The Mad Lemurs of Terra fight to win. To survive. To breed. To eat.

To live another day.

For millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years, our species has fought merely to prove primacy over one another. Not for food, not for safety, not to advance ethos or thought, but merely to prove that we were better than others. Defeating another did not advance the primacy of a school of thought or ethos or course of action, it merely showed others that we were capable of defeating that single being or small quorum through plotting and, often, cutouts.

The Mad Lemurs of Terra, however, were forged by a malovent universe to fight for each heartbeat, each breath, each minute.

I have tasted the wrath of the Mad Lemurs, drank deeply of its blood tasting nectar, and emerged changed by it.

I understand now what very few of my people understand.

The Madness of the Lemurs.

Look into my red eyes, my burning third eye, and tell me that I do not understand the howling laughter of a malevolent universe echoing through the enraged scream of a Mad Lemur on the hunt. - Lok'tok'nok, Adherent of the Cult of the Defiled One

Mbutu brought his arms up in the classic boxing defense pose, protecting his chest and abdomen, covering his face but keeping enough mobility to guard the side of his head as the Atrekna, clad in endosteel and phasic constructs, shrieked and went on the attack again, slicing at him with phasic enhanced endosteel blades. Pebbles, shards of vehicles, chunks of asphalt and brick, and even chunks of macroplas whirled around him as the Atrekna lashed out with what was beginning to seem like an inexhaustable well of psychic power.

He counted and on five he dropped his guard in time to see the Atrekna drop back, moving a hand and ripping the entire ground, all the way to chunks of bedrock, in between Mbutu and the alien psychokineticist.

Mbutu knew that pattern now. Five seconds of preplanned attack, fall back for a second or two to plan the next five seconds, drive in hard.

The Atrekna was getting faster and faster, less time to plan the next set of attacks and defenses, and lasting longer.

A single punch drove through the phasic construct reinforced rock and asphalt, shattering ferrocrete and chunks of basalt as well as splintering the phasic construct.

A car engine came from each side, ripped out of the vehicles by psychic power and Mbutu shrugged slightly, taking the hits on his shoulders. Another barrier lunged out of the dirt, this one covered in hair thin phasic spikes wrapped around thin spikes of endosteel.

Mbutu grabbed the smashed car engine and slammed it against the barrier twice. It went down and Mbutu caught a glimpse of the Atrekna fleeing into the industrial facility.

Oh no, I'm not falling for that again, Mbutu thought, moving at an angle and starting to slowly circle the huge building.

The last time he had gone in there, the Atrekna had nearly killed him. He had been moving between two massive endosteel and hyperalloy presses when one suddenly ripped from its moorings and slammed into him. He had managed to get a hand up, stopping it, when the one on the other side had ripped free and hit him. His arm had been extended when he had been pushed back, his elbow hitting a hyperalloy building strut.

It had nearly dislocated before the strut had given out and his elbow still hurt. The huge foundry press had damaged the variable weapon system implant in his arm and with his cooling and slush problem he had not been able to replace it.

He checked his readout.

2.58% slush

62% heat

Not enough slush to create the 'lining' of the nanoforge, the heat too high and baking the nanite before they could accomplish much. His nanite replication systems were largely offline, his body temperature starting to have issues.

Mbutu moved over to a large heavy truck proclaiming it was carrying "Nu-Water! Good for the environment and usable by YOU!", punching through it and standing under the water, staring at the industrial building.

The Atrekna was in there, planning its next assault.

Mbutu knew it just as sure as he knew that there could only be one way this ended.

Victory or death.

Either was fine.

The Atrekna stared out of a broken window at the Mad Lemur, watching it jog around the building. Always keeping the lemur at an angle, never looking directly at it, nor staring at its shadow.

The Atrekna marveled at the lemur. Such simplicity layered onto such a complex and interesting organism. Virtually no thought to action delay, capable of multi-layer planning, capable of reflexive adaptation and reaction to stimuli.

She, and she was a she because she had decided that she was a she, watched as the lemur ripped away a piece of fencing and crammed it into its mouth.

It could eat while it moved. Eat while it planned.

She hoped the lemur wouldn't crash through the wall and into the industrial facility again.

The last time, the lemur had almost killed her.

She had struck out with her powers, attempting to use two huge endosteel presses to crush the lemur, only it had driven an elbow into a support girder. That had caused scaffolding to collapse, nearly crushing her and forcing her to rip through a wall and back out into the open.

The lemur was a high end predator with a mind capable of predictive analysis.

She had been forced to reach deep inside, discover powers and capabilities far beyond what she had ever heard of.

During her eighteen million years of life, she had defended herself from others plots and machinations, launched carefully crafted machinations and engaged in intricate plots against rivals, often with fatal results.

But nothing had forced her to push her limits like this one fight.

Part of her doubted any other Atrekna but Dalvanak the Defiled One had ever delved as deeply as she had been forced to do.

She watched as the lemur moved to a truck full of water and broke open the side, standing beneath the spray of water. She watched as steam billowed up around the lemur for almost twenty seconds before it was just standing in the water.

It is susceptible to heat, somehow, she thought. I must figure out how to use this to my advantage.

The problem was more than the fact the lemur was encased in Substance-W, or the fact it had Substance-W running through its veins, the problem was the lemur was almost completely shielded from her powers.

She had been able to grab it twice and fling it away from her, once managed to lift it up and hold it still for almost a full second as she prepared to stab it with the long sharp blades of endosteel that she kept behind her in a bladed fan, but each time it had managed to get free with a combination of strength, fury, and counter-phasic reflexes.

The lemur was gulping water now and she knew she could not let it refuel.

She opened the next round of the fight by flipping the container over onto the lemur, feeling her phasic channels burn with overstress at the weight of the water filled trailer, then wrapped it around the lemur even as it grabbed at the endosteel and twisted it like soft taffy.

The wall exploded as she drove through it, tearing up chunks of ferrocrete, phasically charging it, and flinging it at the lemur, ripping apart vehicles and flinging solid masses and quickly formed blades and sharp wheel chunks at the lemur.

The lemur responded by roaring, smashing aside the larger chunks and ignoring the smaller ones.

She opened her third eye, a new tactic coming to her.

She would look a bare second to second and a half into the future to see what the lemur would do and counter it so that she could strike.

With a reply screech of denial she flew directly into the lemur's face, slashing with the blades, bringing the blades around from the fan behind her and attempting to get them behind the lemur to stab at it from behind.

She could see the lemur's reactions to her actions, her actions to its reactions, and it quickly multiplied from a half dozen actions to a blurred kaleidoscopic array of action, reaction, and counter-action.

She threw herself backwards, panting, and the lemur drove straight at her, swinging with one fist. She barely got her shields reinforced before the fist hit her shielding like a cannon shot, shattering phasic constructs, destroying the density collapsed ferrocrete, the raw kinetic energy stopping from hitting her directly by less than two layers of phasic shielding.

Mbutu didn't let up, wading forward, throwing heavy punches. He knew not to let it get its feet under it, that he had to just get in and keep slugging. The Atrekna reacted fast at first, countering his movements, blocking or slipping his punches, but at the five second mark it backed off.

He stepped forward and threw a line drive punch, the sheer force behind it slamming his feet into the tarmac, the asphalt cratering around his feet. The punch shattered the whirling, shifting, mutating shielding protecting the Atrekna, the physical components reduced to chunks that sprayed behind the Atrekna in a fan.

It tried lifting ferrocrete up around his legs, tried lifting spikes out of the ground to either side of him, tried to stab at him with blades of phasically enhanced endosteel, tried to grab his wrists or his ankle and yank him off balance.

He powered through all of it, some of it reflexive from decades of close quarters combat, the rest relying on training and quick thinking.

Mbutu caught the cargo-hauler flung at him, his hands sinking deeply into the frame, swinging it around and slamming it against the Atrekna, which used a blade of endosteel wrapped in pure phasic energy to slice the vehicle in half, preventing Mbutu from crushing the Atrekna like a bug.

Heat 52% and rising

The tarmac around the two combatants was starting to soften, the puddles of water, coolant, and lubricant steaming and evaporating. Flares of phasic energy shot into the sky and wavering tendrils of psychic power shone brightly in the daytime sky.

The Atrekna narrowly avoided getting her skull caved in by a straight fingered jab, which extended the lemur's reach by nearly a foot, shattering her protections and leaving her with scrapes on her face.

Mbutu blocked two blades and took the third across the top of the shoulder, the warsteel carapace cracking and chipping.

The Atrekna blocked a straight line drive punch, putting her power into the shielding, even as the tarmac was ripped up at her feet as she shot backwards half the length of the parkinglot, feeling the insides of her shoulders bruise.

Mbutu slapped debris out of the way and missed the compressed and compacted cargo hauler transmission that hit him in the ribs, flexing the carapace.

More energy rippled as the two kept clashing.

The Atrekna threw herself backwards, into the industrial building again, her power shoving aside heavy machinery as she tried to get some distance from the Mad Lemur. She could feel the blood running from around her third eye, feel the burning tingling agony of her phasic channels overloaded and filled with jagged edges of shattered phasic constructs.

Mbutu threw himself after her, landing with a power stomp, the grav focuser in his left calf going out with a spray of purple energy. The 15G shockwave sent the Atrekna flying backwards, out of the industrial building, and Mbutu crouched slightly and threw himself forward in short, sharp arc, the concussive force of breaking the sound barrier collapsing half the building and throwing debris for nearly a mile.

The Atrekna managed to stop her backwards motion, ripping up a huge amount of tarmac, dirt, and bedrock behind her that she then parted to move through and closed behind her.

She could feel other Atrekna urging her to join the communal mind and thrust their insistence away from herself with a punishing slap, refusing to be distracted as the wall shattered, stopping the lemur's forward momentum.

The sonic boom rolled across her as she brought up her blades, pulling three lampposts to her, crushing them, folding them, collapsing their structure to increase their density, and filling them full of phasic energy.

The lemur rolled his shoulders, part of the armor cracking and falling away.

The Atrekna tensed. The lemur was only ten meters from her.

Mbutu tensed. The Atrekna was just out of reach.

Six Atrekna looped down out of the sky, coming in fast, attracted by the light show in the sky.

**we will put down this lemur** the six Young Ones proclaimed to the Atrekna surrounded by phasically enhanced endosteel armor, a fan of blades behind her like wings. **your power is pathetic**

Mbutu jumped back, grabbing a vehicle, his fingers crushing the body down to the frame, and hurled the chunk he tore free at the nearest Atrekna, one part of his mind keeping track of the one surrounded by a visible aura of power.

She saw her chance.

The vehicle chunk hit the first Atrekna, destroying its shields, crushing its chest, exploding out the other side of the torso that had been reduced to purple slurry. The others dropped down, firing their conical blasts that cracked and pitted the warsteel covering over Mbutu.

She watched the lemur kill four in rapid succession, reaching out and absorbing the phasic power that erupted from each one when they died, using the snap of phasic energy to replenish her depleted power.

While the other two circled the lemur and fired psionic blasts into it, she reached around herself, folding space-time, stepping backwards.

And emerging elsewhere.

Mbutu saw the sneak vanish as he pulped one of the duo that got too close. Before the last one could react, he jumped forward, crushing it beneath his feet.

Mbutu stood still for a moment, breathing heavy, letting the liquid warsteel pour from his mouth as his body struggled to rid itself of the heat. Three coolant arteries were clogged or damaged from the battle and his slush had dropped to 1.01%.

There was a tinny clink over the t-link.

"Mbutu, you there?" came Roca's voice.

"I'm here, boss," he said. He looked around. "Where are you?"

"Not sure," Roca answered. "You good?"

"Got close. Ran into the one Atrekna who can fight face to face," he admitted.

"And?" Roca asked.

"Forced it to retreat," Mbutu said.

"All right. Listen, we have no idea where we are. The locals go suicidal just at the sight of us. I'm sending you scans of the night sky, pass them to Space Force, see if you can get us a ride and if they can figure out where we are," Roca said.

"Roger, boss," Mbutu said. He looked up. "Steamboat Willy is still engaged, but I can hear a Space Force flotilla coming in. I'll relay the data."

He looked around. "I need to be careful, it might still be out there."

"Roger. Out," Roca said.

-----

The other Atrekna, all adherents to the Cult of the Defiled One, watched her as she exited her craft. She was clad in shimmering armor of phasic energy and hyperalloys, a halo over her head with empowered gems floating in the band of pure phasic energy. Behind her nearly a score of blades were spread out in a fan to either side of her, looking like wings. Tendrils of phasic energy flowed around the blades, around her, as she moved through the corridors.

Dalvanak turned from where he was studying strange artifacts taken from the Lemur Tomb World. He stared at her for a long moment, noting the scars on her skin from where the cuts and scrapes from combating the lemur had healed.

Her eyes glowed red, her third eye wide open and burning a lurid crimson.

**welcome home** Dalvanak said. **you have drank deep of the wisdom of the Mad Lemurs**

She nodded. **indeed in strife I found myself and my place**

Dalvanak nodded and motioned to her. **join me Lok'tok'nok mistress of blades**

She felt a surge of pride, the same as she had felt when she had escaped the Mad Lemur, and drifted forward.

She understood much now.

So much.