The Atrekna rallied, quickly, only a few seconds were they stunned and unable to react.

That was enough for the Confederate firepower to kill a fifth of them.

The Atrekna had taken massive casualties, half of their force was gone. The War Machines had arrived, but the feral ships were already engaging, forcing the War Machines to slow down, defend themselves, expend resources to keeping the feral ships from destroying them within minutes.

The remaining ones rebound into new Quorums and Conclaves, bringing up psychic defenses, bringing up protections, attempting to shift themselves slightly out of phase by a microsecond.

All they got was the face of a multitude of Mantid green savant servitor heads, all laughing at them.

Something had happened. Time had been damaged. It had run forward and backwards and frozen all at the same time the ripples from the orbital shot had caused time to go crazy for nearly three whole seconds, chopping those seconds up and the pieces running forward and backwards, slower and faster, but still exiting the other side with the same amount of time having passed.

The Atrekna couldn't reach forward, couldn't reach back, couldn't reach sideways.

With horror, they realized some very basic facts very quickly.

The slavespawn they had was all they were going to have.

The resources they had in their possession were all they were going to have.

The War Machines were all they were going to have.

But finally, and worse...

They couldn't get away.

Which left only two options.

Victory.

Or Death.

And they were determined to achieve victory.

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

"Podnaughts have reached 90% deployment," Ensign Shugruth said. "Targeting solutions firm and in red zone. Warboi hash stable, optimum cooking and baking time has been achieved," the Kobold continued. "Temporal lensing has compensated for planetary distortion. Capital weapon systems are at max capacity."

Admiral Shtuklar nodded, splitting his attention between three holotanks. One showing the status and positions of his own fleet, the second showing the same for Bogey Alpha, the third showing the entire system with layer annotations.

He could see the shockwaves across the temporal zones from the planet, but here the data made perfect sense for him as a planet's mass and speed affected the time/space fabric.

"Status of temporal and stellar stabilizers?" Admiral Shtuklar asked.

"Deployment at 100%, power at 100%, creation engine heat at 15%, slush at 3%, pod-nanoforge warmed up and ready, templates laid in, we're merely waiting on your word," Commodore Dthetrek hissed.

"Hold activation," Admiral Shtuklar said. "Status on getting Ma Bell's Bad Touch's main firing array at full operation?"

Ensign Ululu'ululU looked up from her board. "Ship's complement is at 15% of trained officers," she started.

"I know. Status, not clarification of reasons," Admiral Shtuklar said.

"Main battery one, five, nine, eleven are operational and running on automation for reloading. Main battery two, three, seven are currently offline but loading," the Ensign said.

Admiral Shtuklar nodded. "Tell the Master Bosun to crack the whip on the Marines, have those lazy dogs load the guns by hand if they have to!" he snapped, turning his attention to the carriers. "Carrier group status?"

"No clone war troops available," Commodore Tranakakrept said, staring at his board. He looked up. "Admiral, I must, for the record, state my objection to allow close engagement light craft engage with no SUDS or clone tank backup despite the fact it is only volunteers."

"Objection noted, Commodore," Admiral Shtuklar said. "Launch on my authority, under protest."

"Launch order recieved and transmitted," the Commodore stated, looking uncomfortable.

"The board of inquiry will have quite enough to feed on after this fight, but we have to win it first," Admiral Shtuklar said. He turned to his hyperlane officer. "Any resonance?"

The officer checked his boards and sensor. "Some kicking in Hellspace, looks like the Crusade's engines so I'm keeping an eye on it, but nothing aimed at us yet."

"Keep stringspace lanes open," Admiral Shtuklar said. "If the Mercy or the Comfort have to jump out, I want those lanes open."

"Aye-aye, sir," the officer said.

Admiral Shtuklar kept the status reports flowing in, including the three subspace foam cruisers that were still operational already manuevering for clear shots at the rear arcs of the PAWM machines coming in.

He lifted his chin slightly, making sure that his profile was confident and assured.

The battle was not yet joined, but unless the PAWM unleashed some kind new tactic, strategy, or weapon system that proved to be highly effective, he knew that his preperations were moving along.

He wouldn't say he had it under control. Those officers who thought they could ultimately control a battle completely forgot that the enemy had a say in the outcome of the battle and eventually lost. When they lost, they lost big.

Admiral Shtuklar had been reminded, pointedly and recently, that he was capable of making mistakes.

He would not repeat the mistakes he had made groundside.

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

Trucker snarled, spitting blood and bacca juice over the side of Cry Little Sister, holding down the trigger on the quadbarrel, raking the side of a Dwellerspawn. Something overrode training and experience and he held the trigger down as Cry Little Sister kept roaring forward, ripping open the entire side of the massive pillbug-esque creature, blowing huge divots out of the spongy and fibrous tissues inside despite the fact the Dwellerspawn was been dead in the first ten rounds.

He gave a wordless roar of raw triumph as Cry Little Sister surged over a hive full of crabs the size of a manhole cover, the tracks grinding chitin into paste, even the glittering biological armor of the crabs.

His crew gave wordless cries back, his driver gurgling where the shipboard MP's had crushed his throat trying to control the Enraged Terran.

Trucker gave out another roar, swinging the gun around, hitting a flatworm the size of a semitruck as it reared up.

The battlefield was fluid, moving around him, but he still understood it, could still feel it. He knew what he was looking for.

The malignant heart that he could feel ahead.

Unnoticed, blood ran from his ear and mouth, thick and black.

Third Armor (Dead Blood) advanced fully into the mass of Dwellerspawn, uncaring that the horde of creatures closed behind them.

Victory in death.

If that's what it took?

That was fine.

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

Vuxten saw the field collapse, heard the howl of rage ring across everything. Holotanks shorted out, psychic dampeners whined and struggled to compensate.

He could taste blood and strawberries and lime.

He didn't pay it attention, focusing instead on the fact that the interdiction was down.

Now he had to kill the Atrekna.

You thought that constantly rewinding would only benefit you, Vuxten thought, reaching for the "all units" icon. It gave me nine hours to adapt to your methods, nine hours to figure out how to find you and kill you. You can see the river cards, the flop cards, but you've got no idea what kind of cards I've got in the hole.

The icon flashed.

"All unit commanders, you have your orders! DISMOUNT THE CUBES!" Vuxten yelled. He grabbed his heavy SMG, moving toward the exit of the ad hoc TOC. (Tactical Operations Command) He cut the link and looked at Corporal Trekmurt. "Throw an aye-em grenade in here on your way out. Blow it all in place."

471 climbed up his back, got into the cradle, and closed the protective housing.

--online ontime go for papa palpatine-- the green mantid transmitted.

He pushed through the sterifield. "We advance into the enemy."

In the distance there were white flashes that cut through the howling dust. The ground rumbled and Vuxten felt a flutter in his guts.

He tabbed open the channel as he moved out, joining his men as they left their temporary shelters. He was leaving all non-combat personnel to hold the operations base, with a pair of heavy weapons fire teams to support them.

His HUD showed that the strikers were getting airborne, the air mobile power armors were launching off the ground, and the armored vehicles and self-propelled artillery systems were leaving the bunkers they'd been sheltering in.

"Sergeant Casey," Vuxten said. His armor's HUD blinked the icon three times then a white X popped up.

"Sergeant Casey," he tried again.

Another set of flashes lit the howling dirt. The shockwave shifted the wind, rumbled the ground, and one of his graviton generators whined.

"Casey here," the Terran's face appeared in a small window. The warsteel flexible cable was still embedded in his eye socket, there was still dried blood under the empty socket, with a thin trickle of bright red blood worming through the blackish brown patch. His face was sweaty and his remaining eye was burning red.

"Regroup, meet up with me at this grid coordinate," Vuxten said. "Break contact with the enemy, pull them into Delta Company, 4-1."

Casey's jaw firmed up and Vuxten could see the rage and stubborness in the human's face.

"There are billions of Welkret on this planet," Vuxten snapped. "We're here to save them, not blow their fucking planet out from under them, Sergeant. This isn't the Ringwars or the Mar-gite War. We're here to save these poor bastards."

Casey growled.

"I don't have time for any bullshit, Sergeant," Vuxten snapped, unaware of the purple sparks visible dancing in his teeth. He snapped the visual of the podling dissolving in the Marine's hands to Casey and could see the reflections of it playing in the sweat on the Terran's face and the play of light on his face. "We couldn't save them, couldn't save podlings, but we can save the Welkret. Now get in formation and interlock, or Vat Grown Luke so help me, or I'll fucking hang you for desertion myself."

Casey took a slow inhaled breath, the muscles alongside his jaw rippling. He blinked once, slow.

"There's going to be enough carnage for everyone, Sergeant," Vuxten said, waving his arm to get his men's attention, then pointed at the fast attack grav-skimmers idling nearby. "We're going to drive straight into the Atrekna's teeth and choke them with our fists."

"On my way, sir," Casey ground out. The window closed as the link closed.

--ballsy brother-- 471 said. --casey worldbreaker scary scary--

"Yeah, well, the Welkret kind of need this world intact, not broken by a rampaging Terran," Vuxten said, tabbing up a piece of stimgun and chewing it. "Drones find anything?"

--yes yes yes-- 471 answered.

Fuzzy circles appeared on the map in the upper right of his vision. Places where there was chronotron equalization radiation.

"Who's handling the city nearby?" Vuxten asked. The icons popped up. The 1192nd Treana'ad Mobile Infantry Horde (Reinforced) was sweeping into the streets.

--nahd rush-- 471 said, sending a grinning emoji. -kekekekekek---

"Any signal from command or the Fleet?" Vuxten asked.

--no-- 471 said.

Vuxten grabbed the edge of the flitter's open troop bay and pulled himself inside. A private was manning the heavy rotary laser cannon pointing toward the back, the two on the sideboards were in computerized point defense mode.

"Where's the nearest Dwellerspawn arrival point?" Vuxten asked, watching the icons for the various units start to flash as commanders ensured everyone was loaded up.

The data came back right away from the military intelligence unit. There were a few light ones around them, but the largest spawning point had Third Armor and Eighth Infantry right in the middle of it, with warnings to stay away and not to interlock or communicate with the two divisions. The next largest was between two cities, a large area of farmland that the Dwellerspawn were appearing only to rush out.

"There. Drive toward that spot. Guns free, but verify your targets, there might be locals making a run for a shelter now that we're not pounding the area with atomics," Vuxten said. He assigned several rifleman companies to the lighter ones.

The lifters started moving, cruising forward at a steady pace.

Now lets see how many of the Welkret we can save.

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

The Autonomous War Machines gleamed with newness. Their hulls were unblemished, their stores full, their interior spaces according to design. Their auxiliary machines were exactly alike and their code identical. Within their Strategic Intelligence Housings their thinking arrays were cycles up, with battlecode loaded and subprocessors operating at maximum efficiency.

Manufactured by the Atreka, the massive machines had masqueraded as resource gathering until the time had come to strike. These ones had no veneer or camouflage of industrial mining machines.

They were war machines, manufactured and designed for the sole purpose of eradicating any rivals to the Atrekna's desires.

They moved forward steadily, knowing they were still out of range of nCV cannons or anything else the enemy could hope to bring to bear.

They computed their own firepower against the size of the ships they had on their scanners, measured drive power and estimated shield strength.

Victory was without a doubt. Their programming dictated that it would only take two to three salvos to completely wipe out the ships heading for them.

They ran their targeting solutions, further refining them, noticing that the enemy was making the mistake of allowing their forces to separate into three distinct crescents, with the first being the widest, thickest, and deepest. The rear line was the thinnest, a merely twenty ships, obviously massive enough that their engines couldn't keep up with the lighter vessels that were rapidly pulling ahead. Those in the rear were deploying small parasite vessels that vanished from the AWM's scanners.

The AWMs had no worries. Any craft small enough to be deployed from a vessel smaller than their mid-sized ancillary machines would be no threat. They dedicated a bare minimum of subprocessor power to keeping track of those ships when they reappeared and concentrated on the ones that, based on speed and trajectory, they would engage with first.

At the current speeds, the AWM's computed it would take at least twenty-three hours before the first wave of the enemy would be within range of nCV weapons, with a distance of three light minutes.

They moved forward, sweeping deeper and deeper into the system, running targeting solutions and updating their tactical data.

Incapable of feeling emotion, with no prior battle experience in their databanks, and no knowledge of the Confederate Space Force, they computed a 99.99998% chance that the battle would be over and the system would be under their control within 23.17 hours.

They reached the optimum number of secondary vessels that would be needed to quickly subdue the primitives and ceased activating any more.

They would wait to see how many were damaged or, as slight as the chance was, destroyed before worrying about manufacturing any more.

They computed less than a 09% chance that they would have to consume much more than 1.28% of their onboard resources to defeat the primitives.

If A Feral Drew a Dick on My Housing had been there, she would have recognized the exchanged tactical data for what it was.

Overconfidence.

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

Captain Hvrekult looked around the bridge, the red light painting his crew in lurid color. The entire bridge was silent as the Slide It In moved through the quantum foam that layered between distinct dimensions.

"Above" them the massive ships of the Atrekna Autonomous Fleet slid by, unaware of the slim and lethal vessel silently moving below them.

Passive sensors aboard the Slide were pulling in data. The bigger ones, the Harvester and Goliath classes, matched Type-IV across the board. The sensor and analysis techs all noted that all of the engines were identical signature, not enough time on the drives to create distinct energy profiles. That the shield frequencies were the same, shield strength was the same, and there was no 'turbulence' to show that there was damage to the hulls.

The entire ship was silent. Everyone moving about in slippers, being careful how they moved.

They were under full EMCON, even their datalinks and datapads turned off. The only electronics that were active were ancient, wire tracing and wiring, filament lights. The modern stuff required to drive a Foam Drive were heavily shielded, more shielded than the munitions lockers that held the heavy torpedoes. The DS aboard the ship was curled in a ball, eyes closed, 'floating' in a digital pool of data in the fetal position.

The Slide slowed down, the engines going to minimum power. It 'heeled over' and slowly turned, taking long minutes.

In front of it the Atrekna ships moved steadily forward, crossing the orbit of the third outermost planet, still making a direct line for the Task Fleet.

The Slide started moving forward, slowly gaining speed, catching up, until it slowed to match the speed of the Atrekna vessels.

A hand signal from Captain Hvrekult was passed and the lights in the forward gunnery bay went yellow.

The crews used the heavily shielded powered assist units to load the guns.

The Atrekna fleet kept cruising in-system.

Completely unaware they were already in range of the Task Force's guns.

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

Smokey 'No lit a cigarette, inhaling gratefully. Like the reports from Hesstla and other conflicts involving the new species, communications were almost completely down or hashed and garbled garbage.

Satellite images showed that 8th Infantry and 3rd Armor were tearing apart the area the Atrekna had been unopposed in. Atomic detonations were flashing repeatedly as massive lakes that had been turned to spawning pools were obliterated.

The Treana'ad Infantry Hordes were sweeping into the cities, providing defense, and slowly pushing the Dwellerspawn and the Atrekna mechanical out of the cities.

First Armored Recon had reached the last remaining base of the military forces that had been present on the planet, spread out, and started hammering them. General Ekret had disposed of his normal slash and dash attacks, instead just firing directly into the massed Dwellerspawn from behind.

The ground forces inside the base had gone from huddled down to endure the assault to crawling out of the rubble with a gun in their hands and counterattacking the Dwellerspawn from the rear, turning the entire thing into a swirling mess.

The Atomic Hooves were engaged across a vast front, A'armo'o's sheer numbers forcing the Atrekna to try to stop him by throwing everything at him.

A'armo'o just ran it over and kept moving, leaving anywhere from a hundred to a thousand tanks at each spawning point to kill anything the Atrekna brought in before they could do much more than take a breath to screech. The Dwellerspawn horde in front of him had given up trying to attack and was now trying to run.

A'armo'o was faster, his tracks wider, and his tanks heavier.

NoDra'ak looked at the map. Where Casey had been going crazy was starting to clear up, the wind tugging apart the huge mushroom cloud. There were no flashes inside, and NoDra'ak could see the icons for First Telkan were on the move, heading at an angle toward the mountains.

The Sisters of Wrath were forcing the Dwellerspawn toward the sea, five thousand sisters moving forward with air and artillery support as well as orbital fire.

General NoDra'ak watched carefully.

The battle wasn't won, but it wasn't lost either.

-----------

The flitter bobbled as Casey pulled himself up onto the back of it. The two Marines on that side shifted so he could move up next to Vuxten.

Vuxten could see the radiation warnings on his armor jump.

"We've got a massive Dwellerspawn entry point about a hundred miles out, Sergeant," Vuxten said, without looking away from where he was staring at the front end of the flitter. "Dwellerspawn from that entry point are pushing at two cities. We break that entry point, kill the Atrekna using it, and we move on."

"Roger that, sir," Casey said. Vuxten could see the human was still sweat soaked, still had the datacable in his eye socket.

His one eye still glowed a hot angry red.

"You want revenge. I get it," Vuxten said. "But the Welkret, they don't need revenge, they need professionalism and discipline if they're going to have a planet to live on."

"I understand, sir," Casey said.

"You don't have to agree, Sergeant," Vuxten said. He drew on one of his officer's candidate classes. "You just have to follow my orders."

"Yes, sir," Casey said.

"Good. You're going to work with our brand new greenie scanning section. They detect any Atrekna, I want them quickly and cleanly eliminated without any threat to the civilian population. Can you do that?" Vuxten asked.

Casey just nodded.

"I can't hear you, Sergeant," Vuxten said.

"Yes, sir."

"Hold on to that anger," Vuxten said. "You can see the Atrekna with the naked eye with that anger," Vuxten tensed slightly. "You see one, you kill it. You don't wait for permission, you don't ask for authorization, you kill it, you make sure it's dead. Just keep collateral damage down."

"Yes, sir."

"Let's go teach the Atrekna that they are not welcome here."

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

On the ground the Atrekna felt confidence. Within a planetary rotation the primitive feral's orbital assets would be swept away and the Atreka would no longer have to concern themselves with any attempts at orbital fire support or the deployment of more forces.

The forces on the ground could be reinforced as soon as the planet fully swept out of the temporal damage zone. They could feel the edge of the zone approaching and were already working to reach back and bring forward more slavespawn.

The primitives would not prevail.

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

"Podnaughts have finished deploying second tier, creation engines have refurbished their munitions stock and have cooled and deslushed to optimum levels," Ensign Shugruth said.

"Temporal and stellar stabilization arrays are charged and ready," Ensign Drugranth said.

The Admiral nodded.

"Open channel, all ships," he said, his voice calm and unruffled.

"Channel open, sir," Midshipman Wargkwarg said, feeling a flutter in her stomach as the moment of her first battle approached.

"All ships," the Admiral took a deep breath.

"OPEN FIRE!"