Slatmurt was burning. An entire planet was burning.

Dawn of the Second Day was a burning thing. The sun rose and shone its burning face upon a sky that was already consumed by fire. The clouds were bloody and bruised looking, the ash getting thicker as it rained down upon us.

We had filled five of the fourteen ammunition lockers with civilians, all of whom begged us to let them go, to free them, as terrified of us as they were of the Precursors. Their fear blinding them to the furniture, the food processors, the bedding, the recreational material, and the atmospheric generators. Blinding them to the fact that I was not imprisoning them behind a door that had the Terran words for "ALIVE INSIDE" written on the door under the glyphs of the Great Herd.

I hardened my heart as I closed the door on their weeping pleas.

As dawn arrived I gathered with my men, my loyal soldiers, in the armored fuel bay. I gave the orders for them to eat, drink, and try to rest.

The ground rumbled beneath our feet as the city took another kinetic kill hit from orbit.

We slept with our helmets on to spare our minds.

Even then, the nightmares were terrible. Full of pain, death, destruction, and torture. Always at the cold metal claws of the Precursors, who whispered in gleeful code bursts that there was only enough for one, and how I would not be that one.

It was nearly dark when we awoke, took care of biological imperatives, and left our little fortress.

The city was burning.

Great clouds of black smoke were climbing to the sky, the bottom of the clouds flickering and painted red by the fires consuming a city where only a day before millions of sentient beings went through their daily routine. As I watched a sky raker tilted slightly, then collapsed, the upper floors slamming onto the lower floors, compacting the building as it dropped.

Nearly three seconds after it began to fall we heard it start its death scream.

I wrung my four hands together with anxiety as I stared at the burning city. I could hear people screaming, a constant hellish wail that carried all the way to the military base. I could see the suburbs burning, see the great hab-complexes on fire or collapsing.

"I cannot order you to accompany me into such hell," I told them.

"You are our Most High, Ha'almo'or," Feelmeenta told me, wringing her hands on her prybar as she stared at the burning city. "Where you lead, we shall follow."

"We are the only ones who can do thus, so we must," Mal-Kar said softly, his eyes wide as a hab complex slowly began to collapse. My implant told me that we had cleared that one and I felt relief that we had done what we could. "No matter our fear, no matter how badly I want to go home, I will not leave them, or you, behind me when the current turns and threatens to become an undertow."

"The Digital Omnimessiah does not demand fearlessness, merely encourages mastering one's fear to do what must be done if a being is the only one who is capable of doing it," Julkrex told me, adjusting his helmet.

Most Lanaktallan would have been aghast at the mention of the Terran religious superstition. An Executor would have summarily executed him right on the spot.

But most Lanaktallan weren't staring at a city slowly being consumed.

"Then pray to your electronic deity for all our sake, Julkrex," I stated. I checked the charge in my plasma rifle. "We go back in."

My men put on their protective masks and we did preventive maintenance checks and services on our two battered vehicles. The armored heavy equipment recovery combat utility lifting extraction system vehicle, who's number two fan howled and vibrated and stunk inside of fear and desperation. The hoverbus, riding low with the addition of hastily welded armor, but able to carry hundreds at a time.

As I drove my upper torso and head were outside the armor, standing up in the driver's position, one hand resting on the dual barreled plasma machinegun, the other on my helmet, and my lower two hands steering. On the bus I could see Mal-Kar driving, the macroplas missing in front of him after a piece of debris had shattered it.

We followed out path into the city, the hoverfans roaring as it allowed us to traverse the heavily damaged streets.

We cleared two habs in twice as many hours, shutting them into the shelters despite their urgent pleas to free them, to not lock them away and imprison them.

It hurt, in some strange way, that they didn't understand I was trying to save them rather than ladle additional cruelty onto their lives. It hurt me that they did not trust me, not because of anything I had done before, but because of what my people had done to them.

Their small apartments, so bare of simple luxuries like colored paint on the walls, the cracked and crumbling plascrete of their housing, their food dispensers that were more restricted and bare bones than the ones I had used during military training. Many of them were eating unflavored nutripaste, the paste so thin it was like watery gruel, when we marched them from their apartments at gunpoint.

A part of me was ashamed, but I pushed that aside, and marched them down, out of their homes, and onto the bus at gunpoint.

I let them think I was an Executor or worse.

What they thought of me did not matter as long as I tried my best to save their lives.

My men knew why I was doing what I did. They understood, as they stood next to me, armed, faceless and featureless in their protective masks.

It was at the third hab of the night, just a handful of minutes before midnight, that we ran into opposition for the first time.

We came around the corner of the massive hab complex, which held two thousand families, only to see that there were four Executor vehicles blocking the street halfway down, with about three dozen armed and armored Executors guarding the primary access point of the hab while a handful of engineers welded a duralloy sheet over the door.

We slowed down and I moved my hand from where it rested on the plasma machinegun to the controller down inside the hull.

One Executor, red piping down his armor, held up one hand as he trotted toward us.

"What are you doing in the city?" he demanded more than asked.

"Rescue operations," I replied.

"I have no rescue operations listed for this area of operation," he said.

"I apologize for any misunderstanding. My orders were verbally delivered from my Most High," I lied. I had prepared my story in case of running afoul of any Sec Service the night prior.

The Executor officer stared at me through his clear face shield and I could see the lights on his datalink flashing.

He suddenly jerked, looking at me, and I knew, somehow, that his computer systems had managed to identify me as a known criminal with a harsh sentence.

"Shut down the vehicles and exit them with all due haste!" he ordered. Behind him his men charged their neural rifles and leveled them at us. "You are under arrest. You will comply and submit to us. We will take you into custody and you will be remanded to military justice authorities."

I looked past him, at the building, at all of the neo-sapients staring out their windows at what was going on. I knew they felt hopeless, felt bottomless despair, being welded into their habs as supposed 'shelter' from the Precursors.

We Lanaktallan were supposed to be the stewards of over two dozen neo-sapient races, near civilized species, and civilized species.

This was no stewardship, what the Executors were doing.

My thumb found the safety switch on the handle I was holding.

"Submit to my authority, lowly one," the Executor stated, his hand moving to charge his neural rifle.

"I am sorry, Executor, but there is a simple problem with your assumptions," I told him.

He frowned, confusion filling him as I made no move to shut down the armored beast nor to leave the vehicle.

"What problem?" he asked.

"A simple mistake in your logic chain," I told him.

He was unaware of what was happening off to the side of the recovery vehicle, focused entirely on me.

"What mistake?" he demanded.

My thumb hit the firing stud on the remote gunnery station and the dual barreled plasma machinegun roared, the barrels spinning to allow one to cool for a split second as the other one spit purplish-white darts of burning hot protomatter.

The Executor exploded into rags of tissue and Executor armor as I shifted the gun and raked the Executors gathered by the vehicles.

The other two guns on the recovery vehicle opened fire as Julkrex added his skills to the firefight.

Feelmeenta raked the ones at the door with her own rifle, set on the fast pulse setting.

Within seconds it was over. The Executor vehicles burning, adding their smoke to the haze of the murdered city. The dead were scattered around, none of them having gotten off a single shot as the situation changed too rapidly for them to process.

"Your mistaken belief I will come along quietly," I told the smoking half-corpse, my finger still keeping the barrels rotating to cool them down. I threw the recovery vehicle in gear, moving down the street.

The plenum chamber scraped the road, reducing the charred body of the Executor Most High into a smear on the pavement.

It took less time than usual to load up the hab inhabitants. We gathered up the weapons, storing them in the recovery vehicle.

It wouldn't do for a child to find them.

When we reached the motor pool I stared in shock.

A single tank had returned. Its armor was damaged, smoking, and two fans were out. The gun was warped, but it was a tank all the same.

I kept staring it as I urged the neo-sapients into one of the refurbished bunkers. The work crews were hard at work, having gotten all the way to the eighth and ninth bunker. Part of me noticed that the work crews were larger than they had been.

An aid station had been set up, manned by several Hamaroosa and a N'Kooran.

Once the refugees were safely into the modified munitions bunker I moved to the aid station.

There was a single Lanaktallan there. He was bleeding from his ears, four of his eyes had ruptured, and one of his jowls had been torn away, revealing his teeth. He had suffered burns on his lower body and as I trotted up the Hamaroosa tending to him shook her head silently.

I knelt down next to him. "What happened?" I asked him, taking his unburnt hand in mine.

I had learned the value of physical contact helping the neo-sapient refugees.

"Too many of them. Our guns are almost worthless," he gasped. He looked at me, but I knew he wasn't seeing me. "We tried, Most High, we tried to hold them back, but there was too many of them."

"It's all right, faithful one," I said, reaching out with one hand and touching his unburnt shoulder. "You did more than anyone should ask."

"We shot our guns dry. My crew, Most High," he began to weep. "My crew, they all died. A rocket hit my tank, the crew compartment exploded," his weeping became stronger. "My gunner, he still got his shot off, Most High," I could hear the pride behind the tears. He looked at me, squeezing my hand tightly. "Tell my mother..."

He went limp. The fire left his eyes.

I turned and looked at the tank. It was from another Armored Host, one I did not recognize. It was not surprising that I did not recognize the tank.

Almost half of the Great Herd's armored units were destroyed. The infantry units were deserting, according to the communication chatter I had listened to in the armored recovery vehicle.

"Should we fix it?" Mal-Kar asked me. "If we use the robotic repair bay it's an hour's work at the most."

"Yes," I told him. "We'll need it."

"For?" Julkrex asked, as if the smiling Telkan didn't know the answer.

I turned and looked the way the brutally damaged tank and its dying commander had arrived from.

"They're coming."

--Excerpt From: We Were the Lanaktallan of the Atomic Hooves, a Memoir.

From the Flag Bridge deep inside the battleship, Rear Admiral (Upper Decks) HawGawk watched as her ships went toe to toe with the Harvester Class Precursors trying to fight their way into orbit around the two supermassive gas giants that were the two planets furthest from the star. She was outnumbered thirty to one in ships total, but she smiled slowly as another Harvester started to break up.

Her capital ships now outnumbered the enemy's. True, it was only by one ship, but when the fight had started her capital ships were outnumbered by a factor of eight. Even with near-C cannon fire, it took the Precursor machines literally minutes for their massive barrages to reach her ships. In each time the shells were swept away by point defense firing to the side, having dodged the barrages.

Only two of her capital ships had been knocked out and one of those had managed to get back in the fight. The other was coasting deeper insystem while the damage control crews fought valiantly to save their fellow crew members and bring the fires under control.

"STATUS CHANGE!" her tactical command officer called out, the Treana'ad's voice tight with stress.

Admiral HawGawk shifted her command cradle to look at her tactical officer. "Talk to me, Tactical."

"Hellspace jumps incoming! Many many sources!" her tactical command called out. "One hundred and counting!"

"Any reading on who's coming?" HawGawk asked.

"Too far in-system for Precursors, they're making translation inside the stellar gravity shadow," her tactical officer said.

"It's the Crusade," HawGawk said. "Get ready for battleplan tie-in."

The first ship made its translation and HawGawk flinched back from the image. She wasn't the only one, most of the crew did, some calling out to saints or the Digital Omnimessiah to protect them. The ship was black, wreathed in flames, parts of it damaged and wrecked. The drives bled hellcore energy, the architecture was twisted and almost obscene. The prow was fashioned to appear as a mature Terran female being bound and tortured.

"Signal from the Crusade, Admiral," the Communication's specialist called out.

"Put it through," HawGawk said, rotating a screen to in front of her.

The screen cleared, showing a massive Terran female in full Imperium era power armor.

"I am Joan Mentissa, of the Dark Crusade of Light, servant and sister to Daxin the Unfeeling, Osiris of the Warsteel Flame," the woman said, her gaze unwavering. "By what name are you called, sister yet unknown?"

"Rear Admiral (Upper Decks) HawGawk," the Rigellian stated, keeping her expression detached even as her guts clenched.

"Sister HawGawk, my ships are at your command, my ground troops await your battleplan," the Terran woman, who's beauty was terrible, stated in a firm voice.

"Imperium, correction, Crusade ships have filed sit-rep and force levels," her commo officer said. He whistled low. "These are some nasty ships. They've got a dozen Antaeus Class Battle Cruisers."

"Who need reinforcements?" HawGawk asked.

"Eighth Infantry and Fifteen Infantry is calling for reinforcements, they've got multiple heavy Precursor fabrication class units that made planet-fall in their area of operations," the commo officer said.

"Transmit the coordinates to the Crusade," she said. She looked back up. "There are two Old Blood Infantry Divisions in need of reinforcement. Can you provide?"

The Joan nodded. "It will be done. Warn thy comrades that the Crusade is incoming."

-----------------------

Colonel Dremsal glanced at the data displayed in the side of his vision, an excersize in 'glancing' at something without moving his eyes. He'd only lost five tanks, three of them to the Great Gobbler, and even though he'd taken damage, he was past the two smaller ones.

Ahead of him was a burning chemical refinery, the black clouds of smoke rising into the air.

"Signal the Armored Herd we're slowing down. We need a ten minute break to cool down and deslush," Dremsal ordered. "Tell Fifteenth Combat Sustainment they have six minutes to reload and repair the Armored Herd's vehicles."

"Roger, sir," his commo tech said.

"Get me a drone feed on the other side of the factory, I want a look at our foe," Dremsal said.

It took less than sixty seconds for the data to be transferred.

The three high altitude stealth drones had gotten high-rez fine detail scans of the Devestator that had made landfall. He could see the heavy damage was already being repaired. There were scores of maintenance machines on its ten mile wide bulk. The air above it was patrolled by aerospace elements.

The number made Dremsal snort. It looked good, was probably mathematically the most efficient, but he had ten times that in drone combat air cover himself. He looked over the data some more, checked the theater ROE, and then linked in all of his commanders, including Most High A'armo'o.

"All right, gentlebeings," he said. "We're going to break here. Great Gobbler is about fifteen miles behind us, it should take him almost two hours to catch us. We're going to reload, rearm, refit, cool down, and deslush for ten more minutes."

The commanders, displayed as holograms in his vision, all made motions of assent.

"Once we're ready, we'll button up,. push through the refinery wreckage, then form a siege line," he stared at everyone. "We're bypassing atomic and going straight to nuclear munitions. That thing's a big one, it'd take days to bust it up with atomics and Command wants it gone. We'll be using clean nuclear penetrators."

A'armo'o checked his lexicon, searching for the difference. Both of them involved either fusion or fission of weaponized isotopes, and on the surface there wasn't much difference.

The lexicon popped it right up. Atomics were largely omnidirectional blasts at ground or surface level. Nuclear involved penetrators like the BOLO's Hellbore or the Terran staged nuclear counter-implosion round. Directed, normally used for city destruction or in orbit.

Only the Terrans would look at an atomic explosion and think to itself: that's nice, but how can I make it really break the enemy's shit? A'armo'o thought to himself as he lifted his command cradle up so he was half out of his tank.

The air felt cool on his sweaty torso.

Great Most High of Slatmurt Armor Forces A'armo'o heard the shout over his comlink and turned behind him to look.

The massive digging machine was burrowing into the ground, vanishing as it pulled its battlescreens closer.

"Oh, that's not good," A'armo'o said, watching as the digging machine vanished underground.