First Contact

Chapter Twenty (Leebaw)

Leebaw was nothing to anyone.

It was a small world in the ways of the galactic economy, political influence, manufacturing ability, or any other way that the Unified Galactic Systems cared about. Its people were a small people who had barely developed stardrive to get into jumpspace and travel to another planet. That planet had been important, a manufacturing hub for the leading tentacle of the Unified Civilizations.

The little world had gone from dreams of starfaring and exploration and joyous advancement to locked into their little world. Emigration quotas, GalNet bandwidth limits, even exploitation limits within their own system, all were put in place by the Unified Civilized Races Council.

After all, their world had been registered as the property of Ukewa's Packguru Manufacturing nearly three thousand years before the little people of Leebaw had even developed the ability to transmit or listen to radio waves.

The Unified Legal Council had informed the people of Leebaw that if they had intended to assert sovereignty over their own world, perhaps they should have filed a motion to appeal the claim register within a year of it first being filed.

The fact that the people of Leebaw had not even developed gear driven clocks by that point was not any fault of the Council. The people of Leebaw should have thought of that.

And so Leebaw's dreams of being part of, maybe even founding, some kind of interstellar society of equals died in a court of law before they even invented the metal nibbed pen.

They tried protesting the only way they knew how at that point: Violence.

Their attempts were pitiable. They barely lasted a full decade before they were defeated again.

The Unified Races Council ordered to that the people of Leebaw undergo "therapy" to remove "violent primitive instincts" through social conditioning.

The little land dwelling amphibians were marched lockstep into camps to taught how to properly venerate Ukewa's Packguru Manufacturing (A subsidiary of Nu'ukluk Entertainment Conglomerate) and follow the commands and regulations of their elders. The little space facility, the Leebawian pride and joy, was razed for 'ecological reasons' and a coal burning power plant put in its place, after all, the Unified Space Council had already had UPM build a much better space port than the crude native one. Bit by bit the people of Leebaw saw their cultural heritage sites wiped away in the name of 'modernization.'

With the destruction of history comes the destruction of cultural identity. After a generation or two they became a loyal worker pod for UPM, spending their meager pay on necessities and a few simple luxuries, as was proper.

Still, some of them harbored resentment in their hearts.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be, was it?

The amphibians, half the size of the four legged, four armed, six eyed, tendriled Overseers known as the Lanaktallan, dug into burrows, squirreled away makeshift weapons, made careful chains of communication. The Leebawians created small units of resistance, each reporting to a leader, who only knew the name of one leader.

They had recreated the resistance cell structure again.

Forced to live outside the shining cities, they suffered often from vertigo after all, they slowly gathered. The Lanaktallan were the ones enamored with the cities, not the Leebawians. The thought was to bring down those high shining towers, bring the Lanaktallan down to the level of the amphibians.

And so the Leebawians prepared and waited.

But that was not why it was dying.

It had become infected.

It started simply. Twinkling points of light appearing out in space. The planetary managers said that the lights were mere tests, nothing for the Leebawians to concern themselves with. Then scanners went down.

A space station began screaming.

Leebaw's GalNet became a place of horror as the infection spread across the solar system.

The Lanaktallan counseled caution and not to be swayed by anti-Unified propaganda even as they boarded their ships to flee the system.

Then sparks appeared in the sky as orbital leisure stations were destroyed, ships were raked with fire and exploded, and everything but the GalNet node was wiped from the night sky.

For three days Leebaw had cringed away from quiet darkness.

Then the voice was broadcast across the world, a brain twisting screech of absolute horror.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE

Mechanical horrors landed at the spaceport. Not with crashes, but landing with care before wading into the starships still in port. The newcomers tore apart the ships and their crews then spread out, moving toward manufacturing facilities. Private spaceships were destroyed in high orbit, their wreckage first scattered then gathered and processed. Cargo vessels were torn apart and processed.

Still sparks blossomed in the night sky. Little pinpricks that lit up and went out. Once in a while there were long streaks in the night that ended in tiny flashing pinpricks.

The Leebaw first viewed the mechanicals as liberators and rushed out to great them.

Only to be murdered en-masse.

The Leebawians all nodded to one another. Of course, it was just another monster from outside. The Cult of the Solitary Burrow were correct. Those who reached out a hand in friendship only had it torn off or had a manacle wrapped around the wrist.

The Leebawians scattered as best they could.

The mechanicals concentrated on the Lanaktallan, herding them into their cities, broadcasting the savage murders suffered by the Lanaktallan. The Leebawians thought that perhaps if they just pretended none of it was going on, the mechanicals would leave them alone.

That pipe-dream ended with shrieks of agony.

The Leebawians learned in the next few turns on their world to avoid any technology higher than fire and sharp sticks. A machine that found any "Primitive Ones" might chase them and kill a few but largely ignored them after scanning quickly for any technology. A quick thinking Leebawian noted that every one of their people fitted with a cybernetic link was gone, dead, their bodies torn apart. Any group larger than an ancient clutch was destroyed.

The Leebawians mourned for lost dreams. Even being drones for UPM was preferable to being torn from comfortable housing and forced to live in the mud, hunting with sticks for nearly extinct mussels and wildlife, drinking dirty water, and watching the cities slowly burn.

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The Leebawians wept.

They just wanted to be not alone. They just wanted to see what was beyond. Just wanted to meet other beings.

But not like this.

Not like this.

Pinpricks appeared the sky again, only these ones did not go out. They got steadily brighter as the Council Cities burned. Sparks came to life and died back down around those burning stars.

The Leebawians looked up, wondering what was happening now, even though a small part of them knew that it wouldn't matter. Whoever it was, their little people would be nothing more than amusement for hunters at worst, slaves and drudges at best.

Hope flickered, then went out.

Leebaw was dying. Not from the slamming impacts of orbital guns, not from the mechanical murderers sweeping across the planet, not because the cities, bright and sparkling, were burning and being turned to horror filled charnel houses.

It was dying as hope died.

Then came the message. From the stars, as fire blossoms, new suns ignited in the night sky close enough that more than once night turned to day for long heartbeats. It vibrated off of every scrap of metal, bellowed from every speaker, howled from every hidden datapad.

WE ARE THE TERRAN CONFEDERACY

WE HAVE COME TO ASSIST

HOLD THE LINE, BROTHERS!

The Leebawians huddled in their burrows, closing their large expressive eyes, and just wished the universe would go away. The message couldn't be meant for them. They were small, insignificant, and the universe viewed them as little more than slaves to their betters to be slain for amusement at will.

But some, who harbored resentment toward UPM, who nursed flickering anger in their souls for the Lanaktallan, began to dig free caches wrapped in EM shielding and buried in iron rich mud. Began dreaming that perhaps, this time, things might be different.

As the little Leebawians watched, streaks slipped down from the orbitals, into atmosphere, and began to speed toward the thickest concentrations of machines. Nuclear fire blossomed, pushed away the smoke of burning bodies, and left behind damaged and destroyed machines. Not the larger ones, of course, those rose from where they had crouched, shaking off smaller ones, and screeched their defiance at the newcomers.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE

The newcomers bellowed back

FREEDOM OR DEATH

The Leebawians huddled down, caught between the two roaring forces. The braver of them lifted their googly eyes to look upon the land, raise their gaze to the sky again.

Massive ships roared down from the sky and the Leebawians felt their thick rubbery skin prickle up in fear. The last two times that had happened the universe had shown them that they were the butt of a cosmic joke. As the Leebawians watched the machines, the new masters of Leebaw, swarmed the massive ships, which responded with counter-fire.

Some ships exploded in mid-air.

More didn't.

Even more rained down from the high orbitals.

The ships didn't bother to slow down to a gentle speed and then slowly levitate down to the earth. These ones came in fast, rockets screaming as they suddenly braked. Radiation poured from the nozzles, scorching the ground, burning away vegetation and turning dirt to plasma hardened rock. The ships slammed down, the sides opened even as gunports continued firing. Parts of the massive ships detached, moving on treads, deploying guns that raked the sky with shrieking munitions. The parts of the ship took up positions around their brood-mother, linking together their fire, adding their own roaring voice to the defiance lashing out at the machines that still swarmed.

From inside the ship came more vehicles, massive bipeds that were made entirely of metal. More weapons were raised, and the machine's assault began to tatter, began to break. The wave of metal was pushed back further and further by the guns. The very sky seemed to catch fire as the newcomers threw their fury into the faces of the machines, unleashing endless wrath into machines without numbers.

Shell by shell, beam after beam, the newcomers drove the machines back. But that wasn't enough for the newcomers, they spread out, like spokes from the hub of the landing craft. Each spoke building another hub, calling down more ships from the sky, repeating it over and over.

Smashing the machines.

The Leebawians dug deep into their burrows, fearful of what horrors the newcomers would inflict on the small Leebawian people. The only step they could see from driving them to scattered primitivism was to wipe their small people from existence.

Then, it happened. As dozens of Leebawian's watched from the safety of the water of the swamp the newcomers, the huge bipeds of metal and fury, approached the machines that kept the younglings in cages for experimentation or just plain sport. Over the last few turnings of the world the machines had moved the younglings from cages to inside the buildings.

The watching Leebawians knew that their younglings would be slaughtered, caught between the murderous machines and the furious newcomers.

They waited for the pounding of artillery and aircraft that always preceded a biped ground assault, flicked their tongues nervously while they waited for the massive tanks to pour cannon fire into the base as they did to break it up for the bipeds.

None of that happened. Instead, the bipedal machines, accompanied at times by four legged ones, slowly moved forward, from cover to cover, firing only at the guns that revealed themselves in the machine's base. They seemed almost non-committal, firing and advancing, firing and retreating, shifting their lines.

To the hidden Leebawians, it made no sense.

The Leebawian's felt a stirring in the current and froze. The currents did not feel like one of the big machines patrolling the rivers and streams of the delta, but like more Leebawian's moving through the water, towing large fish as if they had made a prized catch.

Clicks sounded in the water and the Leebawian's blinked in nervousness. The clicks sounded like Leebawian clicks but made no sense. It was just random sounds.

Curious, one of the Leebawian swam deeper, into the silt filled cloudy water deeper in the river. He held tight to his spear, but had a stolen handgun under his tongue, ready to swallow it if he had to. His echolocation told him that there were dozens of his kind swimming through the cloudy opaque water, pulling huge fish behind them. The fish blood made it impossible to tell which tribe the newcomers were from, clogging the taste-buds, so the Leebawian swam deeper, lighting up the ends of his whiskers in hopes of seeing who was moving through but had not announced themselves.

At the bottom of the river he saw them. His eyes seeing what his senses said were only his kind and some fish.

The four legged robots had their legs folded and were using water-jets to move. They were pulling two or three of the big bipeds on fishing line. There were the smaller ones, the size of a child Leebawian, were darting around like fish. One moved in front of him, stared with a blank faceplant for a long moment, then wiggled away.

From the four legged ones poured the smell of freshly caught fish blood.

He paddled in place, watching in confusion as the chrome figures moved through the darkness of the silty water. The clicks and pops were between them, not meant for Leebawians but one another.

The curious swimmer, a part of a cell that had planned on assaulting the space port before the machines had arrived, realized he was hearing battle-code, not much difference from the coded cant his own cell used.

As he watched one of the bipeds turned its blank for toward him. One its forward hands opened and closed, then the biped turned its head back toward the four legged one towing him.

Curious, the Leebawian, one Ukk-uk-huk, followed. Adding his own movements to the pack moving through his territory. There was only twelve of them, moving correctly in a spindle, and they made room for Ukk to swim with them.

Ukk realized that they were swimming to the pool in the machine's base. That cruel body of water so close to freedom but so far that young Leebawians were allowed to swim in but were kept from escaping into the waters of the delta by a flickering shield.

He saw, as he followed, that the shield was still up but did nothing. He swam through, expecting oblivion, but instead just felt a tingle.

They had left it up? Why?

Ukk expected the bipeds to spring from the water and start shooting everything in sight. Instead, the small little ones slid out of the water and wormed their way across the floor on their bellies like they were made of liquid. Ukk started to reach for the edge of the lip but one of the bipeds grabbed his wrist. When he looked the rune for "wait" flashed across the faceplate of the biped in the darkest color that Ukk could see.

The bipeds slipped out of the water, climbing out with water running off them, to Ukk they looked like primordial nightmares. All black, bulky, dripping water, covered in delta reeds and muck.

Ukk stayed in the pool, watching.

The four legged ones started returning, moving carefully, sliding into the water without a ripple. The smaller ones came out, leading two or three podlings each, the podlings giggling to themselves at this new game.

Ukk stared as they kept going by.

It has to be a terrible trick...

It couldn't last, the unearthly silence where even simple water droplets were like thunder.

THERE IS ONLY...

The familiar scream started. Ukk closed his ears but still felt the bellowed replies.

GET FUCKED SKYNET!

shattered the screeching onslaught, roared from a dozen throats.

The night caught fire. Stealth abandoned for speed, the four legged ones and the smallest ones urged the podlings into the pond even as Ukk heard the weapon fire start.

One of the smaller ones came in, moving fast, making a curious noise that sounded like "mew mew mew mew" as the podlings imitated it and chased it. A machine burst in, smoking, tattered, its armor blown away or twisted and cratered, and leveled what Ukk had long ago learned was a plasma gun at the running podlings.

Flares shot out of the little metal one's back and the podlings laughed with glee as metallic dust puffed from the little robot to fill the room.

Ukk spit the pistol out into his hand and pulled the trigger wildly. He had never fired the plasma pistol before and didn't expect it to kick back against his hand. It hit the machine twice, rocking it back, the return plasma shot missing the little ones and hitting the wall.

Croaking in anxiety and despair, Ukk reoriented the pistol on the machine, which was turning toward him.

--help kittykitty simba help--

Water exploded behind him as one of the four legged ones burst from the surface of the pond, flying through the air, a massive cannon with shells as thick as Ukk's forearm attached by a belt connecting the cannon to the four legged robot. Lasers flashed out, slicing away the plasma run from the machine, cutting furrows in the machine's armor, cutting free two legs.

Then the four legged robot crashed to the floor as the podlings croaked and clicked in fear.

It made a roaring noise, a primal sound that made Ukk shudder, paused, and the cannon on its back opened up.

BRRRRRRRT!

To Ukk it sounded like the world ending. The shells chewed the machine apart, but the four legged robot didn't stop there, it raked the walls, peeling apart the metal walls, the shells not stopping and slamming into targets beyond.

One of the podlings jumped in fear and Ukk felt his stomach clench as he knew the beam of light traversing the room would catch the podling.

Instead there was a minute gap, too small to be purposeful but too perfectly positioned to be accidental, and the podling landed safely.

The little one clicked and croaked and Ukk understood it.

--follow mew mew follow kittykitty little littles--

Another machine entered and Ukk fired the plasma pistol again, all three shots missing. More entered, swarming in through doorways, crashing through the metal, dropping from the vents. Ukk fired again but the pistol's plasma cartridge magazine ran dry on the fourth trigger pull.

The four legged one scrambled to Ukk, stopping over him, crouching down over the small Leebawian, and that cannon kept firing, flashing lasers and screaming plasma getting added to the mix. Machines shattered, spun, and collapsed. Ukk saw smaller laser beams flicker out, intercepting pieces of metal shed from exploding machines, zapping them from existence before the tiny metal pieces could hit the podlings.

It seemed to go on forever to Ukk. The scream of weaponry, the sound of metal ripped asunder, and the clicking --follow mew mew little littles--. Females began streaming by, some heavy with eggs, others with the deflated look of ones that had recently laid their eggs. Males streamed by, many injured or with cruel implements thrust into their bodies.

They all jumped into the pool as Ukk huddled beneath the big four legged

Finally it was over. Silence descended for a moment, broken only by the patter of podlings and rescued brood mothers streaming by.

Still Ukk huddled under the four legged one.

One of the big bipeds came into the room. One arm was blown off, its black surface was marred, and it leaked fluid down its flank from a hole that Ukk could see circuitry and mechanical parts through. It saw Ukk when the four legged robot moved aside.

Ukk froze, sure his time had come.

More returned and one moved over to Ukk, who huddled down.

The visor went clear and Ukk realized he was looking at a hairless primate, like one of the lemurs of the southern jungles stripped of hair and made large.

"Is this your planet?" It asked in Unified Galactic Common.

Ukk croaked his assent.

The figure pointed at a robot that still twitched and one of the bipeds kicked it over. Ukk noticed that the weapons on the four legged one tracked it. The biped stopped it with one big foot, pressing it to the floor as if the machine's mechanical strength didn't matter.

"It's jawnconnor time, Froggy," The primate said. He squatted behind Ukk, reaching around him carefully, and replaced the plasma pistol with another pistol. Ukk shivered, terrified, as the primate embraced him, holding onto his hand, forcing his finger on the trigger.

He was about to be devoured, he was sure of it.

"You're this close to going out, Froggy," The biped said softly from behind him, moving Ukk's hand to aim the pistol at the armored flank of the machine. He forced Ukk to press the firing stud and the weapon cracked, spitting a slug that cratered the armor but didn't penetrate.

Ukk klicked in resignation. Of course it wouldn't penetrate.

"You'll learn to fight back," The primate said. He forced Ukk to fire again, although Ukk didn't understand why as the slug only hit the crater, widening and deepening it.

"To charge the wire," The primate forced him to pull the trigger a third time, expanding the crater. Ukk still felt despair. The pistol stung his hand even with the primate's help, what hope did...

"And smash...

the next shot exposed the innards and Ukk felt a sudden surge of shock.

"These metal...

the next shot slammed through the crater and turned wiring and mechanical parts into slag. The machine shrieked in pain. Ukk felt a sudden flare of anger

"mother...

the next shot slammed deeper and two of the machine's legs blew off. Ukk felt the anger build. Why weren't his people armed like this?

"fuckers...

The next caused a thin plume of plasma to vent out the ruptured side. Ukk clicked rapidly in anger.

"Into..."

The next caused the head of the machine to blow off in a shower of sparks and the entire side to split open. Ukk gave a loud croak in anger and tried to hop forward.

The primate let go.

"Junk," it said as Ukk rushed forward, emptying the magazine of the pistol into the machine as he croaked and clicked in rage.

--------------------------

CONFEDNAVINT REPORT

Lintennal 515, called Leebaw by native species, being cleared. Casualties below estimation. Orbitals under CONFED control. System 90% pacified.

Native species capable of self defense. Are arming and equipping to act as resistance force to assist. Native species was space faring before Unified Civilization interference.

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

UNIFIED MANUFACTURING COUNCIL INTERNAL MEMO

The Terrans spent significant military resources to free a labor world under the control of Ukewa's Packguru Manufacturing by ground force means but glassed the entire planet of Kalukaluku, a major industrial manufacturing center only a few light years away just because they couldn't detect any life forms left on the planet. Kalukaluku's industrial and manufacturing capability could have provided assistance to the war effort if it had been liberated rather than underwent orbital bombardment.

Had the vaunted "Terran Confederate Navy" properly allocated their forces instead of rushing to engage in ground combat on a remote planet of no strategic or tactical value, the industrial center might have been saved by the same forces.

Nu'ukluk Entertainment Conglomerate has filed a most strenous objection to one of its valuable industrial centers being so casually wiped away just because these "Terrans" can't properly allocate military resources.

Please discover who to contact within the Confederacy government in order to allow Nu'ukluk Entertainment Conglomerate to bring forth a lawsuit for this grievous misapplication of military resources.