First Contact

Chapter Ninety-Eight (Leebaw)

She was Queen Glad-Real-All, and she had been born whole.

A daughter of the Mad Angel Terrasol, he of the flaming warsteel sword and wings of flowing magic. She was born knowing the spells and incantations of life, of the sublime traceries of the blood code, of the how and the why all life together.

She knew of her people's ancient history, as inscribed by the ancient seer Toll-Klien, which translated to Child of the Toll, which she secretly knew was Child of the Price that Must Be Paid. She knew of triumph and loss, of how even her magic could be twisted to blasphemy and others would seek her power for their own.

She knew the songs of power to commune with the Arch-Angels of Warsteel that patrolled the far heavens to ensure that those who dwelt within her realm were inviolate from powers beyond.

Queen Glad-Real-All knew of the heroism of little people, at the difference a single being could make, knew that heroism and will and steel could carry the day even when all appeared to be lost.

She knew to never give up.

She was Queen Glad-Real-All, and she had been born whole.

Serving her were her Wood Elves, that she had touched and ensured that they knew the songs and incantations when they were born whole. She whispered to them in their sleep as they grew so that when they were born they knew their job in shepherding life across her domain.

She was Queen Glad-Real-All, all who knew of her loved her.

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His name was Ukk-uk-huk and he was content.

The Overseers had came to his world when he was but a tadpole. The older members of his pool had all been killed when the Leebawans had tried to resist. He had watched as his people's little spaceport had been wiped away to be replaced by a giant smoking place that generated electricity for the cities of the Overseers, even as the Overseers destroyed the small towns and places of his people.

He had watched the Overseers destroy muddy banks where tadpole eggs should have hatched. He had seen them tear apart his world, cut down the beautiful silent forests where his small people had always marveled that living things grew so big.

They had learned the ways of space, learned to create ships that could travel between the stars, and for that, the Overseers had come and his people were doomed.

Then had come the metal ones. They had killed everything, destroyed everything.

Then had come the Terrans. Savage primates that reminded Ukk-uk-huk of the lemurs of the Southern continent, extinct now, as the Overseers had disliked their funny games and playful pranks. They had smashed the machines, taught Ukk's people to smash the machines. To scream and rage and not huddle in their burrows waiting to die.

Like the lemurs of the southern continent.

Ukk-uk-huk's people had blockaded and forbidden the southern continent for hundreds of years, to give the lemurs time to grow like Ukk's people had grown.

Now they were gone.

The Overseers had returned and the Terrans had told the Leebawans that they had to decide what would happen.

Ukk himself chased the Overseer in charge of "Incendiary Population Control Methods" down and shoved a spear made of a stick and a Terran Marine KaBar through the Overseers torso, pinning him there until the Leebawan females came with knives and hot coals.

Since then he had been content with his life. He guarded the Wood Elf Elanteer-1 when the strange being walked around. The Wood Elf, a servant of the Great Elven Queen Glad-Real-All, was curious about Ukk's world. Had wanted to see fish, taste plants (even the ones that weren't good), squish his feet in mud, and taste the waters. Elanteer-1 cared for Ukk's world, and Ukk had seen him weeping over dead fish and small crustaceans as if they were his own children.

When Ukk had told Elanteer that when he was tadpole there were many more of the small rainbow fish in the creeks Elanteer had sat with him and sang a song, one that the Wood Elf made up.

A month later Ukk had seen thousands of tiny rainbow fish in the creeks, darting around eating the algae that had bloomed in the old way.

It was then that Ukk began to believe in magic.

A year went by. Slowly. Around Ukk the world seemed to come to life. The Terrans rarely showed themselves, landing only at the small space port, and only going to talk to the Wood Elves or the Elven Queen unless invited by the Leebawans.

Ukk remembered when he had encountered the Terrans. Watched them save tadpoles and brood mothers and wounded Leebawans. How they had taught him the meaning of jawnconnor time. They had awaken a rage within the Leebawans, had watched, approvingly, as the Leebawens had driven the Overseers away with flame, spears, and a willingness to die on the Overseers guns if only they could drive their spear deep into the Overseer's body.

It felt good to rest in the algae rich mud and listen to Elanteer sing his songs of magic, holding tight to his magic spear where a Terran Marine KaBar gleamed in silent menace.

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The Obscene One came from beyond. The Arch Angels of Warsteel and Fire had warned Queen Glad-Real-All that it was coming. Had warned her that it would attempt to bring black heretical magic to her world to twist her work. That they would attempt to slip past the Arch Angels and bring doom upon her kingdom.

She had thought he had been born whole. She had thought that she, Glad-Real-All the Elven Queen, had known all the spells, incantations, and rituals there was to know.

But the Gan-Dolph had been reborn Gray, and had taken her to a secret grove while she lay dreaming, unclad, next to her dreaming pool, her fingers trailing in the gently swirling water whose currents streamed her hair out beyond her.

There the Gan-Dolph had taught her spells left behind from the War of the Genome. From the War of Blood Code. Had shown her the ancient and great magics that were hidden even from her sight.

He had bid her to protect this world and its small, injured people. As if she would do anything other.

She could feel the Obscene One. Could feel his rapacious hunger, feel his raw hatred, and knew that this is why she had been whole into such power, why she had been entrusted with the Sacred Fire and the Songs of the Seven Seals.

The Obscene One wished a ATCG War and the Elven Queen was willing.

This world, these small peoples she was shepherding and restoring even from extinction, were her charges and she would not let them go into the Dark Night.

Glad-Real-All sang the songs and summoned the birthing pools deep in the swamps of hydraulic fluid and battery acid around the slowly decaying machines of the Ancient Enemy's Great Iron Furnaces. There, she created new life, sang the songs to bring them into the world.

The trees she had grown, used great magics to accelerate the growth, she whispered to in order to produce spores that she would need. She touched the algae across the world and whispered a long song of ATCG to its strands. She touched the Leebawans themselves and changed a single piece of dormant code to make it into a marker.

A way to tell the People from the Enemy.

She prepared Leebaw for war.

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The Void Creature seeded the waves of attacks and slowed down. There was no hurry. There were few emissions from the world. It was not sure why it had been called. There were some ships around the world, not many, but not enough to face it.

It had wiped away this world before, a hundred times, and would do so again.

The ships around had launched missiles, but they had missed its great presence by kilometers, vainly attempting to get closer with gravitics pulses even as they peered at its bulk with LIDAR and RADAR.

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Rear Admiral Jonathon E reached out with his mind, through his datalink, and grabbed the bars of the ship's wheel in front of him, looking down at his gestalt vision of the crews of his twelve vessel flotilla. He had laid in the fire plans. Dig the C+ shells deep, sweep the enemy from the skies with his cannon.

Around him the ocean sparkled as sea birds floated on air currents, singing songs and telling tales of the enemy's movements.

He had been raised in Texas, on the coast, and his gestalt image reflected it.

"OPEN FIRE!" he roared.

"WEAPONS FREE!" the cannoneers roared, yanking their lanyards.

The three massive battleships fired their main guns, C+ Cannons, fired in carefully arranged sequence to keep from warping the keel. The Heavy Cruisers fired their Plasma Wave Phased Motions guns, the giant pistons hammering at one gun then the other so the dual gunned ships could fire without tearing itself apart.

"VOLLEY ONE AWAY, SUH!" his Treana'ad Gunnery Officer called out. Admiral E preferred to have him appear dressed as if he was an ancient Terra pirate, dressed in blue with little caps with red tassels from the feared Londown Pirate Navy.

The cannon crews busied themselves, in their blue pants and white shirts, looking snappy as they reloaded the cannons.

"Get me the results, Scan," he ordered the two men working over a map with compasses and sextants.

"Direct hits. Target Alpha-One is heeling to starboard," the Treana'ad in the Crow's Nest called out.

"WEAPONS FREE!" the cannoneers roared, yanking the lanyards again.

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The first salvo had wounded it badly. The shells impacting inside its armor, turning flesh and sinew, organs and tissue, into expanding bubbles of agony.

The creature screamed across the void in the voices it knew would be heard.

SUBMIT OR BE DESTROYED

The roar back staggered it, agony across its mind.

EAT ALL THE DICKS

The roar was feral, cruel, full of malice, hatred, and rage. It burned across the creature's mind, burning away synapses, snapping dendrites, seering axioms.

The second salvo hit, smashing deep. The creature reeled, an explosion of tissue from the great 'foot' it used to crawl through space itself.

This was impossible.

It was losing.

It reached out and gave the orders to the smallest of itself.

Reproduce one of its kind.

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When beings through of the TerraSol Fleets they thought only of massive ships, huge weapons, gigantic shells, cliffsides of armor. They thought of fleets in the hundreds, thousands of ships, spreading out to engage the fleets of the enemy. Of the areospace fighters, bombers, intro-atmospheric ships that could operate in space or atmosphere with equal ease. Of dropships pounding the dirt in plumes of radioactive retrorockets to disgorge the ground forces.

When they thought of the ground forces they thought of the great firebases of the Army, the pounding artillery, the smashing tanks, of infantry dug in so that the enemy would have to use its own bones to dig them out. They thought of the Marines, the Mechaneks advancing through atomic fire, through the hell of the enemy's guns, landing in drop-pods that slammed to the ground and shattered the enemy.

But there was another battle that was always fought. One that didn't make for good Tri-D Drama, that didn't have vast militaries moving across the landscape even though the troops were deployed in such great numbers that it required scientific annotation to list.

Nanophage Texarkana-8817 numbered in the 6.43134x1038 in the upper atmosphere, hanging up above the jetstreams and soaking up the energy that cascaded across the ionosphere.

The Elven Queen knew it as Angrist, Keeper of the Upper Air.

It was the first assaulted. Spores from space fell far enough their shells ablated away. They were designed to reflect UV rays back into space or absorb them, to dim the amount of sunlight that fell upon the world.

Angrist fell upon them, their blade-like protein shells piercing the spores, rupturing them so they fell as scattered genetic debris to burn up on the air currents.

Layer after layer of warriors, or weapons, most too small to see with the naked eye, fought against the incoming tide of weapons of the Obscene One.

Glad-Real-All the Elven Queen sang her songs, performed her incantations.

The Arch Angels of War Steel in the Sky Beyond Sky were winning the battle against the Demons and Unclean Ones of the Darkness Beyond.

The battle for sea, land, and air, fell on her. On her mastery of incantations, spells, and rituals.

She reached out, to her Wood Elves, and led them in song.

In the quiet spaces, in burrows, the Leebawans sang with them, providing croaking counterpoint to songs they did not understand but respected.

Glad-Real-All, Elven Queen of Air and Ocean and Land and Sky sang her songs, guiding her soldiers as the battle raged on.

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Larger creatures now sleeted into the atmosphere. 73% of them had been swept from the sky by carefully planned fire patterns of slushed out defense vehicles, a testament to Admiral E's tactical ability and the ability of his gunnery crews, but that left 27% of tens of millions sleeting into the atmosphere.

Some opened wings, gliding on the air currents, looking for where their primitive brains told them to land to hatch the life squirming inside of them.

Others fell like darts, slamming deep into earth or ocean, breaking apart as the impact woke the creatures inside.

All of them were met by Queen Glad-Real-All, Lady of the Blood Code, Keeper of the Sacred Flame, and her warriors.

Creatures the size of a dog, covered in hard chitin armor, with four blade-arms and a long tongue, shouldered their way out of the husk of the giant seed-pod that had brought them and scrambled from the crater.

The moss they stepped on shot rhizome tendrils into their feet, sucking at their nutrients. The nutrients letting them push more rhizome into the creatures. Tendrils slid from out of the joints in their hard chitin armor.

An inhalation to screech filled their lungs full of pollen. The rush of air down the throat caused the pollen to explode into life. Shooting roots into lung tissue.

Most of them burst before they got five feet. Some never made it out of the crater.

One, tougher than the others, managed to drag itself nearly ten feet, its bladearms scraping at the dust.

It touched a seed. The seed felt it and vegetable matter clenched, heating the drop of water into steam. The steam expanded.

Driving needle thin spikes through the creature. The seed drank deep and felt the corpse fall upon it.

A single tendril of green pushed up, petals opening, seeking the sun.

In the ocean great creatures that fed on algae swept through the vast beds of Obscene Things, scooping them up in their krill nets. The great creatures felt the hunger and swept on, searching for more to eat.

Everywhere the invading corrupted life touched down, they found soldiers waiting for them.

Airborne viruses swarmed a field of bacterial, slicing through them, injecting their own DNA, ripping and tearing at the DNA code.

Bacteria was inhaled by a giant creature, found the lung tissue, and massively bred.

The giant creatures that had unfolded themselves from the drop-shells they had rode to the planet's surface inhaled less than a dozen times.

And drowned in their own lung tissue.

The Wood Elves had been born whole. They knew the songs. They knew the incantations. They knew the spells and rituals.

The Leebawan had been born in mud and misery but had learned glory and the brightness of life once again. They sang with the Wood Elves.

All of them sang to the direction of their conductor, the Elven Queen Glad-Real-All.

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In one spot a massive creature crashed down, the fiery impact of the meteor giving time for the life inside to establish itself. It drove roots deep, cracking bedrock to look for what it hungered for. It quickly developed giant book lungs to stir and clean the air. It shuddered with the pain of the infections that wracked its body, but still it grew. Biological battle-screen projectors swelled to life, protecting the infection from even orbital guns.

A shell began to form, allowing the tissue inside to form without constant attack. It sent out tentacles that, even as they died, left behind soil more condusive to the new life than the old.

A single blot that in a week had grown to over a hundred miles wide.

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Ukk-uk-huk followed Elanteer-3 to meet the Great Elven Queen. He was dressed in armor, plates taken from Overseer armor, can carrying his spear with the deadly blade. He shivered at her awe. She was coldly beautiful, unworldly, and moved with a grace that made him want to weep.

**Ukk-uk-huk, bravest of all the Leebaw People** the Elven Queen said, reaching down and touching him. **Are you ready to risk life and limb for your people again?**

"Yes, oh Queen," Ukk said, looking up at her beauty.

**Though it may cost you your life?** Queen Glad-Real-All asked.

"For my People, I will do the jawnconnor even if I must die," Ukk responded.

**I have a quest for thee, noble one. Journey through the Unclean Lands, find the Citadel of Death, invade it, and stab the Heart of Darkness with this, your spear** she said.

She grasped the spear and it warped in his hand. Great crystals wrapped around the stick and he could see a gold and silver fluid flowing around the stick.

"As you wish," Ukk said.

His people were a small one that none had ever cared about before.

The Lady had brought back the fish both great and small, had returned the birds that sangs and screeched, had even called up again the little lizards that Ukk remembered from his youth.

**With you shall travel my servants, Elanteer the Brave, Karl the Undying Mechanek. to guide and keep you during your travels and troubles,** the Queen said.

From beneath moss stood up a great black warsteel Mechanek, its armor breached but its eyes still red. Mushrooms bloomed from the cracks in its shoulders and backs, crystals grew from the rents in its chest and legs, a burning sword in its hand.

Elanteer was clad in armor of crystal and living lace. Armed with a sword of crystal and wood.

Together Ukk-uk-huk and his two companions headed for the Heart of Darkness. The touch of the Elven Queen burned upon Ukk's brow.

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The pulsing mass within the shell sensed the three when they approached. It sent its warriors against the trio, but none could prevail. It tensed within its shell, knowing the armor was proof against any weapon that could be brought against it.

Their footsteps left behind spores that attacked the biomass the Pulsing One had carefully nutured on the ground, that had eaten into the soil. Spreading in moments, connecting to one another, creating a path that the rest of the vegetation used to assault the Pulsing One's territory.

The great black creature, clad in crystal and fungus, raised its fiery sword and struck, tearing a great hole into the side of the Pulsing One's citadel.

The three entered the spaces beyond. They crushed and destroyed the organs they found, severed the nerve cables that writhed in their way, smashed the creatures that the Pulsing One sent to fight.

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The Black Knight fell to a huge creature with massive bladearms that managed to shatter the crystal protecting the rents in his chest. He died with his fist around the creature's heart. He gave out a great trumpet-like death cry that shook the entire Obscene Citadel. In his death nanospores poured from the mushrooms, streamed from the rents in his armor, turning the tissue everywhere black as the Rohan Class nanospores attacked the tissue of the Pulsing One.

Ukk was wounded by a skinny creature with a stinger that fell from the ceiling and clung to his back, jabbing the stinger deep into his side. Elanteer swept it off Ukk's back with his sword.

Together the Elf and Leewbawan struggled on. Fever gripped Ukk, but Elanteer half carried him onward. They fought deeper and deeper into the Obscene Citadel, until, finally, they reached the Heart of Darkness.

It was a great pulsating organ, like twisting coral piled high.

The last of the Pulsating One's soldiers attacked.

Elanteer stood between Ukk and the foul creatures that burst from blister-like sacks inside the great cavity, his own sword of crystal and wood in one hand and the burning warsteel of the Black Knight in the other. He danced a dance of death, singing out his own death song as he did so, the blades flashing as he killed one after another.

Ukk dove into the black viscous fluid around the brain. It burned his skin, tried to dissolve his transparent inner eyelids, but he felt the Queen's touch on his brow and pressed on, one hand tight around his spear.

Ukk scrambled up the pedestal of bone and sinew the great pulsating mass sat atop of, used his claws on his hands to climb the mass itself.

As he reached the top Elanteer fell beneath the last of his enemies, their blades in one another's hearts.

Ukk lifted the spear over his head, the same spear he had carried the night he had learned of jawnconnor, and thrust down into the mass.

It ripped through the outer shell, the magic of the Marine KaBar tearing through the hard chitin. As is drove deep into the neural tissue beyond the crystal cracked, leaking the gold and silver fluid.

The creature screamed, once, before the nanites shredded it, absorbed its genomic code, and transmitted it to the Queen.

Ukk rolled on his back and stared upwards as the shell split and the fibrous tissue gave way until he could see the stars.

There he laid.

He watched the stars, breathing heavy, his body wracked with fever. As the two moons rose he saw a delicate creature fly from the trees on gossamer wings. It lifted him up, and carried him to the tree.

There, it sang songs of healing and love, nursing him back to health.

Eventually Elanteer-5, who had been born whole, came for him.

Ukk limped back with Elanterr-5, who had been born whole with the scar down his face that Elanteer-3 had received from a great creature, until he saw his old burrow. It had soft moss inside and the Leebawan gratefully sunk down onto it.

In his hand, he held his spear. The stick he had gathered that fateful night, the KaBar he had been given as a gift.

The others croaked and clicked to him to tell them what he had seen, what he had done, but he found he had no words.

He lived out the rest of his life, long by the standards of his people, hopping beside Elanteer, even as the Wood Elf was reborn whole.

He never forgot the lessons of jawnconnor or the quest to pierce the black heart.

And he never let go of his spear.

A lesson he taught the tadpoles.

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QUEEN GLAD-REAL-ALL 2871

INFESTATION ELIMATED

OBSCENE ONE DEFEATED

TERRAFORMING CONTINUES

RESTORING BIOSPHERE TO PRE-LANAKTALLAN STATUS

------NOTHING FOLLOWS------

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