Screams at Ta'Xet was working on the Terran's brain when it happened. She had just removed the last of the bone shrapnel and repaired the tiny capillaries when the human neural tissue, which felt like firm jelly at the best of times, suddenly seemed to soften.

"All stop," Screams snapped. The robotic surgical assist lifted its arms even as her assistants moved back.

As she watched the furrows and ridges suddenly squirmed, realigned, and changed. On her display the dendrite patterns changed, impulse trails shifted, and the brain itself altered.

Screams frowned as she stared at the suddenly altered neural tissue of the Terran Descent Human on her operating table. The differences were subtle, but there.

Alarms started wailing and her cybernetic implant that provided psychic shielding against injured and enraged Terrans cranked up so hard that sparks jumped from her antenna. Two of her nurses fainted, and the greenie in charge of making sure the surgical equipment worked at optimum efficiency collapsed in a faint.

WARNING WARNING WARNING! PHYSIC LEVELS DETECTED! WARNING WARNING WARNING! flashed on her retinal link, two-thirds of the screens, and over the holodisplay of the Terran's brain activity.

"Oh no," Screams breathed. She recognized those patterns. It was the first time she'd ever seen them in real life, but she recognized them anyway.

From lectures on Terran Neural Evolution.

Screams turned and lunged, slapping the button on the psychic suppression field.

The Terran on the surgical table opened his eyes as Screams turned around. He looked around, his eyes glowing a dull red. That burning predator gaze settled on Screams and the three foot tall russet colored preying mantis went perfectly still as her brain reacted to the presence of a superior predator.

"Am I going to be OK, Doc?" the Terran asked, his voice calm and level.

Screams made a human nod. "I'm finishing up now," she said.

"Oh."

"I brought you out from under the anesthetic beam to check for any defects," she lied.

"All right," the Terran said. He sighed. "I'm grateful for your assistance."

The voice was calm, even, as if discussing the weather, not speaking about the fact the top of his skull was open and there were still medical probes and instruments lodged in his brain.

Screams moved around behind him and activated the holo. "Can you see that?"

"Yes."

She brought up a picture of two Telkan podlings playing in the grass in a sunny park. "What is this?"

"Telkan children playing on a sunny day."

She brought up a black warborg. "This?"

"Confederate Army infantryman, Sixteenth Infantry Division by the patches. Red sky, sand, from the Mar-gite Invasion."

"Good, good, this?"

"An apple on a lace table-cloth."

"Solve this equation."

"N equals B squared over R," he said. "Graviton particle movement equation."

She was watching his emotional tracker as she went through the questions. The jumping line moved within tolerances for a Terran at a calm rest even as she went through all of the images and found no mental defects.

Terran emotions were tough to baseline anyway.

"You're fine, soldier," Screams said, watching as her two nurses and the tech were carried out and new beings came in to replace them. "I'm going to keep you awake while I finish up."

"All right, ma'am," the voice said, cold and steady.

It wasn't like she had a choice, the anesthetic beam was having trouble finding what to suppress to put the big Terran infantryman back under. She worked quickly, resealing the brain's protective membrane, adding synthetic cerebro-spinal fluid to bring the pressure up to the correct level, then placing the top of the skull and using the nanites to reaffix the capillaries and nerves. She put the skinflap back and used the nanites to reseal it.

"How long until," the Terran started to ask.

"At least 42 hours," Screams told him. "The enemy is using psychic warfare and you just had neurosurgery."

"Oh."

Again, perfectly calm, as if Screams had simply told him that dawn was eight hours away. None of the "Let me go... I can still fight..." struggling that had been there only an hour ago. The Terran had been mumbling to let him up and go fight until right before... whatever had happened.

She motioned for her nurse to move him into recovery then signaled to wait before bringing in the next patient, a Treana'ad who had taken an armor breach on his abdomen. He was stable for the moments she needed. She didn't store the data and wipe the instruments, instead leaving it live.

She moved over and activated the holographic keyboard. She ran a search on the medical database that came up empty. She checked that datalinks and saw the BOLO Daisy was in communications.

>BOLO DAISY, this is MAJOR SCREAMS AT TA'XET. DO YOU READ? OVER.

Daisy responded almost instantly and Screams asked the massive supertank to check the datastores for what she needed. Every Bolo carried volumes of information, everything from historical data to medical data to music and literature.

Daisy transmitted the data and broke the linkage, the combined brains of Captain Thurgood and the Bolo's robotic brain busy with stopping a landing in force of the enemy.

Screams checked the data, comparing it, until she got a baseline match.

Her implosion wire went cold and dead, ice from her brainstem all the way down to the end of her abdomen, even her legs, arms, and bladearms feeling cold inside as she stared at the match. There was no doubt, it was as much of an exact match as could be expected when comparing two different people's brains.

Structurally and performance wise, they were exact matches.

Her bladearms trembled and she cleaned her antenna nervously as she ran comparisons.

She knew several dark secrets. Secrets that whispered and murmured to themselves in the darkness of history and the Terran soul. As a neurosurgeon, especially a battlefield trauma neurosurgeon, she had need to know of those secrets.

That the Terrans had altered themselves in ways they did not admit. That they had changed neural functions, altered synaptic paths, changed dendrite chains.

She knew, better than anyone without her highly specialized skillset, that it had been done of necessity, that it had been performed to not only save humanity, but save the universe itself.

Psychic potential so strong it suppresses the psychic potential of those around it, she thought to herself. An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred, bubbled up in her mind. Blessed be the mind too small for doubt.

She shivered reflexively at those cold, burning, hateful words.

We did it to them. The monkey was happily playing in the jungle, excited with its new toys, its new vistas, its new friends, and we ran up and smashed it across the back of the head with a club and stuck our bladearms in its brain, she thought to herself as she stared at the holograms. When it was over, where most races would have felt there was no going back, they locked the door and walked away.

She shuddered again.

The Digital Omnimessiah protect us all from what someone has done, she thought to herself staring at the highly active portions of the cerebral tissue on the holograms.

Where normally it was coldly dormant, almost vestigial.

Now it burned with cold sullen fire as synapses fired within tissue unused for thousands of years of evolution, manipulation, and suppression.

Screams shuddered as she remembered the dull red of the Terran's wholly biological eyes.

The last thing so many of her race's upper caste ever saw.

The last thing some entire species had ever seen.

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

Mukstet raced across the snowy sky, hitting the afterburners and getting up higher where the air was cold. The 80mm Hellbore shot fired from the ground had heated up the air around the battlefield and he was having problems dumping heat as fast as he was generating it. His creation engines were at 85% slush and rising, 82% heat and rising, his armor was pebbled and cracked, and his port graviton engine had picked up an ugly harmonic.

"Foxtrot-Nine-Two, disengaging," he radioed back, the channel full of static from the atomic hammers pounding the planet across the entire globe. "Heat and slush levels critical, severe armor and systems damage. "Alpha Wing disengaging."

"Roger that, flight plan incoming, over," the radio crackled back.

Mukstet couldn't believe it. In an age of quantum communication, laser and microwave communication, digital communication, they were reduced to electromagnetic bandwidth with the interlinked Battle Tactical Net operating on something the communication technicians called the "Six Meter Band" that used ionosphere bouncing somehow.

It took almost fifteen seconds for the battleplan to load into his system, and even then it was just a series of coordinates and single symbol flight instructions.

That made him raise his eyebrows. The Hesstlan people were hunkered down at an old Lanaktallan pleasure craft airport, a handful of tanks from 3/67 providing protection as they were broadcasting their willingness to check.

"Flight plan recieved. Foxtrot-Nine-Two, out," Mukstet said.

--need nitrogen slush-- 973 told him. --tanks empty air scoop is damaged can't fix airscoop without nitrogen slush can't gather nitrogen slush without airscoop if tank is empty--

"Did you get the tanks fixed?" Mukstet asked.

--main tank still under repair, aux tanks three and five are repaired, aux tanks one and four are just gone, aux tank two under repair-- 973 reported. --graviton pump on port engine has an organic superlubricant harmonic needs flushed--

Mukstet nodded, knowing his helmet would relay the motion. "All right. Hang tite, we're going to a friendly base."

--roger roger-- 973 said, turning his attention back to the loading mechanism for the starboard 25mm cannon.

Behind the quartet of damaged strikers another Hellbore blast lit up the sky. The clouds rushed back in as soon as the overpressure wave collapsed.

"STAMPY HOT!" the little robot reported, sending out an emoji of a panting canine.

"Go to small arms only," Ralvex ordered as he knelt in the mud, his gun cooling. A Treana'ad was pulling off his overheated and depleted ammo-pack off his back, a half dozen of them on the Treana'ad's combat power frame.

The Treana'ad slapped Ralvex on the top of the head. "CLEAR!"

Ralvex stood up, squeezing the grip and starting the barrels of his gun to spin. He'd had to replace his autocannon when a round had hit the base of the reciever, shattering the buffer tube and the drive spring rod. Luckily the troops of 15th Sustainment Battalion were striding through the battlefield in their power assist harnesses like there wasn't a war going on and he'd been handed a new weapon as soon as he'd dropped his damaged one and gone to his magac battle rifle.

Looking over the scene in front of him he chinned up a piece of stimgum and locked himself back into the Battlefield Tactical Network. It was moving with cold precision, although Ralvex had noticed there were differences from when he had been trained. It was little stuff, he couldn't explain it, but it was little things like the fact that instead of detailing in minute detail what each unit would do, almost to the ammunition expenditure, the orders consisted of such vague concepts as "Hold that position" and "Advance into the enemy and attack left flank." No precise orders with details, just an expectation that it would be done without concern of how it was done.

At the beginning his orders read "Engage armored units of 150 tons or less with primary weapon unless breaking charge, Support Unit Alpha fire as capable, Support Unit Bravo engage sub-infantry bio-drones" and that was it.

Now it was: "Engage the Enemy at Will. Purple targets are priority."

That was it.

Ralvex just started chewing the gum as he brought up the Hymns of Blessed Podlings, the pure clear voices of the Telkan choir singers filling his ears as he leveled the dual barrel rotary autocannon and thumbed the rocker switch.

Armor Piercing High Explosive Mass Reactive Anti-Matter Incendiary Rounds lashed out as he raked the front of a tank and tore huge chunks of its forward armor off as the entire front of it dissolved into fire and fury as he hosed 250 rounds a minute into the tank. In less than three seconds his rounds got to the internal spaces and the cupola blew off with a purple flash.

Ralvex switched his aim to a larger tank, lashing the crysteel domes, imploding them and extinguishing the blue light.

I consign thy souls to the arms of the Digital Omnimessiah, who's mercy I bring to you in this terrible fashion, Ralvex thought as the hymns soared in his ears. Dwell within light and warmth and love for I free you of this horrible torture with paradoxical wrath that I wield to bring about mercy.

He hammered through the flank armor of the massive tank, the 25mm shells blowing away chunks of armor, ablating away more and more of the battlesteel until it hit the warsteel liner in the organics compartment.

Something died with a purple flare and Ralvex switched targets even as he had Tiny Tim deploy prism and ferro-masking smoke, his own suit allowing him to see through it.

The Telkan children of the choir, old enough to be named but still immature, sang glory and sweetness in his ears as he fought.

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

Admiral Thennis wiped the cold sweat from her brow as she watched as the enemy shifted formation, trying to get out from under the guns of the terrible black ships even as Admiral Thennis's crews worked to bring the ships back into fighting condition, decades of practice smoothing and speeding the effort.

It was nothing that some of them had not been born into.

One of the bigger ones, that had taken repeated hits until the black material had begun to break away to reveal battle-steel inside, surged ahead, driving forward, its guns thundering and warping space, interposing itself between the enemy and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the former heavy frigate slash troopship now the size of a battleship after decades of upgrades, additions, and refit. The Oswald had taken a brace of nCv shells amidship and was struggling to stay in formation.

"You shall not fall, little sister!" the massive ship roared out, audible as if vacuum could carry sound.

BISMARCK> MY HULL IS A BULWARK AGAINST THE ENEMY'S GUNS, SISTER! scrolled across the text repeater.

The enemy had managed to open up two more wormholes, ships streaming into the fight through the wormhole. Each wave successively larger. The third wave was leaving the wormholes, nine ships in this wave.

The timer hit zero.

"STATUS CHANGE!" Commodore NGwark called out.

Admiral Thennis turned her attention to the display screen, swallowing down the acid reflux, gripping the arm rests of her crash couch tightly with aching hands, the memory-foam long ago pressed into shape.

WARNING! HELLSPACE BREACH DETECTED! WARNING!

"Many, many point sources," Commodore NGwark sang out. "Drive emissions consistent with the Dark Crusade! It's reinforcements, ma'am."

"Signal coming in from new contact's flagship," Commander Sventana...

...no, Commander Svetana's daughter, who was almost thirty, called out.

"Onscreen," Admiral Thennis snapped.

The woman, who had been trained since a young age to take her mother's place, nodded and tossed it to the Admiral's main display.

Thennis jerked back, her acid reflux surging as a horror-show appeared on her screen. Jet black warsteel festooned with barbed chains, the helmet open to reveal a heavy featured severe face attached to a warsteel skull, fed by wormlike tubes that infused the skull with a dark life.

"I am Osiris, commander of the Abithica, Lord of the Dark Crusade of Light," the figure said, the face twisting as the skull spoke. "You are Admiral Thennis, Task Force Tiamat, Commanding."

Thennis nodded, swallowing down stomach acid. "I am."

"Are you in need of assistance?" the flesh adorned black warsteel skull added.

"We are," Thennis said, her mind boggling at the fact the being on her display would be going through formality like that at a time like this.

"Then the Dark Crusade of Light shall assist. We shall interlock with your warplans. Osiris, out," the skull said, then vanished.

"Ma'am, warplan transmission from the new forces," Ensign Talimava called out. She gulped audibly. "They have ground troops and want coordination for ground troop landing, as well as dozens of ships."

"Well, there's hundreds of targets out here and on the planet," Thennis said, swallowing. She rubbed her forearms and shivered. "Get those men on the ground some backup and lets finish the fight up here," she turned to LT JG Greely. "Status on Sucker Punch Two and Three?"

"Half hour to fab up, two hours to deploy," he called back.

That gave the enemy one hundred fifty minutes to keep sending through ships. At the current rate of another wave every minute that would give them one hundred and fifty waves until Sucker Punch could collapse the wormholes.

"Stay on it," she ordered. She looked at the screen and watched as the newcomer's ships took up positions, locking into the formations, and went to work. Some stayed off, firing heavy guns, but a handful swept directly toward the largest of the enemy ships, C+ cannons thundering out as they closed in order to board the enemy ships.

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

Mukstet cursed and swept around the side, skating the striker at a sharp angle even as it moved at a ninety-degree angle to its facing. He triggered the guns, feeling the airframe shudder. In the few minutes since he had made for the makeshift rearming base a Precursor vessel the size of stadium had managed to land nearby and vomited up attackers.

His guns shredded apart Precursor machines into scrap metal. A small part of him noted that all of the crysteel globes were dark on the newcomers and he suddenly understood why they were fighting so hard to get into the makeshift airbase.

The tanks of 3/67 used the lull that Mukstet bought them to get into position, opening up with their guns as Mukstet goosed the striker and sent it shooting across the ground, firing at the targets less than a hundred feet below him. Missiles sent fountains of mud and grass into the air, blew apart burnt wreckage from the initial attack, and tore apart Precursor vehicles.

Despite the massed firepower of a score of tanks and Mukstet's strikers a dozen rushed forward for every one killed, even more enemies streaming out of the bulk of the Precursor landing craft.

All of his telltales were red. He couldn't fab up any more missiles, no more cannon rounds, and even the door gunner's weapons were red-lined. He'd taken a bad hit to the aft section and lost his mainline graviton engine, only the howling starboard and port engines keeping him in the air.

"Mukstet to 3/67, we've got to land. We're spilling slush and burning hot, over," Mukstet transmitted.

"This is Utini, get in there, we'll hold them off. We'll be going atomic," one of the tank commanders answered.

"Roger that. Out," Mukstet said, banking hard. The airframe shuddered as the graviton engines vibrated. He leveled out, came in low at the makeshift walls around the former luxury airstrip. He could see how the concourse had been pulled apart to make the walls, see where the air traffic control tower had been blown up and was still burning, but on the ground he could see heavy tanker trucks, on the walls he could see small furry people firing heavy guns. Two tanks had their back decks opened up and he could see the strange reddish fury of their heavy creation engines working.

There was a Hesstlan down there waving brightly colored flags to guide him down.

The striker set down with a bump, the forward landing gear creaking. A Hesstlan tapped on his window and he looked at the male Hesstlan through the cracked and pitted armaglass, shaking his head.

"They're saying you can keep it running, they'll resupply us," one of the Terrans said.

Mukstet jerked slightly. He'd almost forgotten he'd been running with open troopbay doors and door gunners.

"They can't hold," Mukstet said, watching as a pair of small female Hesstlan carried boxes of ammunition to the wall, running from the back of the tank where a group of other Hesstlan were passing down boxes to the waiting Hesstlan. He considered for a second and made a decision.

Striker Foxtrot-Niner-Two was out of the fight.

"Dismount the guns, get on the wall, men," he ordered, slapping the harness buckle. He opened the channel. "I'm out of the fight. Foxtrot-Niner-Sixteen, take over Wing Alpha."

"Roger that," Private Mulpret answered.

"I'm coming with you, men," Mukstet said.

"Roger, sir," both Terrans replied at once.

Mukstet grabbed his pilot's SMG and headed out the back. Both of the infantryman had pulled the Pontiac Vindicators from the mounts, both throwing the ammo belts over the shoulders to keep the line clear to the ammo packs they'd shrugged into.

"Let's go, men," he said, jumping down. It was obvious where the enemy was, it was the wall all the firing was happening on. He ran for the wall, climbing the ladder where the Terrans just jumped to the top of the wall.

The tanks had gone to rapid fire on their guns, pouring shots into the landing craft's battlescreens even as their auxilary guns hammered the Precursor infantry that swarmed forward, slowly gaining ground over the corpses of their brothers.

Mukstet knew, even as both of his Terran doorgunners cut loose with the miniguns, that all too soon they'd be in the range of his own SMG.

٩(◕‿◕｡)۶ SENSO WA TANOSHI KAWIAA DESU NE ٩(◕‿◕｡)۶ ?!?! rang over the battlefield. Many Hesstla winced, some cried out, but all of them kept firing.

There was a burning tingle across the top of his ears, down his spine, and under his toenails. He heard a strange sound behind him, almost like bubbles in a soft-drink fizzing, only louder, sharper, more metallic.

He turned and looked as the words rang out again, not making sense.

٩(◕‿◕｡)۶ TEKI NO CHI O KOBOSHITE INOCHI O UBAU NO WA TANOSHĪ KAWIAA DESU NE ٩(◕‿◕｡)۶ ?!?! roared out, somehow the emoji's understandable through the high pitched roar.

Mukstet stared at what he saw appear in the middle of the tarmac.

Row upon row of upraised pink and white chainswords held by heavily armored figures with banners held aloft from their backs and burning torches on their shoulders.

"WAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGHHHH!" erupted from a hundred cat-girl throats in a lust filled screech.