Two legs? Two arms? Two eyes? Only a single torso? How can you take something built so strangely, without quadruped perfection, serious in any way?

An easy question to ask.

If you've never seen a human fight. - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff

The house was somewhat lavish by modern standards. Six or seven years prior it would have been a lavish estate owned by a rich and powerful Overseers with Third Most High rank or better. It had two kitchens, a small set of suites for servants, two offices, four children's rooms, a large dining room, its own shelter, alcoves for security beings. The furniture was wood, brass, and polished iron. The paint and tile were selected with an eye for beauty rather than function. The smart windows were perfect clarity and placed in such a way that the beautiful yard could be seen.

It was the on-post housing of a Colonel or higher.

Before the Precursor Autonomous War Machines had come, before the Terrans had defended Telkan, before the fall of the Omni-Corps, the closest Brentili'ik would have come to a house like that one was to be brought in through the servant's entrance to scrub a toilet and a bathroom floor.

Now she sat in the secure office, two Telkan Intelligence agents on guard.

Not to mention her brother in law wearing the Ultion Knight armor he had worn after her husbands had been killed in his reality.

Her sisters, all of them the same sister, each from a different reality, sat on the couch across from her.

Her Interim Chief of Telkan Intelligence, Kreldan, sat in one of the chairs. The whiskers and fur on the left side of his muzzle were burned away, his skin glittered with quikheal gel, his eye was patched as the cybernetic eye synched up to his brain, and he had moved slowly and stiffly.

"Most of your staff was killed, Madame Director," he said softly. He leaned forward, winced slightly, and set a datacube on the edge of the holotank. "It was so fast. I thought I knew what it was like, thought my people were trained, but it was just so fast."

"Do we know at least what species they were?" Brentili'ik asked.

The male shook his head. "No. Inversion charges for the bodies, the armor was dedicated nanites, Tonniztark Class, usually seen in covert combat armor. Nothing, not even DNA. Most of them didn't show up on surveillance," he sighed. "To top it off, it appears the cloud storage went offline thirty minutes prior to the attack. We had IT specialists on site to try to fix it."

He shook his head. "One of the IT specialists we called in was found dead. One of the attackers got in that way, destroyed all the surveillance data and took over the security control room after killing everyone inside."

"Do we have any footage?" Brentili'ik asked.

He nodded. "Some. What we have is confusing. Mostly, microdrone footage from emergency services drones that were released when the first explosion went off, which was labeled as drill authorized simulator with outside security."

He reached out with one finger, noted that the end was bandaged, and winced slightly. Brentili'ik picked up the remote and tossed it to him. "What happened to your finger?"

"After I was knocked out one of the attackers severed the end of my finger to get my induction jack and RFID chip," he said. He shook his head again. "I got lucky that a beam knocked me out. They usually made a kill shot on any bodies, but they were in a hurry when they severed my finger."

"It's called a coup-de-grace," She'islos said. "Standard Terran close quarters combat training."

Kreldan nodded. "They knew exactly what they were doing. Who they were after, what they were after. This was obviously rehearsed."

Brentili'ik sighed. "So we have no idea who did this? The Lanakallan? The Confederacy? Someone we've overlooked?"

Kreldan shook his head. "No, Madame Director, we have no clue. It's doubtful that it's the Lanaktallan, they would have sent an Executor strike team. The Confederacy would have no reason for this."

"That's just it, we don't know the reason for this," Brentili'ik said. She looked around. "Nobody has brought this up, but it is a very real option: This was an Atrekna attack using agents we have not yet seen. Custom built or evolved, trained through temporal duplication on our building, using temporal lensing tricks to see our routes and who would be where."

Kreldan's eye opened wide. "That's a disturbing theory."

"It fits better than anything else we've thought of," Brentili'ik said.

"It would be consistent with their mode of operation," She'islos said from behind her veil.

"We have some footage, as I said, from the drones," Kreldan said. He shook his head again, reached up to scratch the itch on his muzzle and dropped his hand before he touched the quikheal gel. "There's a small problem though."

"What?" Brentili'ik asked.

"There's an anomaly in it," he said. He clicked the remote. "This is a montage of someone defending the House of Delegation."

The screen rezzed into focus, showing four of the black armored, short and stocky figures. They were moving through a smokey and rubble strewn room that Brentili'ik recognized as the main staff dining hall. They were pausing at each body and firing two shots. Between one step and the next there was a blur, a prismatic effect, that streaked across the view and all four slumped and started falling.

"What happened?"

"Right here," Kreldan said. "It's at a hundred times slower."

The blur, which Brentili'ik recognized, hurdled over rubble, ducked underneath a hanging cable. The knife popped into view for only a second before it was stabbed twice into the back of the neck of one looking down, twice through the edge of the visor on to others, and three times under the chin on the last.

"Elapsed time, one point two seconds of visual," Kreldan said.

A hallway with two dozen moving forward, opening doors to fire inside while the ones behind passed by the shooter. It was obviously drilled to the point it was mechanical and made Brentili'ik's blood run cold.

They all started collapsing at once. It looked like blood spurted from the necks all at once.

Again, slowed down, the prismatic effect appeared, the knife showed, and was plunged through armor two or three times per armored troop, before the prismatic shape vanished down the hallway.

"By the Forgotten Broodmothers," She'islos breathed.

Again and again the little emergency services drones picked up groups of attackers just suddenly falling, blood spraying before the armor suddenly dissolved.

"The blood spray, any DNA?" Brentili'ik asked.

"Artificial blood, artificial plasma, nanites," Kreldan said. "Any DNA pattern was destroyed."

Brentili'ik shook her head.

"Whoever your guardian angel was, they tore through the attackers like they weren't there," Kreldan said.

The image switched to outside. A grav-striker was hovering off the lawn, emergency services vehicles were burning and it was slowly turning, silent and malevolent.

The image zoomed in close, showing small dimples suddenly appear on the chassis.

"After action examination showed that those rounds were 15mm magnetic accelerator pistol rounds, standard heavy pistol of the Confederate Armed Services," Kreldan said. "Three shots, nothing special."

"Except it showed the vehicle did not have its battlescreens up," She'islos said.

"That explains what happened next," Kreldan said.

Claw marks suddenly appeared on the side, the armor peeling slightly before bulging out. The door's edge buckled inward and the door suddenly tore free. The grav-striker bobbled and a body torn in half flew out the door, the upper half flying further than the lower. The cockpit windows suddenly went blackish-red and then exploded outward as the vehicle nosed down, tilted, and fell to the ground where it exploded.

"What was that?" She'islos asked.

"Not sure. Claw marks aren't a match for anything in our database," Kreldan said.

The second striker bobbled for a second then the armor on the top of the port graviton engine suddenly peeled back. The striker bobbled again right before the graviton engine blew up, something exploded under the striker, and it fell to the ground on fire.

The video zoomed in close on the ground.

Two massive paw prints suddenly appeared in the muddy grass.

"The paws are approximately twelve inches long and six inches wide. Five toes with claws. Ground pressure shows that whatever made this print weighed at least a full metric ton," Kreldan said. "But watch," he said.

The next print was another paw print.

"It's shrunk by 20%," Kreldan said.

The next one was a bare foot.

"A Terran foot. Size nine, female."

"You can tell the sex by the footprint?" She'islos asked.

"To a 92.84% reliability by using toe length ratio, individual toe lengths, foot breadth, and foot index," Kreldan said.

The next footprint had a shoe.

"Size six, female loafer, standard Confederate Armed Forces dress uniform," Kreldan said.

The next one was a heel print only. The camera panned around but no more footprints appeared.

"So, Terrans can turn into giant Telkan?" She'islos asked.

Kreldan shook his head. "There's rumors. Just rumors, of course."

"Of what?" Brentili'ik asked.

"Confederate Intelligence Agents, those women, supposedly have the same abilities as a Terran Heavy Assault Infantry, Monster Class, as far as polymorphic abilities," Kreldan said. "It hasn't been confirmed."

Brentili'ik shook her head. "No, it wouldn't be."

"There is another source for the attacks," She'islos said quietly.

Everyone turned to look at her.

"Vuxten and several others were conscripted by The Detainee, the Lady of Hell, the Hell Mother. Her opponent could be the one who arranged this attack," she said. "It's primary objective may not have been my sister after all. The primary objective may have been to kill Vuxten or Brentili'ik to delay or hamper the Lady of Hell's plans."

Brentili'ik nodded. "That makes as much sense as anything else."

"And we don't know the purpose of the Detainee's mission?" Kreldan asked.

Brentili'ik shook her head. "No. My husband did not know."

"Then why did he agree to it?" Kreldan asked.

"Because when the Mother of the Damned asks you to perform a task for her and the Digital Omnimessiah himself, you do it," She'islos said quietly. She looked up at the ceiling. "I wonder what they are doing?"

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

"He's gonna pop," the rumbling voice said.

"He'll be fine," a woman's voice, gentle and soft, replied.

"He's gonna..." another voice said.

Vuxten's head swam and he went down on all fours, staring at the packed dirt around the fire.

"There he goes," the rumbling voice said.

Feet moved up next to Vuxten and a hand rubbed his lower back.

"Easy, kid, easy," the man's voice was gentle. "I get it, I really do."

Vuxten nodded and swallowed.

"Give him time," a voice full of compassion said gently. "He has much to process and accept."

"You must be Daxin," Vuxten heard Casey say.

"I am," the rumbler said.

"I thought you'd be bigger, more roboty," Casey said.

"I'm in disguise," Daxin said.

Vuxten swallowed and looked up, then slowly got to his feet.

The Detainee sat down on a log, pulling her thick braid of night-black hair in front of her and running her fingertips along it.

"Well, we're all here. Let's have some beer, get some sleep, and we'll start planning tomorrow," she said.

"Can I ask what we'll be planning to do?" a familiar voice asked. Vuxten looked over and saw Trucker sitting on a fallen log, an empty plas bottle in his hand.

The Detainee smiled.

"We're going to assault Heaven and rescue God."