Naero's War: The Citation Series 3: Naero's Trial (5 page)

She whirled with all her speed and ducked just as Khai attempted to call back his sword stroke.

Even with both of their efforts, he barely missed clipping the top of her head.

The next instant she flung herself into his arms and quickly kissed him. “Sorry about our girl. You hold off that jury and fight them.” Naero snarled. “I need a few words with that fake Master Tree!”

By the next instant, the possessed enemy replicants were already transforming and going on the attack. Naero went one way. Khai went the other and charged the fifteen monsters who had posed as the jury of Elders, with Yii blazing in both hands.

Naero opened her third eye and transformed into the energy-being protoform of her own Dark Beast.

She smashed into the fake Master Tree who by then had swatted Master Jo aside and gone after the Prime adepts.

Naero fought the monster on its own terms, driving it through large splintering trees and ramming its glowing, expanding body through the stony ruins of an abandoned, ancient city. The ruins stood adjacent to the dome city and starport that had sprung up next to the ruins, within the past two centuries of exploration out that way.

The orange-and-yellow glowing flesh of the possessed was self-healing, regenerating, and strong like that of a gigantic energy amoeba. Yet it radiated a greenish-black aura, and pulsed from within along networks of black and scarlet glowing veins filled with the Darkforce.

Those veins were like pulsating lightning within the abominations, stretching out from wherever the wyrm’s seed happened to be placed at random in the host.

The fake Master Tree had its possession wyrm located in its lower belly, nearly down at the groin.

Its flesh burned with the power of the Darkforce, as if it were both acid and plasma fire. These things could melt through solid walls and the hulls of ships if they focused that energy.

Naero was protected within her own energy form which had survived the impossibly hot conditions inside a star itself. If such creatures as these latched onto her for a time they could cause pain, but little harm.

And she was so fast that most of its attacks missed her.

She continued to pummel the damn thing, kicking it multiple times in the space of one instant as she fought it in a blur. At one point she nearly ripped its head free, but the body quickly drew it back in and absorbed it.

Naero added her own Chaotic blend of Cosmic energy to her blows, tearing into the thing. Her hand-and-foot combinations sliced and burst open terrible gaping wounds that would have slain almost any beast purely made of flesh and bone.

They toppled down the side of a steep canyon near the ancient city, more than three klicks down to the bottom of the immense gorge. The deep canyon stretched out for many kilometers from there to the north.

Naero sent out Cosmic multiple limbs and tendrils from her own energy form. She pressed and drove her foe against the rough rock and the sharp, black, glass-like crystal ridges and natural blades extending all the way down the canyon wall’s surface. She wore the thing down, wearing it slowly away as they fell, and she continued to hammer it with impossible blows that shattered the thing and exploded gaping holes into the surface behind it.

Next Naero engulfed it and herself in roaring Cosmic fire.

She could endure such flame.

She could walk through a star itself.

These things could not. It shrieked in terror and agony, boiling and scorching away slowly.

Naero looked it in its black, cavernous eyes of Darkforce energy and watched as it slowly perished, seeing the fell G’lothc spirit glaring straight back at her with hate.

Naero matched that hate with her own rage and fury.

“I know what you are now. From this moment on, there will be no deceiving me again. You tried to destroy me, my life, and all that I love. You tried to rob me of all of that. Filthy scum; you used my own honor and my child against me. You used my people and our ways against me. I was nearly killed at the hands of my own beloved and you nearly got away with it!”

Naero snarled and struck the thing point blank with concussive beams of violet force that punched into the monster’s eyes and bored and raked several meters deep through the canyon wall.

Sparks and flames shot up as she lasered the abomination in twain, and then focused those same destroying beams on the wyrm itself.

A massive Darkforce explosion detonated and the fell creature imploded like a collapsing singularity. Terrible energies unleashed within the thing caused it to utterly destroy itself.

Naero was flung clear of the final disintegration by that blast.

She unfolded her psyonic wings and rocketed up out of the canyon only to see the area around the Mystic compound, the starport, and the dome city engulfed in conflict and destruction.

Everywhere she looked there seemed to be Chaos, ruin, and death. Fires and explosions raged almost everywhere.

She transported back to the trial and execution area.

Khai and the others had not only held their own against the fake jury members, but driven them back toward the starport nearby and by the looks of things in the distance, only a few of the abominations yet lived, if they could truly be called lifeforms any longer.

With Khai and the first Cosmic Sword of Legend Yii leading them, the Prime adepts had slaughtered half of the possessed, and driven the others off, killing more along the way.

Naero contacted Admiral Klyne over their secured link. “Klyne, this is Naero. What is our current sitrep?”

“Naero! Excellent.”

“The fake Master Tree is gone. I took him down and destroyed him. It looks as if Khai and the other adepts have the fake jury on the run and should finish them off very soon.”

“I’m back in orbit on my flagship, with the fleets over Kalathar,” Klyne informed her. “I evacuated the Mystic compound and the starport as much as we could, right before things all went to hell.”

Naero paused. “Just how bad is it?”

“Very. Hundreds of thousands of possessed have erupted and taken over almost everything across the entire planet. They’re infecting or destroying anyone who wasn’t taken over like them. Our enemies knew what they were doing. Millions of these monsters are virtually unstoppable. Imagine this plague spreading from world to world!”

“None of us want that, sir.”

“I’m sending down an entire armored Spacer Marine Division to these drop zone coordinates. Link back up with Khai and get your people out of there. That’s an order, Naero.”

“I’m on it, sir. Naero out.”

Things all around them did sound as if they were degenerating into something akin to one or all of the Nine Hells.

Yet even before finding Khai again, she had to find Naero-3.

Stray possessed were already ambling about, wandering into the compound itself. Some of them acted mindless, roving around, destroying stuff at random. Others seemed to be still conscious in some way and still possessed cunning enough to systematically search the evacuated buildings and abandoned nanohuts, looking for any survivors to either turn or murder.

Even Naero knew that she could not fight endless numbers of such creatures. She cloaked herself and used teknomancy to summon some stealth fixers to her on their coded frequencies. Soon she had a small cloud of them around her.

With their help, she found enough equipment left behind to teknomance a full stealth suit of combat armor for her, complete with gravwing, weapons, and ordnance. The fixers whipped up other gravwings and gravlifts as they went along according to her directions.

At last, Naero came to Master Jo’s private stealth ship at the starport, damaged from without in order to ground it. Master Jo had promised her that he would keep Naero-3 in his own private quarters, sealed like a vault against intrusion.

Anyone still human had evacuated the area, and now the complex and the remaining starships there were overrun with the possessed.

Then Naero spotted something frightening.

The possessed were directing their own into any of the ships that were still functioning.

She contacted Klyne, giving him the update. Naero strongly advised that all ships leaving Kalathar be intercepted or destroyed. Otherwise, the possession plague was going to spread, quickly expand to other nearby worlds and systems, and very soon go out of control.

Hundred of the creatures swarmed on Master Jo’s stricken vessel, still trying to force their way inside.

Naero startapped again, replenished her Cosmic energies, and transported herself into the heart of the starship.

Her heart fell. Something had already gotten into the ship somehow, perhaps from the other side or underneath. There were melted holes and shattered bulkheads leading in the same direction that she was going.

The stealth fixer sent her an alert. There were traces of near-astral signature particles in the air.

Something or someone had phazed their way on board the ship.

She rushed to the shielded vault in Master Jo’s private quarters.

Some immense power had torn the vault completely open and peeled its shielded blastwalls back. Darkforce and something else.

Naero snarled as she sensed them. Anywhere from several to perhaps a dozen of the G’lothc Darkforce generation suits.

Who or what was the enemy using to power them now?

Naero ducked in quickly and investigated, but it was now very clear.

The enemy had Naero-3, the KDM, Om–and most important of all–her unborn child, all at the enemy’s mercy.

6

A distress call reached her from one of the Prime adepts.

It was Fel Wilde. “Naero, do you read us? We’re with Khai and we’re fighting on top of what’s left of the gigacity dome. Come in, Naero.”

“I copy, Fel. This is Naero. Hang tight and keep fighting. I’m on my way.”

Naero transported out of Master Jo’s ruined starship.

She still dealt with the shock of losing Naero-3 and all that was within her replicant. Even worse, Naero-3 had still been held in stasis, and had no way to fight back or escape. The plan had been for Master Jo to revive her once he brought Khai to her after the execution.

At least Naero was glad to be past all of that mess, at least for the time being.

The enemy had tried to overwhelm Khai and the others with sheer numbers of possessed near the starport, driving them toward the city dome.

The Mystics held them off, retreating in the only direction left to them–up the side of the immense city dome.

But as Naero swept in cloaked, she quickly saw that there were thousands of possessed moving to encircle Khai and the Mystics.

In some cases, the more mindless monsters overloaded the dome structure and broke through it, falling far below, and rendering huge parts of the dome unsafe and near the point of collapse.

Still the enemy crawled over the city dome surface like mad, heedless insects.

Naero swooped in and distributed the gravwings just in time for Khai and the Mystics to zip away.

As she predicted, they turned back for a moment and saw a huge section of the dome topple down within, dragging thousands of possessed with it.

Naero took Khai’s hand and led them to the drop zone with the 6
th
Division Spacer Marines. 6
th
Division Marines were known as The Razor Princes. Their motto:
We Rule the Battlefield!
Their division unit symbol was a purple number 6 with a golden crown cocked on it.

The armored dropship was set up in ground attack mode, bristling with viper guns, close assault auto-guns, and hyperfire energy cannons. They had companies in the air on gravwings, but no troops deployed on the ground. Ground swarming with the possessed.

Even as Naero led her people toward the drop zone, a tide of possessed flooded out of the dome city. With it being dark, they glowed like a sea of mad creatures, destroying everything in their path in an effort to reach the DZ and attack whatever was there.

Naero and Khai led their people on board the drop ship and the Marines quickly got them all the hell out of there, returning to orbit.

*

After a long, gut-wrenching discussion with Khai, Naero and her beloved choked down their fears and transferred over to
The Kathmandu
. They went to speak directly with Admiral Klyne, General Walker, High Master Jo, and some of the rescued Spacer Elders who were feeling much better after escaping from the enemy.

High Master Tree and some of Elders were still weak from their ordeal and recovered in medical.

An emergency meeting was being held in an attempt to decide if anything could be done with the situation on Kalathar, other than carpet bombing the possessed until the continents of that world glowed on their own from orbit, throughout the next few millennia.

The fleets had intercepted and destroyed scores of possessed-controlled vessels trying to escape from the system.

Master Jo quickly announced, “Naero. You will be happy to hear that all charges against you in the matter of Master Vane’s death have been summarily dismissed. In light of the enemy’s subterfuge and the revelations made by the Cosmic Guardians themselves, all accusations and charges have been dropped, and cleared from your record. They cannot be taken up or brought against you ever again.”

“Well, I’m glad for that, at least,” Naero said.

“That’s fine, but we have even bigger problems now,” Khai noted.

“I agree,” Naero said. “Our new foes only grow bolder and bolder. They strike at us again and again from positions of strength and we cannot hit back. They send attack after attack at us out of the Gamma Quadrant, where we know that they are now locked in several vicious interstellar wars against the other sentient races there. Many separate wars that they appear to be fighting and winning all at the same time.”

“Naero speaks the truth,” Khai said. “I have been to the Gamma Quadrant with her and have seen these things for myself. I believe that once the enemy crushes and enslaves all of the sentient races there, they will be in an even stronger position to descend upon us here in the Alpha Quadrant. They will continually use such attacks as this to soften us up, and weaken us for their next conquest. All of this could occur not in centuries, but in a matter of decades, or even years!”

Naero jumped back in. “And now they have my replicant, Naero-3, and inside of her body are both the KDM, and mine and Khai’s unborn daughter, who might just have powers greater than both of us put together. We must go after and retrieve them before the enemy figures out how to use them all against us!”

“But just how can we do that?” Admiral Klyne said. “Our enemies still have ships that can travel much farther and faster than ours. They can travel back and forth to the Gamma Quadrant at will. Our understanding of their wyrmhole tek is still experimental and dangerous. Neither have we been able to perfect or even further develop the so-called leap drive. Even if we wanted to get back and forth from the Gamma Quadrant and take them on, how would we do so?”

“I don’t know,” Naero erupted in frustration. “But we have to do something. All I know is that my daughter is getting further and further away from me each second. It’s like I can feel it. And the enemy has her!”

She started to lash out and punch and kick at the furniture, the hull, anything she could reach.

Khai rushed in. She beat at and thrashed against his solid mass for a time, even though he deflected or endured her blows.

Finally he just held her, and she leaned against him and sobbed and whispered, “They have her, Khai. They’ve got her. And after what they did to Danner, I can only imagine what they’ll do to her, and she isn’t even born yet.”

Khai unleashed a heavy sigh of his own. “We will find her. We shall find a way.
You
will find a way. I know you. For you, there is no challenge that is too great. Think. What do we know? What can we try? What do we need to go after them?”

“Baeven. We need Baeven. If anyone can track them down, he can.”

“That is ill-advised,” Klyne said.

Naero pulled away from Khai and snapped, “Shut up, Klyne! Baeven has been saving our sorry asses all along; yours included. You and Intel need to deal with that, and live with it. Without him working and killing our enemies behind the scenes, all of us would be dead or enslaved–a thousand times over! He helped foil the trial plot against me. Who do you think it was that rescued Master Tree and freed the Elders from those enemy stasis pods before they could be stuffed into Darkforce generators, after I was supposed to be dead? It was Baeven and his people.”

Klyne snarled, “He is an outlaw, a murderer, and an outcast. You cannot trust him!”

“I trust him with my life and the life of my child. And you should trust him with the lives of our people, because every day he fights for them, in places that even Intel will not go, and he emerges–victorious! A killer? An assassin? Call him by whatever name or insult you wish, yet he fights for us all. And we need him. We need a thousand more like him against what we face!”

“Naero, I am still bound by our laws, and so are you, even if you think you are not.”

“I have seen the limit of our imperfect laws. They would have allowed you and our enemies to take my life unjustly, and that of my child, and curse Khai forever for doing so. Tell me, Klyne. Can you bring my child back? Do you know where the enemy is and where they have taken her? What they are doing to her?”

Klyne said nothing.

“And when the enemy cracks the KDM and learns its secrets, and uses them to wipe out all resistance–including our people–what will you and Intel do then?”

Still Admiral Klyne said nothing.

Naero glared at him and brought her voice down to a whisper. “We are friends and will always be friends, but for right now, you will get the hell out of my way and stay out of my way while I use every means at my disposal to stop the enemy and get my daughter back.”

Klyne grimaced. “I never said I was going to stop you. Do what you must. Just keep me in the loop. We can help. And don’t forget Kalathar in all of this. We have to figure out what to with a planet full of the possessed. We’ve evacuated everyone we can who hasn’t been infected. Without anyone or anything to fight, and no ships left, many of the creatures are going dormant to conserve their energies.”

“After I contact Baeven and get him on the scent trail, I’m going to take some time and attempt to get something out of the KDM. It’s still a part of me and always will be. If I can find any kind or part of a solution from the KDM, I will. The Kexx fought all of this stuff long ago. Has Intel isolated the possession wyrm parasite or learned anymore about it?”

Klyne nodded. “We’ve accomplished that much, at least. We have several specimens, taken out of hosts frozen in stasis. But the parasites are insidious. Even after we remove the possession-triggering parasites, when we try to unfreeze the former hosts, the hosts still perish. Our medteks and biomancers can’t figure it out.”

“Send a couple of the specimens and the hosts to my medical bay for study. If I can biomance anything that will help us, I will let you know. And, Klyne, I’ve never cut you out of the loop, my friend. I never will. We just disagree sometimes on certain things. I’m sorry if I sound harsh. I just don’t have anywhere else to turn right now. I’m going back to my ship. Khai, do what you can. Get any information from the real Master Tree and the real Elders, now that I hear they’re recovering. Join me when you are able.”

Khai nodded. “Copy that, N. I will be with you in a matter of a few hours.”

“Good. That should give me some time to work out something. Let’s all just keep working together. Something has to break for us.” She transported immediately to her private quarters and sent her urgent message out to her uncle and his odd crew of misfits and warriors.