Naero's Valor

by Mason Elliott

  They destroyed each other.

  They could destroy themselves.

  It all made Naero glad once again that she was a Spacer.

  Lander business concerns and company models now only operated in business levels and modes. By strict galactic law, they could never again form corporate style governments or take control of worlds or political systems.

  A few stupid worlds resented even that much outside interference into their affairs, but such changes had to be. Most recognized the good in that.

  Hatred of Spacers had been brainwashed into the lander populations for over three centuries. That was still a real problem on thousands of worlds.

  The legend of Shetanna, in all of its forms, combated that prejudice.

  A dozen years later, across the Alpha Quadrant and beyond, there were countless vid production companies and thousands of vid shows, movies, and series featuring countless different lander actresses in the title role of Shetanna.

  They came in many shapes, colors, and sizes, but she was more popular than ever, and had many incarnations.

  In most of these vids, Shetanna usually fought nasty alien invasions with her various levels of super powers. Some few of these series were even action comedies, or outright romances. But she was always a Spacer, or in some cases a Spacer Outlaw who refused to kill regular humans.

  Naero never asked for a dime or any recognition or fame from any of these vids. Neither did she endorse any of them. When some of the companies or actresses tried to contact her, she avoided them.

  As a whole, they were all widely and amazingly historically inaccurate. There was no way to combat poetic license, once those floodgates were open.

  And the funniest thing was that the Shetanna legend had also spread to non-human, sentient worlds years before. There were now Shetanna legends among many alien races, and here she was either a native Shetanna, or even a wily shapeshifter who came to love and champion that species.

  For a while Naero collected some of the vid posters and holos, but then it all became too much clutter. She had to stop. All of that merchandising and stuff now collected dust in a hold somewhere on her flag ship.

  In vain she even tried to keep her own children from playing “Shetanna,” and getting the toys and costumes from the morass of them all out there.

  Naero occasionally had nightmares where furry ass Danjen played Shetanna in one of his gooney vids.

  *

  Naero delved back into the KDM with Baeven, the very next opportunity that they could manage. One of their primary continuing goals was to explore the complex ancient history and the secret relationships between the Kexx, the Drians, and the Great Adversary, the G’lothc.

  “Uncle, I think that it would be a good idea for us to use biomancy to trace the evolution of each species to afford them a greater understanding of the genetic history and progress of all three.”

  Thanks to the amazingly thorough record keeping of the Kexx, their eternal database had already done much of the work for them.

  “Naero, the problem, as always with the KDM, is properly accessing the correct portions of hundreds of millions of years of data.”

  She shrugged. “Her it all is. Let’s get to it.”

  They surfed, and skimmed, and sampled small parts of the Kexxian Data Oceans.

  That was all that was possible with their limited minds, even with the highest levels of teknomancy known to exist in their current reality.

  How had the Kexx managed all of this nearly infinite knowledge?

  How had they processed it all?

  “Shetharra once said that each of the Seven Dreamers carried the KDM inside of them, and could access it perfectly, entirely, and instantly.”

  “Haisha,” Neveab exclaimed. “How could that possibly be?”

  “Not only that, but they were constantly sharing and adding to the sum total of all that knowledge, with each instant that passed.”

  The concepts involved with all of those possibilities alone were staggering.

  Naero continued, pointing out certain things as they went along. “And yet the magnificent Kexx and their mighty Dreamers held the Great Mystery of all things in shuddering awe. To that Impossible Sentient Power, even the godlike Dreamers claimed that by comparison, they were at the mental level of single-celled plants.”

  Neveab chuckled. “Well dang!” Both of them chuckled at his goofy mirth.

  Yet with those sobering thoughts, Orean and Neveab studied the evolution of the Kexx first, sharing data and observations as they went.

  “The Kexx evolved on a homeworld that had been swallowed up by its expanding sun long ago,” Orean pointed out.

  “Their progenitors were clearly warm-blooded lizards, not dinosaurs. They were originally much larger creatures, 3.05 meters in length, including their long necks and tails. They would evolve and shrink down to become reptilian bipeds, about Orean’s short height or even smaller. They lost their longer necks and tails, at the same time that they gained bigger and more complex brains.”

  “Their homeworld and its societies were lucky,” Neveab pointed out. “Asteroids or comets did not wipe them out in extinction level events.”

  Om jumped in to contribute. Socially, their early cultures progressed and began recording and passing on information and technology very quickly and thoroughly. As a species, they weeded out their superstitions and warlike tendencies in an efficient pattern, over a few millennia.

  Their social and moral enlightenment kept pace with the advance of their technologies.

  The Kexx began to explore Space and the Interdimensions and did not let anything stop them thereafter, even their own ignorance.

  The rest was a continued process of expansion and growth. Yes, as an interstellar race of sentients, they were forced to defend themselves against rival species that were more aggressive and warlike, but thankfully, not more advanced.

  The Kexx continued to advance and evolve for the next half a billion years. That was a bewildering expanse of data; incredibly daunting.

  Neveab picked up on one of the more interesting historical data flows. “They encountered the Drians and the G’lothc very late in their existence, when they were at the pinnacle of their development as advanced sentients and energy beings.

  After that great conflict ended, both the Kexx and the Drians completely vanished within a few thousand years, never to be encountered again.”

  The secrets as to why still eluded Orean and all other investigators, and the KDM seemed to guard that data very closely.

  Even Shetharra could not get the Seven to tell her what had happened.

  When the time came, Neveab and Orean moved on to exploring the Drians and their evolution.

  The two of them didn’t have unlimited time to search the KDM on each species specifically, so they were forced to do so in stages over time.

  They did invite Aij to join them, since her presence would be extremely helpful.

  After only two hours, Aij did hit upon something helpful and startling.

  “The Drians had never been mammals, as conjecture originally proposed.

  “In fact, they originally evolved from self-aware machine intelligences that were subservient to avian-based, interstellar sentients called the Marem.

  “The Marem eventually fought an extremely violent civil war with atomics that destroyed their species. Only their mechanoid AI creations, the D.I.N. survived, and eventually took over their worlds, and the remains of their society and culture.”

  The Din evolved into the Drin, and then the Drians.

  Within the space of three hundred million years, they evolved from machine intelligence mechanoids into hyper-advanced, synthetic flesh-based hyper androids, and finally—super evolved energy beings that still specifically chose to exist as mortal beings of flesh and blood.

  Then after many experiments and false starts, they chose to create their perfect children, advanced beings destined to surpass them on a Cosmic scale.

  To acco
mplish all of that, the Drians eclipsed all of their godlike abilities, and gave their children immortal, indestructible bodies of liquid hyper-Ultrium flesh, and expansive minds that would know no limit.

  Aij told them a great secret.

  “In their final act of creating the Driathans, the Drians surrendered themselves, and called directly upon the Great Mystery from the Beyond to complete their great miracle.

  “The Lifespark and the Breath of Life itself were infused into the Driathans by the Great Mystery itself, and they were created in order to carry the Flame Eternal not only to their universe—but to every universe that would ever exist, from that moment in Space-Time forward.

  “That was just a part of the destiny of the Driathans. Why or how the Drians vanished after the end of the Great War still remained part of their mystery.”

  The closest they came to any kind of an explanation in their searching were personal accounts of Drians feeling tainted and corrupted by the prosecution of the Great War itself.

  Many Kexx of that ancient age had made similar laments in great despair. Orean knew that for a fact.

  The Great War had turned both the Kexx and the Drians into the greatest killers in all SpaceTime, across several galaxies. They had literally taken countless lives, as well as enduring significant casualties among their own kinds.

  That Epoch was an age of death and destruction on an unimaginable scale. Such actions, even justified, had their costs.

  Finally, Neveab and Orean reserved a large chunk of exploratory KDM time to pursue the most dangerous kind of research, in the most heavily protected sections.

  These were the areas of data and lore concerning not only the Darkforce, but the Great Adversary themselves.

  “Little is known about the G’lothc, their origins, and their evolution,” Neveab said. “I’ve spent a total of months searching those dangerous files and I’ve barely been able fight my way into that perilous data ocean.”

  Then, with Oms help, they uncovered some telling records.

  To learn about the Great Adversary and how best to defeat them, long ago, Kexxian and Drian Mystics, just under the level of the Seven Kexxian Dreamers, volunteered to undertake a perilous task.

  Like Orean herself, they had all been experts in shapechanging.

  She skimmed the same files that Om had located by dumb luck.

  Note this fact. For such an experiment, these brave Kexxian and Drian souls had all volunteered to gradually shapechange into near and finally actual full forms of the G’lothc.

  In the end, they all became G’lothc as much as they could, and small teams of such Mystics in those forms and their teams studied the foe over several centuries, in order to learn their many secrets.

  These secrets helped the allies back then defeat and destroy their enemy…at least physically.

  But as those annals also recorded, the cost of this invaluable research came at a very high price.

  All three hundred and forty-three of the Mystic test subjects either perished during the research or had to be terminated by the Seven Dreamers themselves.

  And the reason was that…

  Either the process of imitating the G’lothc or trying to actually become one turned out to be lethal—or else the attempt succeeded all too well.

  “Once overcome by the seductive, corruptive nature of the Darkforce,” Orean said, “many test subjects we’re so far gone that they actually joined sides with the enemy. They became G’lothc, and had to be eliminated as if they were just another one.”

  She let that sink in.

  “Those end results frightened the Kexx and the Drians,” Neveab went on. “The G’lothc had the secret ability to affect other species directly, to infect them, and eventually turn them into more G’lothc.”

  Neveab proposed that Orean attempt to shapechange him into a G’lothc.

  That was the only way.

  Only then could they penetrate and make sense of the G’lothc data, in ways that they could not currently do so.

  The risks were still the same.

  Orean warned Neveab. “We can’t make the same mistake that the more advanced Kexx and Drians were unable to avoid.”

  What are you thinking, O? You cannot turn Neveab into one of the G’lothc, and take a risk on not be able to turn him back. That’s insane.

  Nor did she have any wish to combat him and his powers in a G’lothc super battle form. In such a terrible mutation, he might prove as violent and destructive as any of the Six G’lothc Darkforce Champions.

  That would be incredibly bad on so many levels.

  Then Naero hit upon a solution, after first consulting with Jia and Zhen.

  “We can program a time element into the shapechange with biomancy and teknomancy, in order to reverse the transformation process after a certain amount of time. I’m thinking about one or two standard hours.”

  They would also take steps to make sure that the reversion could not be stopped or reversed in any way.

  “Even if we go full on G’lothc and lose ourselves, we’ll still revert back to our original forms. And we’ll still be trapped in the KDM all the while. That’s another added failsafe.”

  Together they parsed out all of the details.

  What’s more, if they did not revert back soon enough, Jia, Zhen, and the rest of the Alliance Champions could enter the KDM, monitor their progress, and hold them at bay until they did change back.

  “What we’re attempting is still loaded with more risks than I can begin to count,” Zhen noted.

  But in the end, they saw no other way.

  They needed hard answers. They needed more data on their foes, just as the Kexx and the Drians did.

  They no longer just assumed that mere surface G’lothc forms and neural nets would easily access the stored data of that hyper advanced species.

  It made some sense to go after it the way they were attempting. The way the KDM itself was coded, they had to actually think like a Kexx to interpret Kexxian knowledge. Likewise they had to order their minds like a Drian to comprehend deeper Drian information.

  It stood to reason that only an actual G’lothc mind structure could truly understand them and their vast knowledge the best.

  Orean initiated the timed change on Neveab first, and then herself.

  The instant rush of Darkforce Cosmic energy was stupefying and scary at first.

  Then it just kept getting worse.

  She had to beat back her own Darkforce beast lurking dormant within her as it sense so much power to feed on.

  The transformation of Neveab was as frightening as her own.

  Her beloved uncle twisted into one of the hideous G’lothc battle forms right in front of her, all pulsating Darkforce, eyes, maws, tentacles, and appendages. Part of the fell form was even amoeba-like and absorbed energy.

  The creature even named and announced itself. “I am Navoc. Now I can fully move within the Darkforce secrets. Hurry! Let us do so. I am eager to link with the dark mysteries once again.”

  He—it—seemed far too eager, in fact. This was a near-G’lothc form, not truly complete. They left out a few key genetic and Cosmic components. Orean and the others weren’t certain that it would be wise to become completely like a G’lothc, right at the first try.

  As with the Kexx and the Drian subjects in the distant past, the lure of actually becoming such a being might be too great for any mind to resist.

  Next, Orean had slipped into her own, fell G’lothc shape and mindset.

  Her physical form was a mere variant of the basic G’lothc genome. It was uniquely repugnant, yet similar to Navoc’s form.

  The sensations were both horrific and wildly intoxicating.

  The G’lothc naturally tapped into Darkforce energies and sources all around them and from numerous feeder dimensions.

  Had she not been used to resisting the Darkforce of her our Darkbeast, the innate lust for all of that negative energy power might have been overpowering.

  That was it
.

  G’lothc were very much like lesser versions of her Darkbeast, but in the flesh. They just weren’t energy beings.

  “I am Kozzeth,” she announced, somehow choosing a G’lothc name in their secret, dark speech. The urge to surrender to the heady madness of the Darkforce and become suffused with and lost to it was a constant, burning, ever-present, almost sexual lust.

  Somehow she maintained her wits and kept on task, drawing Navoc with her, but then he quickly snarled and took the lead.

  At first his behavior enraged her, but then she recalled that G’lothc were hyper-competitive, even with each other.

  They plunged into the G’lothc Ocean of knowledge and lore.

  That great sea of data now welcomed and opened up to them.

  It no longer barred their path or sought to reject and destroy their prior, unacceptable forms.

  Navoc sought for the secrets of G’lothc power in vain. As usual with the KDM, there was just too much data to sift through.

  Demanding and trying to force the data flows to make perfect sense simply did not work at all.

  Kozzeth took a different, more subtle approach. She searched for threads, keys words, concepts, and data high point matches.

  She searched for the secrets to G’lothc origins and evolution.

  Where had the fearsome G’lothc originally come from?

  What disgusting, evil creature had the Great Adversary evolved from? Some venomous serpent? Some evil race of malignant monsters?

  Nay, the truth, when they reached it, was far more chilling.

  At first, Kozzeth could not accept that truth.

  The progenitors of the G’lothc were rodent-like shrews, mere voracious mammals.

  Later they became ground and tree-dwelling primates, great apes, and then erect walking hominids.

  The protoforms of the Great Adversary were humans.

  They were as humanoid as they could be, even down to their genetics.

  Not near-humans.

  Humans and humans who later evolved into something very similar to Spacers, who could exist easily on starships in interstellar space.

  At that time they were actually a species called the Laral. They became a powerful force in their galaxy, and eventually helped control and maintain freedom in what was their entire Alpha Quadrant.