doing]

In all twelve cities celebrations were starting. Torches were lit and lined the streets, replacing the phasic crystals providing gentle light. Feasts of delicacies like rib-finned iridescent fish baked over an open fire and roasted shelled bivalved mollusks were laid out for all to enjoy.

In the center of each city was a large statue of active phasonium. It shifted between a large, thick bodied mammalian lemur and a massive brutish looking creature with wings and tusks and horns.

[wait. is that a statue to me? why would they build that? none of them have seen me in over a thousand years]

All around the statue the neo-Atrekna had formed three concentric circles, holding hands, their robes swirling patterns created by tying the robes into knots and dipping it in dye, with wreaths of flowers around their necks and adorning their brows above their third eye. Small neo-Atrekna ran around throwing flowers in the air and squealing with delight.

[what the hell? is this a music festival? is that tie-dye?]

The drums were pounded, the singers sang, and neo-Atrekna lined up in the streets in uniforms. As each neo-Atrekna entered the city square, they had a wreath of multicolored flowers set on their shoulders and another wreath put on their heads. They filed by the gathered crowd, who threw flowers at their feet. Neo-Atrekna cheered and waved signs as well as sang and held hands, rocking side to side, as the uniformed neo-atrenka marched to where vehicles were waiting.

[what? how the hell did they become hippies? how did I screw up this bad?]

Those in uniforms, bedecked with flowers, moved to the vehicles. From there they rode to the border, where they entered the dug in bases. The trenches began rapidly spreading out as dedicated robotic systems dug outward to connect them. Self-deploying robotic minefields spread out in front of the trenches. Crew served weaponry was deployed. Ammunition Supply Points and Ammunition Transfer Points were staged next to fuel and repair points. Artillery and rocket systems were moved forward and the checks on the systems began. Tanks and strikers were loaded up and waited on the airfields and tank fields.

[ok this is better. stupid hippies]

The Atrekna in the True City saw the preperations and dismissed them. The abominations had done the same thing every few months for nearly a decade and nothing had come of it.

They knew nothing would.

It was just for show, an attempt to cow the Atrekna by a mutation deformed abomination.

They were confident right up until the rocket systems and artillery pieces began to fire.

The shells were crude, mostly high explosive thermobaric rounds that slammed into the ground and blew apart thick biomatter pipes that pumped nutrient solutions and water to where it was needed. Rockets exploded over breeding pools, over lakes, dropping bomblets and napalm in equal measure. Mist covered the larger slavespawn, fading away to reveal that the Ohm class slavespawn now looked like they were covered in glitter.

Buildings, crystal farms, and other important infrastructure sites were hammered by the abomination artillery and rockets.

The Atrekna reacted with rage. They ordered in the Ohm Class slavespawn, ordered in the servitors, ordered in combat groupings of Young Ones.

The neo-Atrekna were reloading the artillery and rocket units continually from the pre-staged ammunition, moving ammunition from factories to the staging areas on mag-lev trains. They alternated units so that they could continually pound at the Atrekna held areas.

The Ohm Class slavespawn ignored the Atrekna commands, most of them still asleep.

The servitors, driven by the lash of the Atrekna's mind domination powers, loaded into vehicles and drove at top speed to try to reach the trenchworks of the abominations. Atrekna artillery and rocket units went live, firing at the abomination lines.

The Ohm Class still just slowly moved around, grazing on the vegetation. Neo-Atreka rockets dropped fast-grow seed packs and more of that glitter on the slavespawn.

All of which kept ignoring the Atrekna in the True City and the commands to assault the abomination lines.

Atrekna who went out to the Ohm Class slavespawn found that the glitter was precision manufactured microcrystals that blocked the Atrekna mental wavelengths. The Atrekna tried cleaning it off but had adhered to the Ohm Class slavespawn's armor.

Snipers, using high caliber highly accurate projectile weapons that the metal jacket was heavily doped with the microcrystals. began shooting the Atrekna that were trying to bring the Ohm Class under control.

The Atrekna found that on each projectile was carved. Over and over was three words.

'sorry about this'

The Atrekna put together a Quorum to figure out what that meant.

Once in a while a rocket would get through to the city, usually at high altitude, and detonate.

The expected atomic never detonated.

Instead it was a bright white flash that blinded even those that were merely exposed to the reflection.

Artillery and rocket attacks cut off the water and nutri-pipes. Long range rockets and rocket assisted artillery cut the servitor warrens off from the True City, forcing the Atrekna to use tunnels to move the servitors to the True City and then to the front lines.

[isn't this exciting, X1]

Weeks passed until the abominations, the neo-Atrekna, made their push.

Strikers and tanks roared forward, armored personnel carriers and light armored fighting vehicles all advanced into their own rocket and artillery attacks.

The Atrekna in the True City had already been forced to deal with the fact they were unable to temporally replicate troops and materiel. They had taken horrific casualties at the outset, but over the last few weeks had determined through consensus that the abominations would not advance because they knew that Atrekna would destroy them.

Instead, the abominations smashed through the Atrekna lines with tanks, strikers, and armored vehicles.

The long tunnels from the True City to the fortifications and the servitor warrens and the slavespawn caverns suddenly had the walls cave in and abomination forces flood into the tunnels.

The Atrekna were shocked.

The abomination combat teams were different than what the Atrekna had expected. Abominations were mixed in with servitors, providing phasic counter-measures as well as phasic force fields to protect the servitor species.

Even some tanks and strikers were crewed by the abominations.

In the servitor warrens, which were quickly overrun, street fighting was intense as the abominations deployed more of the microcrystals, disrupting the Atrekna's ability to dominate the servitors.

Servitors began picking up weapons and turning them on the Atrekna.

In places in the warrens, where Atrekna were captured, the abominations marched them to the nearest wall, listened to the Atrekna's threats and declarations of superiority, pushed them face first against the wall...

...and shot them.

Wounded Atrekna on the battlefield were executed by abominations without hesitation. The servitors of the abominations always summoned an abomination to perform the execution unless the Atrekna threatened the servitors too much.

[oooh our children aren't fucking around, are they, X1]

As the neo-Atrekna drew closer to the city, the sky shifted. During the day, the sun began to glow brighter, moving to a reddish-orange as the it got brighter in the sky even as it got smaller.

Against the neo-Atrekna assault the island fortresses of the Atrekna were wiped out, the black night sky seemed to have something just beyond sight. A suggestion of color in the sky. A possibility of sparkles in the blackness.

When the ocean fortresses sank beneath the waves, the ocean-going Ohm Class all turned away from battle and moved to the kelp and plankton beds to quietly munch on the beds, their eyes turning from red to blue or green.

Only the True City remained when the sun was orangish-red and the night sky seemed to hold some kind of strange promise of glory.

[stars... I can almost see the stars]

The war entered the final phase.

The street fighting in the True City was intense, the neo-Atrekna taking it building by building, tunnel by tunnel, chamber by chamber, street by street.

The lead units all had paintings of a huge fierce beast, dark brown of skin, with black wings, curved spikes jutting from the skin, curved horns, and burning red eyes.

[what the hell is that? Is that me? It is! It's me! Why am I on their vehicles?]

Those units showed no mercy as they smashed their way into the city. Where other units tried to avoid damaging the structures, those units fired their main guns into or called air strikes down on delicate crystalline structures.

They lined Atrekna against the walls and executed them.

They threw grenades into spawning pools.

They marched forward, servitor and neo-Atrekna alike, the bestial head of the creature on their shoulder flashes. The officers and the neo-Atrekna carried whips of barbed wire interwoven chains that were flush with phasic power.

A snap from one of the whips could collapse a crystalline wall into powder.

The True City was reduced to swaths of smoke shrouded rubble as the neo-Atrekna forces advanced.

Several times, the neo-Atrekna tried to accept surrender.

As soon as they turned their backs, the Atrekna attempted to temporally replicate forces, to teleport away, or teleport in forces. Or just attacked wildly, screeching in rage at the sight of the neo-Atrekna.

Attempts at surrender were just met with bullets.

The triggers were pulled with shameful relief.

The sun brightened even further, a yellowish orange.

[the stars I can almost see the stars taste the stars]

Two years, five months, sixteen days, eleven hours, twenty-two minutes, the war ended with a single pistol shot by a servitor with a Mother's Head shoulder flash.

There was a feeling of falling and floating for a long moment. The sun blinked, like it had gone out, then came back in burning golden glory.

The night sky was filled with stars.

[the stars...]

The war was over.

The Neo-Atrekna stood triumphant.

In the cities there was a single day of silence, where everyone stayed home and did not speak. If their employment meant they were required to speak, it was done by voice, done quietly, somberly.

Then the population celebrated.

They held hands in circles around the statue of the Fearsome Mother, swaying side to side and singing. They threw flowers. They feasted on good wholesome food. They embraced one another and the servitors, whom they had accepted as sentient beings just like themselves.

Children painted colorful patterns on the sides of the Ohm Class slavespawn, whom just munched on the foilage and moved forward a few feet.

[oh great back to hippies]

They stared with wonder at the night sky.

[the stars...]

With joy they launched their first spacecraft.

[Wasn't that exciting X1?]

Special Subject X1 sat in his garden, staring at a flower in his hand.

The sub-species had already managed to build biomechanical superluminal ships.

They had wiped out his people with a ruthlessness he was only used to seeing from his own people.

He knew, in his heart, that his people were doomed. The neo-Atrekna would never forget how their ancestors had only professed a willingness to coexist right until they attacked again, perceiving the neo-Atrekna's willingness to coexist as a weakness.

He knew that...

The detonation made the ground shake, the water in the fountain tremble, send the creatures and insects scurrying for their nests and hidey-holes. The lights flickered and went out. The distance view on the walls flickered and went out, showing nothing but Substance-W doped steel walls.

Lights came on, red light painting the room. The crystals came on, bathing the room in light.

"EMERGENCY SYSTEMS ONLINE" came a voice from the speakers.

The lights came back on. The walls flickered and vanished, showing a landscape around the garden.

SX1 moved to the doorway, which was unlocked, and opened it. He looked out into the hallway.

The robots were slumped, some collapsed on the floor.

He moved toward where the Mad Lemur's labs were.

The first three doors he moved near radiated high heat. He could smell burning insulation and polymer compounds.

The fourth opened into a hallway that still had a faint scum of fire suppressant foam coating everything.

He moved through the hallways and the rooms, using his phasic powers to keep the heat and smoke away.

The labs were destroyed. Her comfortable relaxing rooms were enveloped in fire. The cloning banks were nothing but charred wreckage. The vast computer systems were either burning or carbonized metal and ceramics.

He discovered that the fusion reactor that drove the facility's power had detonated. The backup fission powerplant had taken over the load. The Mad Lemur's work area, where she had created horrors, where she had sliced apart X1 over and over, were all so much twisted and melted wreckage.

He found a single carbonized skeleton in a hallway that still simmered with wrath and rage.

X1 moved away from it, continuing his exploration.

More exploration and he discovered a tunnel that led upwards.

He followed it for hours until it ended at a door.

A door that was half-retracted, darkness beyond.

He moved through and stopped.

He was outside!

He looked to the sky and saw the stars across the night sky. The soft glow of a nearby nebula, the small moon in the sky.

Special Subject X1 breathed the air, taking deep breaths, and closed his eyes. His hands went up and he carefully removed the headband from his head, finally uncovering his third eye.

The orange splotches on his skin darkened and lightened. The green circles around his eyes brightened. The blue stripes around his arms brightened. His eight feeding tentacles wiggled beneath his full cheeks.

He fell to his knees and put his face in his hands, the red striped down his fingers darkening.

He wept for his freedom.

But most of all, he wept because the Mad Lemur was dead.

He was free.

Free.