First Contact

Chapter Ninety-Two (Dreams)

Dreams sat in the Great Unified Council, toward the back, behind even some of the neo-sapient races, which were only allowed to watch their 'betters' go through the motions of ruling their known universe. She held perfectly still, as unmoving as a statue, feeling her implosion wire tingle as she let her psychic senses spread out over the gathered beings.

So many of them were mere emptiness.

The Hamaroosan seat was empty. Someone had carved "REMEMBER SANDY" into the holotable with a ritual knife that they then stuck almost to the hilt into the table. The maintenance teams had left it in place.

The Telkan seat was empty. They had simply not shown up again.

Dreams could feel the cracks in the Unified Species already.

The Lanaktallan speaking, while wearing the sash of Third Most High of the Council, had a mental voice that could best be described as "hurrrrrrrr" to Dreams senses.

That made Dreams 'squint' at the speaker. She queried her datalink and compared the current Lanaktallan to the one that had spoken only a day prior. Their voice patterns were close, but their secondary and trinary vocal ranges were different, there was a slight difference in the size of their patterns, and the one speaking's tendrils were millimeters shorter. Additionally, the previous day's 'Third Most High' had leaned back on their left hindhoof when speaking where this speaker leaned forward on their right forehoof.

Dreams reached out with her psychic senses to touch 117 and told him to rush at the most speed to her side. To bring a single object and attune it to specific output. She touched Fights and asked her to bring her overwatchers as well as medical equipment and to contact The Wings of Mercy to send a medical evac dropship to the parking lot of the council building.

She had a bad feeling.

The Third High Most kept speaking about how the loss of systems by major corporations due to Terran Confederacy's insistence that the systems attacked by Precursors remain under Terran Martial Law had resulted in almost a hundredth of a percent loss of a percent of the taxes paid by the corporations. He was presenting numbers and charts via the faint flickering holograms that the Unified Council seemed to prefer.

Out of curiosity she pinged the prior year's taxes and publically declared profits and losses for the effected corporations and then compared it to the current publically declared profits, losses, and taxes. True, many corporations had gone bankrupt due to the lawsuits, emancipations, and the malign glee of the aVI of the Unified Judicial System in ruling exactly as the laws read instead of the 'spirit of the law' (which seemed to be: The Lanaktallan people are always right and always get what they want) which had turned out badly for the Lanaktallan corporations. However, Dreams could see that profits for some corporations were up across the Terran sectors as wages increased, increasing native species buying power due to the Terran Confederate policy of 'Buy Local' that the system commanders followed.

In other words, what he was saying wasn't true, but the facts he was presenting painted the picture that it was.

An old political trick.

The words kept flowing, repeating the same thing over and over, just with slightly different wording, some of the words requiring a moment's thought to get the context, thus hammering in the Lanaktallan's point further.

Taxes Good.

Taxes Low Because Terran.

Terran Bad.

117 hurried up, his Moszlak sauntering in behind him, moving to sit next to Dreams's chair. The Moszlak took up position to he could crush 117 with his ancient weapon should 117 attempt to seize control of technology to use it to wipe out the entire council chamber.

Not that 117 was considering it.

For more than a moment or two.

Dreams nudged 117 to keep silent watch, that something was going on. Fights nudged her psychically that they were in the antichamber just outside the Council chamber.

The Third Most High paused, sliding one finger down the side of its datapad to get to the next section, when Dreams felt it.

A scream. A scream of absolute terror that dwindled slightly. Not voiced out loud but perceptible to Dreams regardless. The feel of someone fighting, struggling desperately, to no avail as they were dragged down into a prison that they were locked into, able to see out of, able to hear outside of, able to feel what went on outside the prison.

A Vuknaraa stood up, holding a device over her head as the voice only Dreams could hear screamed louder in terror.

"DEATH THE LAN..." she got out.

117 felt the device as the Vuknaraa, a fair skinned biped covered with pale downy fuzz, began to stand up. His psionic abilities, trained and honed to a fine edge, immediately smelled out the detonator being grasped by the Vuknaraa's four fingered hand, could feel the wiring, could taste the blasting caps, could hear the singing of the implosion charges covering the Vukanaraa's waist in a belt of destruction. There were eight charges particularly angled and built to direct their power straight into Dreams's seat.

Before she was standing all the way up 117 reacted to with his Terran Marine training, reaching into the unshielded electronics of her datalink, jumping to the explosive suicide belt's electronics, stilling them, disconnecting them. He felt the odd code surging and twisting in her implant, preventing her from screaming, and shut down the implant for good measure even as he slapped the device Dreams had ordered him to bring onto the floor and triggered it.

In the split second before the device went off, as the Vuknaraa was still standing up Dreams reacted instinctively to the threat. She started to lash out to burn away the Vuknaraa's mind but Dreams could still hear the wailing scream of protest from deep inside the Vuknaraa's mind.

Instead she only paralyzed the Vuknaraa, stunning its motor cortex and interrupting its autonomous systems for long enough to cause her to black out.

The Personal Protective Screen spun up instantly, creating a dome of pure energy that looked like interlocked hexagons.

At the same time two more voices began screaming for help to Dreams's senses as a Tnvaru and a Savashan both stood up and leveled needler pistols at Dreams.

117 reached out with his datalink, jumped to the two would-be assassins and then to the weapons. He simply turned off the weapons.

The two would-be assassins screamed "DEATH TO THE LANAKTALLANS" as they pulled dead triggers, pointing the weapons at Dreams, who lifted a blade-arm to rest her chin on even as she reached out with her senses and knocked both out.

Both Warborgs had already moved, stepping forward, their eyes flashing to green and then amber and finally red as weapons deployed from their back, heavy duty APERS shells loaded into their cannons, and their defensive systems came online.

"REMAIN SEATED!" the two warborgs roared.

Everyone who had started to jump up collapsed back into their seats.

"SILENCE!" they followed up.

Mouths closed, screams of fear were swallowed.

Everyone sat silently, staring at what they had just been reminded were massive combat cyborgs, swallowing any words they had.

Dreams almost started giggling at the realization that for the first time in who knew how long a bunch of politicians sat with their mouths closed. She transmitted the data to Fights on what races had just tried to kill her.

Medical personnel started to rush in, heading for Dreams's seat then stopped, their mouths working. Two dropped their cud on the floor.

"DO NOT MOVE! THIS AREA IS UNDER MARTIAL LOCKDOWN!" the two warborgs roared.

Three of the medical personnel ran. One fainted. Before the door could close the russet colored Mantid rushed in, followed by her two escorts. She had three hover-cradles with her loaded with the medical profiles of the three beings and their races. She rushed over while everyone stared, pointing out the three beings.

Security forces, Lanaktallans, rushed into the Council chamber and found themselves staring into the guns of two warborgs with crimson eyes.

Dreams felt Sees tell her psychically that someone had intended on entering her chambers with the intent of doing harm so she had gone out to stand by the planters on the steps that led down to the parking lot and had taken Speaks with her. She had already had the ceramic tree in Dreams quarters carried outside and Mr. Rings was hiding in the watery bole. She, Mr. Rings, and Speaks were watching the Medevac shuttle landing in the parkinglot on a hot drop.

The Lanaktallans looked to see Dreams sitting smugly inside the dome of interlocked hexagons and reached for their weapons.

117 jumped from his implant to their's, decrypted their pathetically weak armor codes, jumped to the computers that ran the armor, shut off their armor and weapons then turned off their atmosphere with almost malicious glee. He then overloaded their implants, burning them, and then turned them off.

He could see the six Lanaktallans start to panic through the clear armorplas of their visors and flashed a half dozen icons that translated out to "Ha ha! You suck!"

Fights was having each would-be assassin loaded into the med-cradles, putting them in stasis so deep that all cellular activity was ceased. She signaled to Dreams that she had them.

Dreams had just finished ordering the forces at the space port to recall to the shuttle and lift off. 117 sent commands to the electronics in the diplomatic quarters to reboot, wipe, and leave behind malevolent VI slicerbois in the memory, hiding under supposed diplomatic notes.

The lawyers of Johnson, Jackson, & Johnston were not worried. Should something happen to them their law firms would sue the entire Council until they had to use hand fulls of dirt to pay off their debts. They, and their assistants, moved slowly and confidently toward the limo that would take them to the spaceport, filing lawsuits and legal briefings as they went.

Almost every being fled from the gray skinned bipeds as they slowly moved to their limo. At the spaceport a Telkan male, a ticket home in his hand, ran up and hugged one of the lawyers before racing off to board his flight home with his wife and broodcarriers.

The lawyers felt a tingle of malicious pleasure at how much the Telkan's happiness hurt the Lanaktallans watching from hiding.

Dreams watched Fights leave with the 'patients' and motioned to 117 with the bladearm she was not resting her chin upon.

117 turned off the protective barrier, his eyes on the Lanaktallan security guards who were gasping, foaming at the jowls even as others tried to help get their armor off.

"Well now, this is exciting," Dreams said slowly. She motioned and the warborgs moved back up behind her, their eyes going to amber. "I wonder who would want to kill little old me."

She lifted up the chrome donorcycle chain and swung it slowly back and forth. She held up the flick-knife and pressed the chrome stud. The blade swung out and locked into place with an audible click, the steel blade gleaming softly in the lights of the chamber.

"Should I assume, Third Most High, that negotiations between the Terran Confederacy and this august body have broken down and you wish the diplomats of the Terran Confederacy to leave the planet?" Dreams asked, rubbing one bladearm along the side of her face.

The Lanaktallan gaped at her, mouth opening and closing silently.

"Oh, wait. You are not the Third Most High. You're a double, a stand-in, that was sent here to get blown up to create artificial justifications for attacking Terra," Dreams said, her voice still thick with amusement.

The 'Third Most High' just gaped while other races slowly turned around to face Dreams, looks of shock on their faces.

"Did you really think that my people, much less the Terrans, would not be prepared for combative diplomacy?" Dreams laughed. "You were willing to kill everyone in the chamber to try to pin the blame on my people."

Tri-D cameras, which had seen the entire thing happen, swooped in to get a better look, unaware of 117 examining every bit of their circuitry. Dreams knew the entire planet and beyond was watching.

"To quote my fellow diplomat Speaks the Words We Fear, you do not know with whom you are fucking with," Dreams said, her voice suddenly serious as the chain stopped swinging. "We are the Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems. We have known defeat but we have never been beaten.

"This is not the war you wanted, nor is it a war we have sought," Dreams said softly. "My people once thought the Terrans easy prey. We struck, as we always did, in the theory of 'eliminate the queen and the hive falls', by striking at their home planet. By glassing large portions of it.

Dreams paused for a moment, swinging the chain again. "And we paid dearly for it. As you shall pay dearly if you pursue this war you think you want."

She paused, suddenly going still. She was still a long time, and some council members began murmuring to one another when she shuddered several times.

"WOE UNTO YOU IN THE NAME OF WARMTH AND LOVE!" Dreams suddenly shrieked.

She made a sharp motion and 117 jumped on her back. She scurried toward the door, where the rest of her security detail was waiting. 117 jumped from her to one of the warborgs, double-checking the status of all of his war-gear. Satisified he jumped to the back of the second one, sliding his cybernetic bladearms into the slots built for such. The warborgs moved, one in front, one in back, their weapons tracking everyone in the room who so much as twitched.

"PERVERSE ONES" 117 flashed in over a hundred icons in a few seconds.

"What you have done is obscene and the Terran Confederacy shall bring such wrath that even in Hell your suffering will be legendary," Dreams shrieked out as she approached the door.

117 touched the door panel and shorted out the entire building's computer network, backed up the toilets, programmed all the holo-emitters to display a Terran male wreathed in fire, reset all the clocks, and bricked the food dispensers.

Dreams paused for a moment at the door, looking at the Lanaktallans inside. She pointed one bladearm at the dead Lanaktallan in security armor.

"These are just the first. Terra goes to war, not against the Precursors, but against the obscenity you have unleashed upon the Telkans and undoubtedly mean to unleash on twenty-nine other worlds," Dreams snarled. "For this, when we have proof, we shall land the Mechaneks of 29 Palms upon your homeworld in fire and fury. A curse upon thee for the vile obscenity you have revealed yourselves to be the masters of! I CURSE THEE, VILE ONES!"

The door closed behind Dreams and the Council chamber erupted in yelling accusations.

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Dreams sat in the comfortable seat, petting Mr. Rings, as she watched the planet recede.

"This is going to be bad, I just know it," Speaks said softly.

"That's why we're going to the homeworlds of each of the would-be assassins," Dreams said, her voice quiet as she kept gently petting Mr. Rings, who's coloration was bright blue around his eyes and on his tentacles.

"I don't understand that part," Speaks said, rubbing his bladearms together.

"They did something to those three. Some kind of suppression, and I have the feeling it isn't the only thing that was done to them," Dreams answered. She shuddered with the memory of how the gestalt had screamed and raved. "Are you OK?"

Speaks nodded slowly. "Yeah. You? You were raving at them. I think you even tried to lay a curse on them there at the end."

Dreams held up her bladearms in a sign of yes-no and sighed. "It took everything I had not to just start killing every Lanaktallan I saw. There is no proof they're the ones who did it, just circumstantial evidence, and I don't want to commit the Confederacy to a war on circumstantial proof. The rage is easing up."

"How is Sees?" Speaks asked.

"Resting. She's trained to handle such things. Fights was touch and go for a minute, her implosion wire almost went off when she started computing what she'd need for a bioweapon that would wipe out the Lanaktallans, but she got it under control," Dreams told the black Mantid. "117 was going to denote the space-ports fusion reactor but got his instincts under control."

"This is going to be really bad, I mean it," Speaks repeated.

Dreams looked over at him. "Are you a seer now? Your chitin is a bit dark for prophecy."

Speaks rubbed his bladearms together again. "Terra hasn't been challenged, hasn't been actually threatened, truly, in a couple thousand years yet they still worry that something's going to jump out and stab them in the neck. There's been a couple wars, hell, there's even been one or two major ones, but they don't realize how hilariously outclassed most of their opponents really are," Speaks said slowly. "These Lanaktallan? This 'Unified Civilized Species' group? They're going to do something stupid. We're talking as stupid as when we glassed Terra, I just know it."

Dreams didn't scoff, just waited patiently. "How do you know?"

"Because the Lanaktallans haven't been challenged in a hundred million years. Every species they have met they've dominated and dociled and domesticated before the other species even knew they were in danger. Success for that long, for that many million years? That breeds arrogance and the feeling they can never be beaten. Hell, when you get right down to it, we didn't beat them. A species, a civilization like that? They don't think anything can threaten them."

Dreams shivered. "You think they'll end up 1%?"

Speaks shook his head. "No. I think they'll end up xenocided."

"There's trillions of them. Nearly a hundred trillion," Dreams said.

"And the Confederacy has enough bullets for them all," Speaks answered. "Mark my words, the words I speak you fear to hear: The Lanaktallan will put the muzzle of the gun into their own mouth while strangling a human child and think that the Terrans don't have the will to pull the trigger."

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Are you OK now, sis? You were touch and go for a moment.

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

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Yeah. Remind me to thank Terrasol for stepping in. That was a serious feedback loop.

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

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE

What could even cause that? We cannot deduce what may have caused such an event.

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

MANTID FREE WORLDS

I have no idea. It was like if a human suddenly sprouted Overqueen antenna and locked into our psychic wavelength and started hammering us with Terran rage.

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

CLONE WORLDS DIRECTORATE

There hasn't been a psychic Terran, well, not one that could do much more than empathy, since the Great Glassing. They're all probably mixed in with the Sleeping Ones now, if there's any ones who survived. It's pretty much gone from the genome and nobody has really been interested in adding it back in.

There's almost a revulsion to it. It couldn't have been a psychic Terran.

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

MANTID FREE WORLDS

I know. That's what I can't figure out. Maybe a Gestalt glitch?

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

DIGITIAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

No way. I checked. That came from your people, hit you, looped back into them, and started increasing in strength.

That signal in the middle? That wasn't Mantid. That was Terran. I checked the records, I've got nothing like it. Well, not quite. There was signals like that back during the fall of the Imperium of Rage, when the Hellspace Rift opened. But nothing matching the signal and nothing that ever effected the Mantids.

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

MANTID FREE WORLDS

We don't really know what went on out at the Hellspace Rift. Most of the records were lost by the collapse of the Imperium of Rage. I know there was some serious fighting out that way, but then it ended up full of Idiots and we don't know what happened.

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

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Sis, what would happen if a Terran got onto the psychic wavelength of the Mantids? Aren't most Terran Descent Humans a snarling ball of rage and violence to your senses?

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

MANTID FREE WORLDS

We'd feel it, but it would be alien, we could block it out. This couldn't have been a Terran, it was an Overqueen of some type, but they're extinct.

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

TELKAN GESTALT

TWO HOUR WARNING! PROCEED TO SHELTERS! TWO HOUR WARNING! PROCEED TO SHELTERS! TWO HOUR WARNING! PROCEED TO SHELTERS!

Guys, I'm afraid.

shhh podlings shhh broodmommy hold broodmommy sing shhh podlings safe podlings warm

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

MANTID FREE WORLDS

We'll be right here, dear one. Reinforcements are on the way. Come here and I'll hug you.

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS----

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

You know... there was that Omniqueen signal last year. Maybe that has something to do with it.

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

MANTID FREE WORLDS

I hope not.

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

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