"My eyes were wet with tears, our little dog, when I bore thee (to the grave)... So, Patricus, never again shall thou give me a thousand kisses. Never canst thou be contentedly in my lap. In sadness have I buried thee, and thou deservist. In a resting place of marble, I have put thee for all time by the side of my shade. In thy qualities, sagacious thou wert like a human being. Ah, me! What a loved companion have we lost!" - Grave of Patricus, a dog

The Ancient Ones watched the advance of the Inheritors of Madness into one of the strongest redoubts on the planet. It was the primary gateway for reinforcements from both time and space. A dozen space-time bridges connected servitor training and arming planets to the planet under attack, there were multiple setups and blockades for temporal reinforcements that took into account the Inheritor's use of chronotron weaponry.

Still, the advance was shocking. The insect hordes of the Inheritors were less an infantry charge, as predicted and foreseen by the Seer Caste and more an assault by light armored vehicles. The cybernetic Herd Lords were another shock, with how well they integrated with the rest of the Inheritor's military forces coming in a close second.

In less than two hours, the Inheritors had made huge gains in penetrating the northern border of the redoubt, pressing nearly a third of the way to the final defenses of the space-time bridges and temporal gateways. The hole in the lines was nearly twelve kilometers wide and getting wider all the time as Inheritor forces pushed the Atrekna forces east and west with a ferocity that the Atrekna who had never faced the Inheritors could have never imagined.

Still, the Ancient Ones were concerned but did not view it as a complete rout.

They had prepared. Readied themselves for such a possibility when they had designed the layered defense. They had another tactic to play, one that involved a great expenditure of chronotron energy.

But the New Universe had chronotron particles, not threads, and those particles were energetic and at the end of the lifespan each single chronotron erupted in a cascade of fresh, energetic particles.

The Ancient Ones watched carefully as the Inheritors pushed deeper into the redoubt, which could even defend a 34 degree arc of the orbit from pole to pole and strike at forces within two light seconds.

Timelines collapsed and reformed rapidly as the Inheritors made decisions or performed actions. Timelines in the New Universe were not like the timelines of the Old Universe. Timelines of the Old Universe could be carefully selected and pruned until the Atrekna got the outcome they desired.

In the New Universe, timelines were just as hateful and malevolent as the New Universe itself, refusing to be pared, pruned, or shifted. The majority of the time the timeline that the Atrekna tried the hardest to prune and keep from happening, the timeline that spelled disaster for the Atrekna, was the timeline that gained supremacy and it often appeared that the other timelines helped somehow.

The Atrekna had learned the hard way to allow the timelines to shift, merge, separate, and splinter on their own, without the Atrekna attempting to influence them.

However, several of the Ancient Ones had come up with a strategy. A way to use it to their advantage.

Creation of an artificial timeline, one that wanted to collapse back into the main one.

The key to that timeline was to allow everything but one event in one area from happening, instead of the old Atrekna strategy of looking at the universal timeline and choosing the best.

The Ancient Ones decided this planet would be an excellent place for an experiment.

A small, tiny, almost infinitesimal change to the timeline.

That would make it worse for everyone involved.

[The Universe Liked That]

The chronotron weaponry in use by the Inheritors was the key. It would eventually hammer down and flatten the timelines as they gleefully were attracted to the energetic chronotrons released by the weaponry.

So the Ancient Ones watched.

As the tanks to the east and west of the breakthrough got bogged down with heavy slavespawn (more and more Atrekna were beginning to prefer 'Dwellerspawn' as it had a certain flavor, a certain tang to the mental icon) in those sectors, another unit of heavy tanks pushed into the breakthrough. The infantry and the air assets pushed with the tanks.

The Ancient Ones felt the cold satisfaction of having been correct, some of them making sure the Young Ones felt the rebuke of their ideas.

The Inheritor military units flooded into the breakthrough.

There was a gap. Not much of one. That could corrected in minutes with how fast and fluid the battlefield was where the Inheritors were concerned.

But still a gap nearly six miles wide as the reinforcements rushed forward as the servitors routed.

The Atrekna Old Ones and Ancient Ones guiding and providing theater strategy felt the cold flush of victory.

And slammed the door shut behind the reinforcements and their rear units that were quickly moving in.

The chronotron eruptions fired off by the Inheritors empowered the device holding the artificial fragment of a timeline away from the Prime Temporal Flow, then overpowered it.

The vast crystal and rare elemental metal structure suddenly shattered.

The chunk of artificial timeline collapsed into the prime timeline.

Some of the Old Ones and Ancient Ones doubted it would be enough to stop the Inheritors.

But the data gained in watching them overcome an ancient strategy from the First Gathering would be invaluable.

-----

SSG Ralvex slowly advanced forward, his M318 roaring as he directed his fire at the sides of the bunkers, the mass reactive antimatter APDS rounds chewing apart the ferrocrete and duracrete before slamming through to explode inside the bunkers. Each bunker that went down he and the rest of the fire team moved rapidly forward to throw grenades into the bunker then advanced towards the next bunker to the east.

Behind him was a full kilometer of destroyed bunkers. To the north was twisting and snaking trenches that were full of nothing but dead servitors and wrecked war materiel. To the south the tankers of the Hesstlan Tank Regiment were roaring as their engines pushed them through the bunkers that they didn't even bother knocking out with their cannons.

TEMPORAL TEMPORAL TEMPORAL flashed on his visor and he automatically triggered the two missiles in his 4-pack shoulder launcher. The missiles sped out twenty meters and detonated in a shower of gold sparkles.

Everything suddenly heaved and Ralvex felt like he was standing sideways at one point.

When everything settled, Ralvex could see immediately that things had changed.

"GET TO COVER!" Ralvex yelled over the fire team channel.

The bunkers were intact again. The trenches full of servitors, many of whom were manning weapons that point b**ack at their own lines and worse, had the squad of Telkan Marines in their sights.

Ralvex swore as he ran for the nearest trenchwork.

Twenty-two paces.

--go go go-- 525 said, putting up an emoji of a frantically sprinting mantid.

Twenty paces and he was taking hits to his battlescreen, which was flaring.

Seventeen paces and PFC Davrek stumbled, his battlescreen flaring out in a shower of spark. CPL Nexrek grabbed him, pulling him along. Some of the team were firing 40mm grenades ahead of them, fuze safeties disabled, so they were going off on the ground, spewing out vapor, smoke, chaff, or IR strobes.

One of the Stampy's took a burst, stopped, rotated, and fired back an 8kt directed atomic back at the gunners. The other ran on, trailing behind the sprinting Telkan Marines. Tiny Tim 1 and Tiny Tim 2 were rolling fast, their turrets turning to spit 10mm APDS rounds at anything that got their attention.

All four of the gunnery drones were playing music as they hurried after the Telkan Marines.

Fifteen paces and Ralvex caught his foot on a chunk of something and went face first, tucking and rolling, pulling Madame-318 close while still in mid-air. Hours of training paid off and he came up on his feet, still running, only having fallen back to fifth of the thirteen man fire team.

Thirteen paces and the masking grenades were barely doing anything. Ralvex triggered his M318, raking the ground ahead of him, the antimatter rounds sending up huge gouts of dust even as he ran ahead of the first line of smoke grenades that had barely started hissing.

Ten paces and Stampy saw something good as Ralvex took the lead again, the pointman Pv2 Lek.Trep slowing down as they increased the strength of their forward battlescreen to soak up the fire coming from the trenchwork dead ahead.

**STAMPY HELP** flashed on Ralvek's HUD followed by ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC.

The 50kt blast blew a hole 250 meters wide in the complex bunker system to the north.

The amount of fire from behind suddenly dropped as Ralvex charged through the dust his fire had kicked up.

Seven paces and Ralvex could see the servitors. Large, lizardlike, bipedal, covered in battlesteel armor and carrying a mixture of plasma, laser, and kinetic weapons. The lasers were coming into play, flickering out and snapping at battlescreens in an impressive crisscrossing lightshow.

"DRAW BLADES!" Five paces and Ralvex let Madame 318 go, grabbing his chainsword and revving it.

Three paces and Ralvex fired his last missile into the edge of the trench, following the missile even before the dust and debris had settled. He landed in the trench, thrust the Cutting Bar Mark Two through the chest of one of the servitors that had been thrown against the far wall, yanked it out and spun in place even as the rest of the fire team began landing around him.

**STAMPY HELP**

ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC

Something went up with enough power that the rumble through the ground far outstripped the 50kt directed nuclear penetrator round.

"GET IN HERE, STAMPY, TIMMY!" PFC Davrek yelled, his 40mm grenade launcher on his shoulder chugging out more masking rounds that covered the battlefield around the four robotic drones in smoke and haze.

Servitors were screaming as the Telkan Marines went at them face to face. Some using their magac rifles at point blank range, others firing pistols, some using chainsword.

Pv2 Lek.Trep simply smashed into them with power armor enhanced fists and feet, going full CQC in the face of a dozen of the reptoids. He tore off arms, smashed through torsos, ripped off heads with every blow.

The reptoids were screaming, some trying to get away, others trying to rush the Telkan.

"FOR THE DIGITAL OMNIMESSIAH AND WARFATHER VUXTEN!" SGT Dritrek bellowed out over his speakers as his cutting bar howled and threw sparks as he ripped through the torso armor of one of the bigger reptoids, green blood and purple hydraulic fluid spraying from the wound.

"Back to back, make them push us out!" Ralvex ordered. "As soon as their initial assault bogs, we'll figure out which way to go!"

His shoulder launcher chugged as the 40mm tossed out a half dozen drones, which spun to unfold their wings and buzzed down the trenchworks to the east and west.

"How many are we looking at, Sergeant?" 2LT Helkrek asked, his voice stable and calm even as he thrust his cutting bar through the visor of one reptoid and shot another one twice in the chest with the magac pistol in his other hand.

"Battalion or brigade strength both sides," Ralvex answered, forwarding his drone feed even as he blocked a phasic enhanced duralloy sword and kicked the swordsman's guts out with a single swing of his boot.

"We stay here, they'll swarm us," the LT said.

An icon blinked to the west.

"Push that way, men!" the LT ordered.

Ralvex kicked another reptoid out of the way, taking the lead. He had a second's breather, time enough to deploy his M318.

The tracers ripped down the short twenty-meter straight of the trenchwork, blowing reptoids to rags and shattered armor, before the rounds started slamming against the trench wall.

"CLEARING THE WAY!" Ralvex yelled, moving forward.

The men of the fireteam followed, the LT taking up the rear, firing his pistol at any of the reptoids that looked around the east corner.

-----

First Lieutenant John "Dusty" Dulstmeyer put his hand on his helmet.

'Repeat that!" he snapped out.

"There's a Telkan platoon cut off to your southwest. The Atrekna gated in the entire trenchline intact somehow," Major Rex said over the line. "They need you to pull the pressure off of them."

LT Dusty nodded to himself as the major passed the orders. He activated the platoon line.

"We've got a platoon, a Confederate platoon, one of OUR platoons, cut off!" Dusty called out to his men.

Heads swiveled.

"Command's authorizing us to go in! We crack the trenchwork and support them, keep the Slorpies from bringing in more behind them!" Dusty called out.

He could tell his men were eager. Armored tails wagged and armored ears twitched.

A Slorpy heavy plasma machinegun nest raked the top of the berm they were behind, blowing up clouds of dust and debris.

"Grenades out!" Dusty called out.

The men with the underslung grenade launchers fired projectiles over the berm in a pre-arranged pattern.

"Psychic shielding to minimum!" Dusty yelled.

The general purpose heavy machinegun raked the berm again.

"Kill that, Ham!" Dusty yelled. "When it goes out, we charge!"

PFC Hambone popped up, the anti-armor bunker buster rocket on his shoulder. He sighted, pressed the stud and the firing button at the same time, taking two hits from the GPHMG that knocked him ass over tea kettle back behind the berm but didn't do anything but mar his armor.

"WOLFSBLOOD!" the K9 troops of 7th Regiment yelled, sprinting over the berm.

The Atrekna servitors stared in shock for almost a full ten seconds, unable to believe that the Inheritors would jump up from behind a berm, where they were safe, and start charging across the ground, howling and baying.

It was a half mile of ground with no cover, no rubble, nothing more than cleared ground.

The five seconds was enough time for the grenades to spew out masking agents, prism clouds, and plasma diffusion gasses.

The K9 troops charged through, their powered armor letting them run at almost ninety kilometers an hour. They were followed by their robotic units, all streaming together in one big wedge formation that moved with clockwork precision.

The servitors fired chest high, center mass, into the cloud. The lasers cracked as the coherent light superheated the air in a tube that collapsed when the laser passed by, artificial thunder rolling over the battlefield. Plasma screeched as the air superheated and separated into its components. Kinetic rounds howled as they went supersonic or hypersonic.

The K9 troops of 7th Regiment exploded out of the cloud. Warbois and Simbas ran fluidly next to them, mixed in with the ranks, all of them advancing at flank speed.

Running on all fours.

Before the servitors could react, the K9 troops were in with them.

The Atrekna watching stared in shock. Every other intelligent life form might put teeth on armor to frighten combatants, but none of them would have fully working jaws, much less use them in combat.

The K9 troops dropped into the trench, not bothering with cutting bars or pistols or rifles. They immediately closed with the enemy, grabbing them in their hands and yanking them close or just lunging forward.

Jaws snapped closed, serrated teeth howling with the ear twisting whine of vibroblades. The teeth sheered through battlesteel armor, flesh, and bone with ease. The K9's would throw aside the flesh with a twitch of the head and lunge at the next enemy troop.

Atrekna watching were shocked at the sheer savagery.

One noted that there was no psychic shielding aura on the armors and reached out with its psychic powers to shut the Inheritor troops down.

Instead of a calm mind trained for combat they found barking, howling, raving lunacy.

DON'T TOUCH ME! every mind screamed out.

The Young One collapsed, its brain leaking out of suddenly empty eye sockets.

"SIMBA IS HERE!" one of the robotic tigers roared out, throwing itself at one of the gunnery slits in a bunker. The ferrocrete proved no match for six tons of warsteel and fury and the cybernetic predator crashed into the bunker in a shower of ferrocrete and dust. Before the defenders could do anything the cyborg's jaws opened up and it breathed white hot napalm over the defenders. The flame rapidly chewed through the oxygen in the bunker and the tunnels, flickering and going out as the Simba was joined by another, then another.

"FIDO IS HERE!" one of the big canines roared out, landing in the trench. The guns on its back thundered as it swept aside the defenders. K9 troops and more FIDO's landed in the trench.

The Atrekna forces reeled back. The screaming madness off of the unshielded minds sent the psychically sensitive servitors, slavespawn, and the Atrekna staggering back.

More K9 troops poured into the trench as they pressed the attack.

-----

In the slightly shifted out of phase fortress the Ancient Ones and Old Ones watched as the Inheritors redoubled their efforts.

Their advance was slowed, but not stopped.

The Atrekna conferred with one another.

Control of the system was still undecided. It did not appear that the Inheritors had any reserves they had not committed.

The decision was made.

Commit the reserves.

-----

The structure was designed to hold back a fragment of space-time separate from the main timeline, a tiny pebble held above the rushing rapids of reality.

The thread it was on snapped.

The pebble plunged into the water.

-----

Vuxten was thrown backwards as the Kaiju Class Dwellerspawn suddenly materialized on top of the Hesstla heavy tank. Both exploded away from one another, trying to occupy the same location at the same time and physics deciding to spank them both.

A track flew off the tank, smashing through the battlescreen of the one to the right. The tank flipped end over end forward, the cupola coming off and the back deck exploding. Telkan Marines tumbled across the ground, some of them going airborne. A few slammed into the side of tanks, most hit the ground and tumbled.

Vuxten landed less than a body length away from where he had been, covered in thick viscous glowing blue blood.

The Kaiju screamed in pain as its lower leg exploded into a slurry of meat and bone chips.

Vuxten looked up at it from where he was lying on his back.

It looked down, holding its ruined leg off the ground as its head came slowly down, fixing one eye on the tiny mite in front of it. It blew hot humid air stinking of carrion and old rotting meat over Vuxten as it stared with unrestrained malevolence at the tiny insect its dim brain had decided was to blame for the agony in its front leg.

--not again-- 471 said.