The mighty have been cast out from Paradise, but face the world with feral grins and arms wide. The Terran knows not of Fear, but drinks deep from it. As the prophet Rorschach told the demons, "I'm not locked in here with you, YOU'RE LOCKED IN HERE WITH ME!! YOU ARE LOCKED IN HERE WITH ME!!!" The chips of rebirth were a panacea, a leash upon the Wrath of Terra. When Death has lost her scythe, the worst of Wrath is kept at Bay. Only Righteous Anger need be feared. But when Death mows once more, she brings Pain of Loss and Wrath of Vengeance with her. Woe be unto the planets upon which the Wrath of Vengeance walks. For it will scar the ones that survive, and destroy the rest.

To quote holy Vegetius, "Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum."

And the Terrans are Militaris Rex. - u/Netmantis

Kra'atmo'o preferred order and stability.

He disliked rude war and conflict, it upset his status quo.

The status quo, to Kra'atmo'o, was important. It ensured that people felt confident in their lives and their leadership. Upheaval led to stress which led to conflict which led to the status quo breaking down.

When he had been a young Lanaktallan, just out of training, he had been the Eighteenth Semi-Temporary Understudy to a System Most High who had taken over a busy industrial system and then ran it straight into the ground through incompetence. When the population had been pushed to the wall, when they had neither food nor entertainment, safety nor security, freedoms nor leisure, the population had reacted as Kra'atmo'o had learned in school.

In less than four years the once profitable stellar system had been reduced to howling isotopes, bitter black ash, and terrible stillness.

Kra'atmo'o had never forgotten that time.

More, he had never forgotten how the Most High had blamed everything on the dead population rather than his own disastrous policies.

A status quo had to be maintained by allowing it to naturally grow and breathe, to undergo slow change when needed and growth spurts when necessary. It was when the status quo was forced to change that things became unbalanced.

And unbalanced meant chaos.

And chaos meant death.

Just over two hundred years prior, Kra'atmo'o had been entrusted with twenty-one stellar systems, at the far edge of the Unified Council territory down and 'out' from the Unified Council territory. After establishing himself he reached out and seized control of more systems. Most had no Most High, at the most a Tenth or Fifteenth Most High or an empty office.

He had guided them, through predictive analysis software, dedicated and capable counselors and subordinates, and an eye for the status quo, into wealth and plenty. True, there was the accident at the reactor that had destroyed the Executors. True, there was the unfortunate Corporate Reshuffling. And true, there had been the Tyranny of Representation and all the struggles it had brought.

But he had guided them and, with their trust and faith, the entire cluster known as the "Kra'at Systems" had come through every challenge stronger and healthier.

The systems sat in an odd 'twisting' of jumpspace. It was a six year trip from the edge of what he liked to think of as the "Kra'at Systems" to the nearest Unified Council System. Jumpspace was weirdly twisted and warped and in some places a ship would actually move slower than light and if they exited the region instead of traversing the 'shallows' for three months, they would be further away then the edge of the rapids, ending up further 'down' and 'out' from the edge of the shallows. It took a while to get used to, but in some ways, the twisted space allowed for more rapid transfer of resources and cargoes within the "Kra'at Systems" than outside cargoes.

It was just fine to Kra'atmo'o.

Everything went fine for over two hundred years.

Then the Terrans had arrived in Council Territory.

Kra'atmo'o, and the System Military Most High, had examined everything they could about the Terrans, specifically the 'creation engines' and 'nanoforges' and 'cloning arrays' available to the common civilian.

The implications were horrifying to the Military Most High. The elderly Lanaktallan had pointed out that the Terran's supply lines and reinforcement lines were only as far away as the nearest gas giant or Oort Cloud. That the Unified Council had met a species that might suffer defeats but could not be beaten.

So, taking a great risk, Kra'atmo'o had journeyed to a system to await the arrival of the Terrans. When they had arrived, Kra'atmo'o had overseen the creation of a mutual defense pact, trade treaties, and diplomatic promises of support for one another.

Everything had gone well for nearly two years.

Then the Terrans had suddenly dropped dead.

Or worse, turned into rabid killing machines that took anti-armor weapons to stop.

That had led to a massive undertaking unlike anything Kra'atmo'o had ever expected to happen. His predictive analysis programs had collapsed, his carefully tailored estimations had fallen apart, and he was, once again, forced to rely on his skills.

The undertaking had been dangerous. Beings had died, killed in close combat with insane Terrans.

But the sixty-eight Confederate Space Force Navy vessels had been cleared of Terrans and docked at the space stations.

The non-Terran crew members that had survived had requested reinforcements, and Kra'atmo'o had settled down to await the reinforcements.

Then the Atrekna Offensive had started.

Kra'atmo'o had consulted with the elderly Military Most High and together they had worked up a plan to have their own people trained to operate the ships.

But that wasn't the most amazing thing.

The Kra'at Systems' GalNet was known as CompuNet, as it had its own hiccups and had an intermittent at best connection to GalNet. This was just a fact of life. It could take two or three days to download a simple hour long video even on a high speed connection due to lagginess and network timeouts.

Which meant that what dropped into Tyrant Kra'atmo'o's recently re-elected lap was one of the most amazing, but also most horrific, things that the universe could have possibly provided.

It was titled, simply: AVENGE-US.DOC

It came along with a lexicon. Explanations of the mathematics and science used. Psychological profiles.

The entire file dripped with "AVENGE US FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!" and rage and grief dripped from every byte.

Kra'atmo'o and the Military Most High had stared at the document for hours. Paging through literal yottabytes of data, images, graphs, and text.

It had been the Military Most High that had noticed something odd about the download. When he had pointed it out, Kra'atmo'o and he had examined it.

The data was on a timer.

It would drop into the public CompuNet after thirty days if the government did not acknowledge receipt.

The Military Most High had advised caution. Kra'atmo'o had agreed.

Finally, on the 29th day, they made their decision.

A decision that made the malevolent universe howl with laughter.

-----

WANT TO BE PART OF THE LARGEST OPEN SOURCE PROJECT IN HISTORY?

Needed: computer programmers, software engineers, genetic engineers, sociologists, psychiatrists, engineers, jumpspace technicians, and many many more.

Accepting all experience and knowledge levels!

Secondary education grants offered to any who can qualify to just transcribe data!

The darkness presses in upon the Kra'at Systems! This Open Source Project promises to be the spark that lights the fire to drive the darkness back!

Sign up today!

-----

Kra'atmo'o stared at the Avarerak in front of him. The being was slightly disheveled, with wild eyes, and a habit of twisting their index finger side to side with its other hand, twisting the digit in the socket in a manner it wasn't supposed to twist.

"You think it will work?" Kra'atmo'o asked.

The Avarerak nodded jerkily, eyes still wide.

"Explain it to me," Kra'atmo'o said. "In terms I can understand."

The Avarerak did so. Twice.

It sounded ridiculous. It sounded insulting. It flew in the face of common sense and logic.

It involved Terrans.

"Your funding and resource allocation requests are approved," Kra'atmo'o said. He thumbed the datapad in front of him. "Just... be careful."

The Avarerak giggled.

------

The bioforge was a large unit, normally used to clone cows, oxen, gupta lizards, things of that nature. Primarily used for large carnivore nutrition, it was used to print of simple animals. The neural imprinter was crude, basically rebuilding, neurologically, the same animal over and over.

Tvewlika, the Avarerak in charge of the project, had another vision for it.

It had taken months to recalibrate, reconfigure, repurpose.

Now he stood, twisting his index finger back and forth, watching as it was fired up.

It went through the self-tests. The tank gurgled as it filled with xenobiogel.

He watched as the cellular printer started work.

Building a monster.

He turned to the other third of the project.

It was a hodgepodge of equipment. A combination neural imprinter used to put neural templates onto cattle to allow them to function and a read only memory storage deep scan device. It was enormous and complex, using more processing power than anything Tvewlika had ever designed.

He giggled to himself as he watched a Tukna'rn worker pick up the solid block with a single I/O port and move it to the Flash Fryer. The block was locked in and Tvewlika held his breath, just like the rest of the research and development team.

It had worked the last ten times. Before that, the neural imprinter would slag down.

One time it had suddenly changed, somehow, into an angry robot that had destroyed half the lab and killed a dozen researchers before it had been destroyed by anti-armor weapons.

Just remembering that was exciting to Tvewlika and he twisted his finger harder, relishing the dull burning pain layered with sharp pain that the twisted joint gave up.

The Flash Fryer began to chuckle to itself.

The secondary system built into suddenly spun to life.

A phasic shielding system.

Activated too early and the device melted down.

Activated too late and, well, it wasn't good.

It came on just at the right time.

From inside the machine lunged a creature made entirely of white energy, like a line-art drawing come to life. It slammed into the phasic shielding and began beating at it.

Tvewlika could hear it bellowing in rage even through twenty feet of crysteel window.

It took less than five minutes for it to slow its crashing blows against the phasic shielding and just stand there, floating in midair. Slowly the limbs curled and the white-line-art floated in the fetal position in mid-air.

The last third of the system chuckled to life. Translating what was slowly rotating, curled up, to pure data.

"Status?" Tvewlika asked.

"Dreaming, Most High," an Ikeeka assistant said. She moved the LCD screen, holograms were too risky for this project, and Tvewlika could see the blurry and streaked dream on the screen.

They were driving a ground car over a rainy road.

Tvewlika turned and looked at the xenobioprinter.

An exact copy was floating in the gel, curled up in the fetal position.

"Begin transfer," he said, twisting his finger again, back and forth, clockwise and counterclockwise, the joint only made to move up and down.

Lasers and phasic beams caressed the floating figure even as the data moved from the block to the system to the translator.

Tvewlika looked at the printed body.

A finger twitched.

The eyes began moving rapidly under the closed eyelids.

The chest began expanding and contracting as it breathed in the gel that bore a close resemblance to amniotic fluid.

Tvewlika made a pointing gesture.

The sounds of muffled conversation, a thudding rhythmic beat, and other sounds could be heard over the speaker. Sounds that were being piped into the gel. The gel began shifting, the tank moving slowly up and down, side to side.

Tvewlika glanced at the dream and at the bioprinter tank.

The tank was moving in synch with the movements of the dream.

The ghostly figure vanished and Tvewlika held his breath.

He knew that the security teams were standing by with their rocket launchers and heavy autocannons loaded with anti-armor rounds.

The middle piece of hardware slowly wound down, the lights turning to yellow to signify that it was done working.

The figure in the tank reached up and scratched the side of its neck, slowly, leisurely.

Tvewlika smiled even as he twisted his finger again.

The tank slowly emptied of gel, leaving the figure curled up. It still had tubes and wires attached, although the majority of the wires had withdrawn.

Heavy sedatives, in the range used to perform lethal injection on large robust livestock, were injected into the body even as the aural stimulation continued.

The body was carefully moved via robotic waldoes to laying down on its back. It was quickly washed and dried and a hospital gown covered its nakedness.

Still, the eyes moved rapidly behind closed eyelids.

"Manufacturing complete," the computer said.

Tvewlika nodded as he hurried into the room, moving rapidly through the hallways.

"Most High, it may not be safe," he was warned repeatedly.

He brushed off their concerns as he rushed to the creature's side.

"Bring her out of sedation," Tvewlika ordered.

He stood there, next to the large creature.

Some kind of impulse, instinct maybe, had him reach up and remove the filtration mask from his face.

The being's eyelids fluttered and the eyes opened.

He noticed how beautiful they were. Blue, with a hint of amber deep in the depths.

"Where am I?" the female asked.

"A hospital. You suffered a severe injury. We were forced to take extreme measures to save your life," Tvewlika said, mostly telling the truth.

"Will I be all right?" she asked. She frowned. "I've never seen anything like you."

"You should be just fine," Tvewlika stated. "We have to put you back under and transfer you from intensive care to a more comfortable room," he said.

"Oh. OK," she replied, her voice thick and muzzy from the anesthetic.

To Tvewlika's surprise she was able to reach out, clumsily, but still reach out, and touch his arm.

"I'll see you later, Doc," she said.

Tvewlika nodded, as he had learned from the body language data files, and patted her hand.

Her eyes closed and at Tvewlika's nod the anesthetic increased.

Tvewlika turned and faced the cameras, the gathered officials and scientists, and everyone watching.

He motioned at the body, breathing slowly, color looking good, and lifted his voice.

"BEHOLD: HUMANITY!"