Naero's War: The Citation Series 3: Naero's Trial (26 page)

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All among the Allies appeared ready for their contest to begin.

But Naero still felt uncertain somehow. She wished they had something more, an edge that would give them some kind of advantage, even if it was only in tek.

She meditated and returned to the KDM in her Kexxian form as Orean.

Yet there was danger even in that. As she became more and more Kexxian in that form, it became harder and harder for her to return, to go back to being Naero.

In a sense, her old self as Naero became a guide out of the KDM, just Orean at first had been a guide into it. Now Orean needed Naero to lead her back to become a Spacer once more.

Yet as she became a Kexx–and not just any kind of Kexx–but a Dreamer, or a Kexxian Mystic, her awareness expanded. Everything about the Kexx grew increasingly more familiar and useful: their bodies, their minds, their neural net, their thought patterns, the way they interacted with Cosmic energy. She grew accustomed to their music, their songs, their philosophies and wisdoms, and their tek.

The Kexx could teknomance and biomance beyond anything that she could even yet fathom or comprehend.

The Dreamers could move planets, even entire stars. They could create things–vast things–with only matter and energy. They dreamed or wished them into existence. Just as she could create a handful of near perfect replicants of herself–the Kexx could create entire armies, entire fleets of miraculous machines and weapons to fight for them.

They wiped out all known disease, sickness, and illness.

They could not create immortality. The gift of death was still beyond them, yet the gift of limited life in all of its forms was nearly under their complete control. As long as an injured being possessed a single wink of the Lifespark, it could be brought back from the brink of death and saved from moving on to the next journey before their time.

Naero teknomanced, and biomanced, and studied, and sang every Kexxian song that she knew to keep herself and her mind centered in the Harmony. She came close to losing herself several times, and in the end, Naero had to wrestle with Orean to bring her back to being Naero.

And this time, when Naero Amashin Maeris opened her eyes, she smiled and burst into tears.

She had their edge.

Let the foe bring their darkest and mightiest monsters. Let them bring their numberless slaves.

Three standard days later the great war for the planet Naggoth exploded full force.

It would not let up from that moment forth, until one side or the other lay utterly vanquished and dead.

They struck the continent of Shurog first, and unleashed a lightning assault against the capital Nazol.

Naero and her assault team already appeared deep within the fortress, while Regiment Shetanna broke into three separate battalions and took the core of the gigacity.

Outside, the enemy armies swarmed up out of countless bunkers and holes. As they assembled to attack, the foremost elements of the Shetanna Battalions rained Cosmic blasts upon them.

Then the enemy possessed began to transform into their lethal energized forms–forms that were much harder to destroy.

The Alliance had developed several elements to counter all of that, based on Kexxian tek and weapon designs

With the new advanced phazeshields, Naero’s troops could pass through buildings and barriers, fighting all the while. They absorbed energy attacks or simply let them pass through them.

And with the newly modified phaze-pulse rifles, Naero’s troops could target and place a hyper fusion phaze-delay round in each tracked target well in advance. Then they could unleash the rounds at random, or time them all to detonate in pattern, sequence, or on command.

Her troops quickly targeted the foremost enemy waves and set them to go off once the enemy approach got too close to the capital. She overhead the chatter of her troops over the secured links. Naero monitored the combat net with teknomancy even as she and her teams descended to take on Bazretul, the resident Dakkur Queen.

“Captain Romanov. Advancing enemy gravtank formations mixed with Dakkur kill teams and drone hordes. We’re not getting a target feed confirmation on that wedge, from between the three o’clock and five o’clock positions to our rear. What’s happening?”

“Romanov here, Major. We’re targeting them as quick as able. We have them seven kilometers out with the phaze shells. That’s tens of thousands of confirmed targets covering those areas. But the transfer link is down somehow. The confirmation of the targeting locks are not showing up on the combat net. But we’re ready to go, sir. Over.”

“Blow them manually if you and your people have to, Captain. Just make sure they burn. And I want multiple phaze cannon rounds in each of those advance gravtank waves. Light them up. They must go down, if nothing else. Copy that?”

“Affirmative, sir. The lead tank waves already have seven or eight rounds in each tank. Don’t you think that’ll be sufficient?”

Major Donovan laughed slightly. “Don’t get cocky, Romanov. That should probably do it. Continue targeting out to the fortieth kilometer arc for your profiles. And get ready for the fireworks. Good hunting, Isaiah. Let’s take this goddam rock. Ooh-rah!”

“Copy that. You and the rest, sir. Ooh-rah!”

She smiled. Marines. Naero listened to and tracked the battle above them as it unfolded.

She and her team continued to fight their way down to the queen’s chamber. She continued to startap and conserve energy for the fight ahead, using mostly her swords and lesser Cosmic attacks and tricks to help clear the way.

They had to reach the queen quickly and take her down fast.

The earth and rock all around the capital for many kilometers rocked, buckled, and shook.

Millions of phaze rounds activated and exploded up above in well-timed rings of destruction. Each foe or vehicle so-targeted vanished in a flash of pure ignited protonic reversal. Each enemy became a small fusion blast, incinerating them into atomic dust in less than an instant.

Within seconds, multiple enemy armies became scattered dust and chaff upon the rushing winds.

Still more enemy armies rose up to rush in.

But then it seemed as if the entire continent shook and shuddered.

From underground bunkers and sealed caves, digging through and exploding out of the ground, Shai mantid warriors erupted out of the ground from what seemed like everywhere by the untold millions.

Each of them had swelled in size to between three and four meters high, and their bodies shifted from red-violet to black. The ground trembled before their onset until some of the enemy could not even keep their footing.

The coming of the Shai to reclaim their lost homeworld of Allondatharru was in fact an earthquake. The enraged mantids tore through everything that stood in their way: gravtanks, shields, barriers, trenches–even mines. They hardly even slowed down if any of their own fell.

While in the depths of her own lair, Queen Bazretul of the Dakkur Empire came forth in fury to do battle for her realm.

“Look out!” Naero warned her people. Too late.

The enormous queen suddenly lunged at Naero herself with incredible speed and might, clearly hoping to slay the Alliance leader quickly and demoralize the rest.

Naero only saved herself by transporting away at the last instant.

But the Dakkur Queen lashed through many of Naero’s command, crushing them or slicing them in half with the energized blades set in her spines and powerful tail. She twisted and flexed, killing everyone that she could.

Ra avoided her attacks by shrinking down to his smallest size, slipping under her thrashing bulk and rising up again behind her. He leaped upon the length of her body. It coiled and snapped and flexed, trying to pulverize him against the hard rock and metal reinforced shielding and supports of the palace.

The prince of the Shai stayed one step ahead of the huge queen, but as he passed over her, he ripped off her spines and stripped away much of her weaponry and blades, causing her great pain.

As Bazretul writhed and screamed, she unleashed a sonic shriek attack, so loud and so powerful that all who heard were dazed or even stunned.

Even in her partial Dark Beast form, Naero took a step back, and Cosmic ichor and vapor poured from her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.

She attacked the enormous creature head on, slashing at its thick, hyperdense skull with her blades.

Bazretul was still shielded somehow, more than even a dreadnaught. What now? Even Naero’s Cosmic energy blades could not slice through the queen’s defenses.

The smaller Chaos swords of the Shetannas had little effect, and the queen continued to thrash about and lash out, crushing and killing more, even the replicants.

None of Naero’s assault teams had weapons that could hurt the queen in this state.

Naero quickly ordered them all to pull back and defend the area nearby against any lesser foes attempting to come to the queen’s aid.

Ra showed Naero the way–raw, direct physical attacks. They pitted strength against strength, power against power.

Dakkur Queens were hyperdense and difficult to kill, especially a large one such as this, with so many Cosmic energy protections. Yet they were still living beings. And if they were alive, that life could be ended.

At first Naero attacked the head, ripping and tearing at its block-like density. No good. The head was the most armored part on a Dakkur, especially a royal.

She switched to attacking the neck at the front, while Ra focused on trying to pin down and sever the deadly tale blade.

But the tough Shai took a pounding as the queen thrashed and lashed her tail every way that she could. Bazretul battered, pummeled, and whipped Ra against the chamber walls, ceiling, and floor.

Chunks of her tail blade also broke off, whether from Ra’s direct attacks or her own exertions. The blade gouged deep slices and gouges out of everything in its path.

Naero felt glad that she had withdrawn the rest of her troops. They couldn’t have done much but die against a foe this massive and powerful. That tail blade alone would have cut them all down.

The Dakkur queen’s neck was still too thick to think of severing it with the weapons she had. No way to cut off the head or neck quickly and nothing to do so with.

While Naero ripped at the thick neck, the queen’s powerful foreclaws ripped at Naero. Even in her partial Dark Beast form those claws did significant damage to Naero, draining her form of Cosmic energy as if it were gushing blood.

Naero struggled to get into a position where she could startap and seal her wounds.

The queen tried to crush Naero against the floor.

Before she could no longer move, Naero desperately ripped a large gash through the shields and across Bazretul’s neck and chest, filling it with unstable Cosmic energy. Naero transported away from beneath the monster, at the same time that she detonated all of that energy.

The resulting explosion tore out a hideous wound in the queen’s lower neck and breast. She howled, but thrashed and twisted, faster than even Naero could guess.

Naero felt both of the queen’s ferocious claws close about and begin to crush her, squeezing her tighter and tighter. Naero fought with all her strength to break loose, tearing at the claws and unleashing several Cosmic attacks.

Bazretul dashed Naero against the wall, trying to smash her open, or at least daze her. “I have you now, you annoying spack wretch. You dare to attack me in the depths of my strength? Well, it shall be a rapturous feast to snip off and consume your head!”

Those immense jaws descended.

Naero opened her third eye, but there wasn’t enough time.

Then the Dakkur queen pulled away on her own and shrieked, snapping her head behind her.

Ra had just broken off half of the queen’s battered tail blade and even ripped out part of the dense spine bones that had connected it.

That must have hurt plenty, because the queen even dropped Naero, letting her slump to the ground, and went completely after Ra. Then Bazretul began to glow, pulsing with Cosmic energy.

She attacked Ra in a rage, driving him back against and even into the solid rock of the wall.

Ra covered up and shielded himself, one of his special defenses, making himself incredibly dense and invulnerable.

Queen Bazretul put that to the test. She lashed her head back and then forward, spraying a thick torrent of Cosmic energy and lightning out of her vast maw in an array of colors.

Ra shielded himself as best he could with his own energies.

Bazretul chortled. “Ah…my kind has not had the pleasure of destroying a prince of the Shai and feasting on him for many an age. Do you like what we’ve done with the old homeworld of your defeated kind? Join all those others in defeat and death!”

The queen pulled her head back to unleash another torrent strike.

It seemed uncertain whether Ra could withstand another such attack.

Bazretul glowed brighter and brighter.