Naero's War: The Citation Series 3: Naero's Trial (7 page)

Naero studied that sickening little hi-tek enemy wyrm with her biomancy. If their infestation spread, all of humanity and every sentient race could be taken over and consumed.

And thus far, any sentients infected by the possession wyrm did not last much longer than a month or two before they were utterly consumed by its malignant Darkforce energies. They were all reduced to ash.

Naero brushed the frost off the clear panel of the stasis tube.

Of course, a small lander girl of six or seven with long dark hair and pale skin.

A little girl who looked much like Naero herself had when she was a child.

A girl who could look like her and Khai’s daughter.

If the little lander girl was revived, by all of the reports, she would die in agony within the hour, even after the wyrm was removed.

“No,” Naero said, clenching her free fist and looking down at that helpless child. “If there is a way to save you and the people of Kalathar from a dark fate such as this, I shall find it.” She looked at the vile wyrm writhing in its shield case as if she might close her hand upon it with all her great strength and crush it to death.

There had to be a cure for such malevolent insanity and hate.

That was it. They were like a virus. Like a disease.

She had to try again, even if the awareness guarding the KDM batted her aside once more. She had to try to find a solution–a cure.

Naero darkened the room once more, and held the small stasis tube across her lap. Then she held the wyrm and its capsule clutched in both hands, opened her third eye, and concentrated.

In a matter of instants, she stood before the KDM’s barrier of adamant once more.

In one hand she clutched the child’s glowing soul essence to her breast; in the other, extended hand, she thrust out the foul essence of the enemy possession wyrm as far as she could away from herself. It hurt and nauseated her simply to be near it.

She called to whatever AI or awareness defended the barrier.

Naero called out in Kexxian, “You know me by now. I am part of you, and you are part of me. You know who and what I am. For all of my failings, I am not your enemy. You know this. See what I have brought before you. This evil is of the same enemy that you fought and vanquished long ago, through your wisdom and great valor. Now we, your beloved children, whom you nurtured, and protected, and sacrificed for so many ages ago, face those same foes, those same evils, and you are no longer here to protect us.”

Silence.

Naero drew closer with her twin burdens.

She continued speaking. “We need help. These foes are too powerful. They are beyond us. We need guidance. We need knowledge and assistance to defeat threats such as this. I know that we are not worthy of knowing all of your mighty knowledge, wisdom, and secrets. But please, I ask only that you help us with what we face now. Millions of lives on this one planet alone are at risk of being snuffed out by this vile and insidious infestation. If there is a cure, a defense against this evil, please tell us what it is or help us find it!”

She knew that all of this was a vision within her own mind, but it still seemed so very real.

As she approached the barrier with the essence of the G’lothc possession wyrm held out before her, what seemed like a million out-thrust hands, palms out, morphed out from the surface on long, tube-like arms to drive her back.

Naero pulled away and turned.

The same hands that had spurned and defied the wyrm reached out even further to gently caress the glowing essence of the child.

She stepped back and called out again, “Help us! We removed this parasite from this child. If we revive her, she will die screaming. Tell us what we can do to save her.”

The multitude of hands withdrew.

Naero suddenly saw two raised platforms behind her. She placed the wyrm on one and the child on the other and then strode before the barrier once more.

She placed both hands against its humming, resonating surface.

She heard those same three words once more. But instead of thundering this time, these seemed to whisper and echo repeatedly around her.

Unbalanced…

Ignorant…

Unworthy…

“I don’t care. That doesn’t matter. Do you hear me, whatever the hell you are? None of that matters. I don’t matter. But that innocent child and the lives of millions of other innocent people just like her do matter. If there is a way, tell me how to save them!”

Nothing.

“Then what good are you? What good is all of your vast knowledge and wisdom, if it cannot save people who are in dire need? Why do you even exist if you cannot save or help others?”

The voices stopped.

Two hands pressed back against Naero’s and a small green creature stepped out from the barrier and walked her backwards.

Naero gasped.

It was a Kexx. Or at least the replicant of one.

By all appearances, in her mind the creature seemed incredibly real and lifelike.

Haisha. So, this was a Kexx.

Finally, someone shorter than her.

At least by a hand or more. Huzzah.

She was female. Naero somehow knew that even without biomancy. She was sleek, strong, and well-formed with a short, slender, agile tail that did not touch the ground. Her body was a perfect blend between humanoid and reptilian, with a large skull and balanced features. Her face was definitely reptilian, and decidedly not human-like, with large, independently blinking and nictitating green eyes. The Kexx actually had a short, lizard-like snout filled with small, omnivorous white teeth.

Even when she did not show her teeth, she looked as if she were either grinning or smiling at something clever. The Kexx were not unpleasant to look at.

Her hands were dexterous and five-fingered, with an opposable thumbs. She wore no clothing. Her body was covered with a sleek, flexible, form-fitting skin of a light green color, with a pale, whitish-green underside of opalescent scales.

Naero tried biomancy, but this was all simply taking place inside her mind. None of what she was experiencing had a physical reality in her imagination.

Her Kexxian counterpart spoke to her. “I am Orean. My recorded essence has been awakened to speak with you as needed. I am what you would call your interface to what you refer to as the KDM. Where is the defense protocol you refer to as Om? As you are limited in your conceptualization capacities, I had hoped to speak to you through him. Where is he? This is very strange.”

“Uh…Om’s gone right now.”

This was astonishing. They were speaking and thinking back and forth at each other in rapid, flawless Kexxian.

Wait, did Orean just call her stupid?

“We are both telepathic, genius,” Orean told her. “And what is more, all of this exchange is taking place within your mind. I believe that proves your own point.”

“What…that I’m stupid?”

Orean grinned wide. “You said it, Spacer. Not me.”

“Look, can you help us or not?”

The Kexx girl shrugged. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“On you, dumbo.”

“On me? How?”

Orean pointed to the child’s essence. “Would you be willing to sacrifice your life to save that child and all of the others?”

Naero thought about that for a brief moment. “Yes I would.”

Orean raises one eyebrow and the big green eye along with it. Then she folded her green arms in front of herself. “You had to think about it.”

“Of course I had to think about it. What is this? Some kind of test?”

Orean smiled wide again and put her hands on her narrow hips. “Indeed. You must be stupid. Haven’t you learned anything by now?”

They both spoke at the same time.

“Everything is a test.”

Both of them chuckled. For her first Kexx, Naero liked this lizard girl.

“So, how do we reverse the effect of the possession wyrms?”

“It will not be easy.”

Naero snorted. “It never is.”

“Did you ever hear about a Corps world called Tora-3?”

“Tora-3? The so-called Kexxian plague struck there.”

“High-level Kexxian protocols were unleashed there years ago, and went out of control. You must unleash similar protocols from the KDM on Kalathar.”

“Orean. Everyone on Tora-3 died, in a matter of seconds.”

“Then you will need to use the correct protocols and control them better, so that that does not happen.

Naero swallowed hard. “How do I do that?”

The Kexx girl pointed at the child’s essence. “The Kexx defeated the G’lothc possession wyrm eons ago. It can be reversed once more. But you must first use biomancy to put the wyrm back into the victims. Once they have the wyrm inside of them, it cannot be removed. It must be neutralized and destroyed within them. It must be purged across the entire planet. I will teach you which protocols to unleash, and how to control them.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I will show you on this child. If you cannot learn to save one, you cannot save the others. You said that they were all going to die anyway. What do you and they have to lose?”

“Nothing, I guess.”

“Place the wyrm back into the child. Use your biomancy. Do it now.”

Naero hesitated. “But…aren’t we in some kind of trance in my mind?”

Orean grinned. “Perhaps you are. I assure you, your physical self will mirror your actions here in your mind. Place the wyrm back in the child, and it will be there. Then revive her, and bring her out of stasis.”

Naero did so, in that order.

The bewildered child blinked and woke up, terrified and looking around her.

Then the wyrm took over and began to transform.

“Now,” Orean said, “follow the directions of my mind linked with yours. Tap into the stars and keep feeding the Cosmic energy through defensive protocols 241B and 877D. Combine them both and their flows in just the way that I am directing you.

Naero hit the transformed child just before it leaped to attack her.

Ribbons of light and shadow erupted out of her and blasted through the creature, sucking out both the Darkforce energy and the incinerated remnants of the wyrm itself. The child’s eyes rolled back up into her head and she collapsed.

The little girl was spent but alive and free of the wyrm.

Orean grinned. “Now just unleash those forces across the planet’s entire surface. That’s all there is to it.”

Naero’s jaw dropped. She flung her hands wildly up into the air. “You…you make it sound so easy.”

Orean shrugged and turned away. “Then make it more difficult, if you want to.”

Naero chased after the Kexx, trying to catch her. “Wait, wait. Where are you going? We’ve…we just had this amazing breakthrough. We’re working together now. Don’t go away!”

“We’re inside of your stupid head, remember, genius? Where are we gonna go?”

Orean walked right through the barrier and Naero lost sight of her. Yet she could still sense Orean’s thoughts.

“Wait, come back. Don’t go through the barrier!”

Orean called back to her. “What barrier? What the hell are you talking about?”

Naero pounded her fists on it. “Then what the hell is this thing?”

“There’s no barrier, N. That’s just in your mind. Haisha, face the music, Naero.”

“Music? What music? Haisha! Wait, damn it all, Orean! How do I reach you again?”

“You’ve got way too much to do, right now. When you are ready and you need me, I shall return.”

“But I don’t understand. I still don’t know anything yet!”

In her mind, Naero shook her fists and screamed.

Back in the real world, outside of her messed-up head, Naero brought the lights up in her quarters. She sat down next to the open stasis pod and the empty containment capsule.

The possession wyrm was gone, and the child was safe.

She sighed, putting her face down into her hands, being that she was relatively alone currently, except for an unconscious child. There wasn’t any need to keep up a brave front anymore. A terrible worry still passed through her like a chill and she shuddered almost to the point of convulsing.

The pressure she was under was very great. She had learned much, but she still wasn’t any closer to finding her own child, Om, the KDM, or Naero-3. She had no way to track them. No way to go after and pursue them wherever it was they went.

As far as she knew, the enemy could already have them at their mercy in the Gamma Quadrant by now. Doing who knew what to them.

It shook her to her core with fear.

An alert on her private com panel went off, causing her to jump.

That meant an urgent response.

From Baeven.

8

The coded message from Baeven said for Naero to meet him on the surface of Kalathar, in a remote area without people or the possessed. She took her personal cloaked starfighter and raced to the given coordinates.

That turned out to be an isolated, volcanic island in the middle of the ocean.

Naero announced her arrival.

As ordered, she took great pains to make certain that she was neither followed nor traced in any way.

As soon as she landed, her sensors told her that a strong anti-scanning and non-detection field covered almost the entire island, as well as an enormous holographic projection. No one would be able to sense anything from orbit, even if they came down and were right above the island itself. Nor would they be able to see the true surface and any changes being made to it.

Baeven was stressing secrecy even more than usual.

Of course Naero wondered why about all of these things.

Underneath the holo and the non-detection field, the island had been ravaged and nearly completely destroyed. Even the dormant volcano was shattered and busted up, covered with a layer of multiple craters and blast effects.

What had happened here?

It was beyond even that of a normal battlefield. Some extremely violent action had occurred here, and Baeven and company had done their best to keep it all quiet and under wraps.

“Hey,” a voice said. Naero briefly felt a hand on her shoulder and swatted it away, spinning back into a fighting stance.

Light brown, furry Danjen stood blinking his blue eyes in front of her, still withdrawing his hand, in his blue loincloth, battle harness, and multiple weapons. And his amazing, prehensile tail.

“Whew, N. Touch-y! Baeven sent me to bring you in. We need your help.”

Naero put her fists down and breathed a sigh of relief. “Sorry, Danjen. Things have been, crazy.”

“No doubt. What, you’re not used to that, yet?”

“So tell me, what am I here for, monkey boy?”

“I’m a Ku. Not a monkey or a primate. Your kind might be descended from monkeys, but mine are not, thankfully.”

Naero rolled her eyes. “Just answer the question.”

“We’ve been trying to subdue that hybrid Dakkur-G’lothc spyship we helped Baeven capture.”

Naero’s jaw dropped. “Haisha! What Dakkur-G’lothc spyship?”

“Hybrid spyship–something new,” Danjen said. “We’ve never seen one like it before. This was the one the enemy used in stealth mode for their agents to seed almost the entire planet’s population with the possession wyrm infestation. The same enemy agents who used new stealth and phaze suits to abduct and then replace High Master Tree and the Spacer Elders on the jury to rig your trial.”

“Intel just naturally assumed that the enemy ship got away again, like they usually do.”

Danjen grinned his furry smile. “Not this time.” Danjen’s eyes suddenly blinked and went very wide. “Baeven’s different, N. Even scarier now than he ever was before.”

Naero stopped walking for a second, and Danjen fell back with her.

Baeven? Scarier? The man already radiated some kind of dangerous essence that invoked fear in others. He was one of the deadliest fighters in the galaxy, perhaps the universe. How was it possible for him to become scarier, in any of his forms? “Tell me what’s been going on, Danjen.”

The island suddenly shook as if from an earthquake tremor. Explosions rocked the volcano and the island about ten klicks away.

“Baeven’s been doing all of this deep meditation crap, in conjunction with Jia and Gaviok. He said something about getting back in touch with a deep side of himself that he had forgotten about. It’s Baeven. Who the hell knows what he’s capable of? And you too for that matter. Both of you guys are major scary. That’s why I always want to be on your side when things go down.”

It must have been Baeven linking up with his Cosmic guardian selves and possibilities, from the artifact statue back on Janosha. He must have had a major breakthrough.

Naero secretly chided herself. Om wasn’t there any longer to do so for him. Of course Baeven had had a breakthrough. He’d helped the three Cosmic Guardians suspend her trial and execution, and expose the enemy’s plot. Baeven and his crew had rescued Master Tree and the Elders.

“So what happened?”

Danjen blew out a deep breath. “We were on our way, racing back to Kalathar, when this big fight erupted. Baeven went out of control, but it was different this time. He almost destroyed
The Shadow Fox.
He nearly killed Gaviok and Jia, which is nearly impossible to do. But in the end, they either barely subdued him or he regained some kind of control. Perhaps a little of both. Then he…he…”

“He what, Danjen? Spit it out.”

“Baeven stopped Time. H-he froze it somehow.”

A Cosmic Guardian ability: to step outside of and manipulate the flow of Time itself and even pull others out with them. Just like at her trial.

“Danjen, if they haven’t had time to tell you yet, Baeven and I are both Cosmic Guardians, with special abilities and powers that are only going to continue to grow and come online. So stay tuned. Now, what about this enemy spyship?”

“We’ve been fighting it and trying to subdue it for days, all over the island. The damn thing can’t fly anymore, but for a while it could still move about. Now we have it trapped and we’ve gone inside repeatedly, trying to subdue its living machine defensive systems. Baeven and Jia thought that another powerful teknomancer such as yourself would help finish the job. Jia can tell you more than I ever could.”

“Copy that. Let’s rejoin them.”

The alien hybrid ship was small, black, round, with sides that were tapered on the edges like a lozenge. It reminded her of another pill-shaped alien ship they had come across during The High Crusade, but this one was only about half the size. It lay smoking within a crater of ash and fused glass. It was badly damaged in multiple places and ways.

Yet even from where Naero stood, she could sense it.

The crippled ship was a living machine and even now it was struggling to regenerate itself. It had a will all its own.

Stepping inside only confirmed that for Naero. Even with her teknomancing she could sense that the ship was definitely a hybrid, a mixture of both Dakkur and G’lothc technology.

Danjen led her within. Each chamber and corridor had required an intense battle. Each one had to be nearly destroyed. The damage was extensive.

Naero sensed the Darkforce. Lots of it. Straight ahead.

They passed through ruined blast doors that, by their looks, had been torn open by raw strength and might alone.

Something that an extremely powerful mantid Shai like Gaviok might be capable of, or Baeven himself.

She spotted Jia first, walking perfection in her silvery, glimmering body. Jia was teknomancing against the living ship itself, trying to subdue it.

She also kept it from self-detonating and destroying them all.

Naero and Danjen walked in further. Gaviok stood by, an enormous mantid who could shift his size and density, a natural master of Chaos force. The color of his carapace shifted with his mood. In battle he was red, or even red and deep, dark black, as he was now.

The primary and secondary defenses of the shielded powercore and stardrive chamber had been defeated. Naero had fought against such defenses on board
The Dark Star
. She knew how tough they could be.

The last shielded blastwall barrier to the core stood before them.

Baeven stood poised with his back to everyone else, draining the Darkforce energy away, and converting it into Cosmic energy that he could make use of.

Baeven stepped back and briefly glanced at Naero.

Naero started, and brought both her hands to her mouth.

Baeven was different. One of Baeven’s eyes burned with Chaos energy–the other with the Darkforce.

And she was the only one who could see it. Only another Cosmic Guardian could.

What did he see when he looked at her?

“About time. Give us a hand, Naero,” Baeven said. “This entire ship’s been a major pain in my ass.”

Jia shifted to one side. Naero moved to the other.

She briefly hugged Gaviok.

“Good to see you, my prince,” Naero told her mantid friend. There was a special bond between them, like family.

“Naero,” Gaviok said, turning briefly more red than black. “A joy to see you.”

“Hold off the love fest, you two,” Baeven told them. “We have a vital mission to finish here.”

“Agreed,” Naero said, preparing to focus at the task at hand. “So, what’s the prize here?” she asked her uncle.

Baeven grunted, fighting the Darkforce once more, but he was the Guardian of Chaos energy and the Darkforce itself. “Nothing much,” Baeven said. “Just a working enemy wyrmhole projection array. We capture it and learn its secrets, and then we’ll be on par with our new good friends.”

Jia smiled over at Naero. “We’ll be able to travel back and forth across the entire galaxy, just as our foes can. Your people can take the fight to the enemy homeworlds and strongholds, once we locate them. No longer will you need to sit by and wait for the foe to strike at us with impunity.”

Baeven said it before Naero could.

“And once we reach the Gamma Quadrant, we can track down your child, Naero.”

“You know where she is, and Naero-3?”

“We will when we get there,” Baeven said. “Unlike you, I had the sense to put an Astral tracer inside your replicant. Now, as for that girl of yours, Naero. Haisha. She is going to be something else. I don’t even know if the G’lothc would know what the hell to do with something like her. She’s a wild blade if I’ve ever seen one. She just might surprise our new friends a bit, if they aren’t careful.”

At last, Naero had some hope.

She focused all of her teknomancy abilities and placed both of her hands right into the Darkforce field, ignoring the pain and linking with the vessel itself, preparing to merge with it and wrestle with the ship head on. “Let’s do this.”

Baeven continued draining the ship of its energies. Jia kept the ship from killing itself and all of them. Gaviok and Danjen stood by, ready to deal with any surprises or last-minute defenses the living ship might throw at them.

Naero merged with the living vessel, just as she had with Alala. The only difference was that this ship was hostile. She needed to bend its will to her will, and to do that, she had to be come one with it.

It was like wrestling with her Dark Beast all over again.

But its fledgling will and purpose faded as Baeven continued to drain off its power source.

Naero fought and wrestled with its simplistic, undeveloped mind.

Intruder. Must destroy! Must destroy both of us. My programming…cannot let you have…my secrets!

Naero slowly reasoned with it, changing its logic more and more all the while.

You do not need to destroy me, because I am now part of you. You are part of me. We can now work together. There is no reason to destroy any longer. We are one.

In the end, Naero had to replicate part of herself and integrate it into the ship’s simple, straightforward AI. That was the only thing that could make it docile and cooperative.

Then Naero used teknomancy to finally make it obedient to her, Baeven, Jia, and any of Baeven’s crew. She added Spacer Intel override protocols for good measure, for when they turned the ship over to Klyne and his people for analysis.

Just not before she, Baeven, and Jia understood the alien wyrmhole projectors, and installed them on their vessels as needed.

That would take perhaps a day or two.

Naero closed her eyes for a moment.

Hang on baby; hang on, Om. The cavalry is coming. I swear we are.

Let them be all right still. The enemy would most likely see them as valuable prizes, and keep them for study–at first.

Once the captured ship was fully subdued, they could begin to understand all of its advanced systems, including the wyrmhole projectors.

Naero started in on that right away.

Baeven and his people had been fighting the alien ship and its defenses for days. They took a short breather before joining back in.

Naero kept going. She was still relatively fresh to all of this. She even got the ship’s self-healing and self-repair capabilities to kick in more. But everything had to be modified. The living ship could not work the same way anymore. It could not simply operate, powered by the Darkforce alone, with all of those insidious alien defenses.

She modified the powercore so that it became a Cosmic force generator, and not solely a Darkforce battery that would need to be charged by a Darkforce generator. Baeven and Gaviok had already destroyed all of those and unleashed the Mystics inside of them. The ship would have eventually run out of power on its own without a generator feeding it.

Now it could operate independently on Cosmic energy itself, which of course included a balanced part of the Darkforce, and not that energy alone.