Naero's Valor

by Mason Elliott

  “That’s right, and you should listen to them, and to all of the people who love you, honey. Together, we’ll all do our best to protect each other. Sound good?”

  Little Shetharra nodded. “Sounds good, Mom.”

  The very next day, Naero, Khai, Shetharra, and the Alliance Champions met in one of the sports arenas built into The Star Angel. They joined two hundred other Alliance Mystics, energy beings, and adepts who were ready to explore inside the KDM for the first time.

  First they taught the newbs the entry trance and gave them their exploration spirit forms.

  Then they went straight to the hall of music knowledge and wisdom.

  No one besides Neveab and Orean had the knowledge or ability to take a near G’lothc form, let alone enter the Darkforce realm of knowledge.

  That still remained far too dangerous for beginners.

  Even for Orean and Neveab, each of their time forays into G’lothc knowledge continued to be a frightening and taxing ordeal.

  Yet when it came to the KDM, everyone needed to start somewhere at some point.

  Orean and Shetharra taught the newbs the basic songs of knowledge that would help guide and orient them.

  That would begin to open up the other data oceans for them to explore. Everyone had to start somewhere.

  Some of the newbs were Shetharra’s young friends whom she had invited.

  To many, exploring the KDM would be a completely new experience of wonder and enlightenment.

  Then Orean proceeded to demonstrate her progress with the twenty-four Kexxian Songs of Making.

  She played recordings of her attempts at all twenty-four. Most of the samples of the latter songs were incomplete and sketchy at best.

  Orean also had vids of Shetharra singing and humming the various songs while playing. Some of her play versions were still far better and more complex than Naero’s best attempts.

  Then a strange thing occurred. While Orean was singing parts of Song #23, Iahk’s sword Yii pulsed with light, like a beacon.

  Shetharra suggested that her father try his hand at the tune.

  When he did so and faltered, Shetharra laughed, and made him begin over again, singing along with her.

  Half way through the song, Iahk fell to his knees with his mouth hanging open.

  “What is it?” Orean asked him.

  “I understand so much more than I did before, O. This song,” Iahk told her. “It’s part of the Cosmic Prophecies. It’s secretly part of the method for creating the Second Sword of Cosmic Legends–Jaa. I must find a way to master it!”

  Shetharra put her hands on her little hips, just like her mother. Then she shook her finger at her dad. “It won’t work that way, Dad. Talk to Mom. You have to master all of the songs, in order. The two of us can help you, but you have to do most of it for yourself.”

  Iahk smiled. “Then I will start doing so this very moment,” he said.

  Shetharra worked with all them all, teaching them the first few easy tunes, then the words.

  When she sang, seven small blinding orbs of light circled around her brow, not unlike a halo.

  Many began calling her the little angel of the KDM. Few besides her parents understood the true majesty of the spirits of the Seven Kexxian Dreamers.

  The Seven Dragons of the Flame Eternal.

  From her birth they had chosen Shetharra as their prodigy. So few understood that majestic truth.

  Everyone went on to explore at their own fledgling pace.

  Everyone had to proceed forward from there.

  *

  When Naero finally managed the time to do so, she steeled herself and finally returned to her time stream in her past, back on board her parents’ doomed exploration flagship, The Omaria.

  She continued to observe from the point where her parents and The Omaria exploration fleet departed on their final mission.

  She merged with the part of herself that she had formed into a time stream observer rep, not unlike a place mark in time.

  It was eerie to be more or less functioning as a ghost or astral spy on board her parent’s primary vessel back then.

  Their approaching doom element still frightened her.

  She could not help but want to see what her mom and dad’s final days were like. To see what they saw and did.

  Was she truly ready to see how they died, to watch helplessly as they perished, and lose them all over again?

  Would anyone ever be fully prepared to watch such things happen to anyone they loved?

  She knew that she could not change the past or affect it any way. That much remained very clear.

  Her parents would fight to the death and be killed while she looked on. The outcome would still be the same no matter what she did, whether she watched or not. No matter how many times she watched.

  She could not stop it.

  Yet in some ways, being able to see them and be with them during their final days and moments would be like recovering precious time with them that she never had before.

  That was the best way for a daughter to look at it.

  She tried to prepare herself for the eventual end of her parent’s lives, like watching a vid show where the tragic ending was already known.

  As she ghosted through the Omaria, it was in fact like being in the greatest 3-D Holographic movie ever made.

  But it still proceeded along in real time.

  If she wanted to see something again, or get to another part of the flagship, she had to go back in her time stream and start over from that point.

  The energy that it took to do that much was very exhausting.

  She quickly learned that it was best to follow one or both of her parents during each session. The length of each session was determined by what actions she took, and how long she could stand the pain without having to pull out of the process and regen.

  She could not stay in sync with the past forever.

  Naero already knew certain facts.

  From the time she had said her final farewell to her mother and father back in the day, it was slightly over twenty-seven standard days before they and their comrades would meet their appointed ends.

  First, she intended to follow those segments of her past time stream in logical threads, but all as seamlessly as possible in chronological order.

  On Day 1, the fleet jumped out at jump-6, very advanced for back then.

  Her folks made a series of jumps, each ranging from a few days to up to an entire week, in order to re-join their trajectory into the deep space of the Unknown Regions of that time period, within the Alpha Quadrant.

  It became very clear that her parent’s fleet had no warning about the trap they were eventually walking into.

  She reminded herself that by that time, her folks had already discovered the Kexxian Data Matrix, and recovered the tek to be able to plant it in both Naero and Janner, in order to keep it safe.

  Initially, that was one of the primary reasons that their enemies had targeted the Spacer exploration fleet for destruction and capture.

  Their foes were extremely worried that the Spacers would crack the code to the KDM and quickly gain an even greater Tek advantage, and mastery over the galactic politics of the day.

  Among themselves, her parents often spoke in private about their worries concerning the KDM, and the targets that it would place on their children if their foes found out about it.

  Yet to their minds, they had taken sufficient protocols for security, and their secrets were intact.

  Then there was something else.

  It also became very clear that her parents were in large part working for both the Mystics, and Spacer Intel.

  Not only that, but her parents had as much information as the Mystics did concerning the Cosmic Prophecies.

  They knew enough that the Cosmic Swords of legend still needed to be forged. To accomplish that, they also knew that the last two Cosmic obelisk statues had to be located, and their guardians selected.

  Naero quickly r
ealized that her parents had also been hot on the trail of lost Xanathar.

  Since following leads that led to the recovery of the KDM, they then pursued a chain of Kexxian ruins which led to something of equal importance and mystery to that ancient, godlike species.

  The Kexx had also been intimately aware of the Cosmic Prophecies.

  Yet another important reason that they wiped out the G’lothc was to prevent the enemy from eventually creating the Great Destroyer that the prophecies warned about. If created, that hyper threat could very well wipe out all life in the universe, and perhaps gain the power to attack other universes as well. The Kexx had greatly feared just such an outcome.

  To Naero, Kexxian apprehension in itself made that potential threat very real.

  There was little else for the godlike Kexx to actually fear.

  Hence their determined commitment to annihilate a grim danger that already took the form of their hated foes.

  World hopping from ancient site to ancient site helped her parents piece together more and more of the puzzle as they went along.

  Even while the Great War was being prosecuted to the fullest extent in the G’lothc galaxy next door, the Kexx and their allies were also desperately searching for all three of the Cosmic obelisk statues.

  But that was not meant to be.

  They never located one of them.

  Her parents had used recovered Kexxian data to locate a secret wyrmhole, one that was very difficult to find, that they hoped would lead them to the region where lost Xanathar awaited them.

  Her parents were jumping toward that wyrmhole when they were ambushed near the last known Kexxian stepping stone that they had learned about.

  Other enemy forces at work were also getting worried about what else The Omaria fleet might find in the depths of the Unknown Sectors.

  More and more, Naero understood why the forces in play wanted to stop her parents, especially with all of the knowledge she had access to in the present.

  Her mom and dad were uncovering some of the most crucial information in the entire universe. Not only that, if followed to several logical ends, they would also expose the Great Adversary and its slaves and allies already at work throughout the galaxy.

  For those reasons alone, those valiant Spacers had to be eliminated before they uncovered too much.

  Naero felt fortunate that at least those threats had been exposed for a long while now. In fact, the GSA had formed in order to combat them directly.

  Her parents had certainly not died in vain.

  So much had been set in motion by their brave sacrifice.

  She could see that clearly now.

  Naero hesitated to think what advantages the enemy would have had over them during the past decade or more were it not for the KDM being in the hands of Spacers, and then the GSA Alliance.

  Clearly they would have all been doomed and crushed long ago, as their foes originally intended.

  Yet on this day, Naero reached her limit, the point where could not take any more pain. She had a very high tolerance, but the agony of staying back in that part of her time stream became unbearable at last.

  Her parents would remain alive for almost four more standard days.

  She would need to come back. Naero always knew that.

  She returned to her present, and reviewed the secret vids she made of the first twenty-three days, where her parents leap-frogged from site to site.

  They always kept busy; they were incredibly dedicated and industrious.

  But she uncovered something else that made her laugh and cry.

  Something personal and very private.

  She knew her parents were frisky, but even she had no idea to what degree. The two sex fiends were always sneaking off for a quick one.

  Haisha! It was like being back among the randy Tua.

  Even she and Khai weren’t that wild, but they were also at war. Her parents did not have that burden to deal with back then.

  Naero gave them their privacy, even in the past, as they slipped away and made love all over their dream, their flagship. She did not record her parent’s incredible ardor. To her mind and the Spacer mind concerning personal privacy, that just wouldn’t be right.

  She certainly wouldn’t want someone to do that to her and Khai, time stream or not.

  But there was still days of material to watch her parents at work, interacting with their crew and their fleet, and mundane stuff like meals, daily Spacer PT, training, and general goofing around in their sparse free time. They enjoyed life to the hilt, and they were beloved by their many crews and friends.

  Naero’s heart broke over and over again. She would watch her Dad and Mom living their dream, their daily lives, and weep until she grew dehydrated.

  For always in her mind, she knew what was coming.

  Next, it often filled Naero with abject fury that the amazing lives of these two wonderful beings were snuffed out and cut short.

  She wept and mourned for the stupid waste, for the great loss of all who deserved to live and did not go on.

  She began to understand why the G’lothc had hoped to torment her with such knowledge and experience.

  To watch her beloved parents in this way during their last days, it was both an incredibly precious gift, and also a form of great torture.

  Unless she herself died, there was no way that Naero could not continue watching, and see the melancholy process through to its appointed end.

  The acceptance of that also tore her up from deep within.

  13

  “I’m still struggling with Songs #3, #4, and #5—even with lots of pointers from you and Shetharra,” Iahk despaired.

  He moped, crouched down, holding his head in his hands like a big green abandoned child.

  Orean had little comfort for him. He needed to progress at his own rate; there was no other way. She knew that well. Iahk was now exactly where she had been a long while ago.

  To put it bluntly, he was still more or less a struggling newb.

  A few weeks later, however, had finally brought about further progress with the Songs of Making within the KDM for her. Orean was now up to working on Songs eight, nine, and ten by that time. Shetharra’s guidance and advice always seemed to be spot on. Now her mother implicitly relied on her daughter’s tips.

  Dedication and passionate, focused determination remained key.

  It did not help that outside of the KDM, Naero and Khai were continually busy with many important matters. They also met regularly with the Alliance Ultrium Construction teams in charge of new tek applications.

  They mostly compared notes and discoveries on any new teknomancy data and information they could glean from the KDM and their other explorations.

  One of the biggest glaring problems for the GSA had not changed.

  Naero was the only somewhat advanced Alliance Dreamer who could actually produce anything by directly manipulating matter and energy. And not only was she still not very good at it, but she could not yet pass on those fledgling abilities to any of her replicants so that they could manufacture things for the Alliance while Naero Prime was busy elsewhere.

  What good was it if Naero could create a starfighter or a whole flight of them, complete with rep pilots? She couldn’t possibly stay behind in some star shipyard, pumping them out of processed stellar material. None of the Alliance Champions had time for that.

  The Advanced Tek Teams despaired over this, but they could still learn a great deal from observing and monitoring the process of each song as it did what it did. They could not replicate the creative effects, but they could gain many valuable insights with teknomancy that could be applied to other known and developing processes.

  Technically, young Shetharra already knew all of the Songs of Making, even the secret ones, according to her. But to her child’s mind, they were only pretty songs meant to be enjoyed as such. She couldn’t actually make any practical application of them as the ancient Kexx had, and she had no desire to do so.


  But Naero’s ten-year-old remained the absolute best guide at introducing newbs and learners to and teaching them the fundamentals of each of the Songs of Making.

  That was only a beginning, but Naero understood now that beginnings were incredibly important. These beginnings would lead to greater things.

  It was up to each individual thereafter to learn the nuances and subtleties of the Songs of Making that would allow them to use the very powers of Creation itself to manipulate reality and make the impossible possible.

  Each Song was capable of creating a finite mass of Cosmic, Ultrium proto-material, with the complexity potential to form anything out of it and shape almost anything with it–with the creativity and imagination of their minds.

  The higher level songs could create larger quantities of proto-material and or specialized Cosmic energy and accomplish even more miraculous things.

  They could cure illness or disease on a wide scale, heal a large number of sick or injured sentients all at once, or slightly move, modify, and terraform an entire planet or planetary atmosphere.

  They could create fully formed, functional cities and megacities, entire armies of advanced replicant troops. And that was just the beginning.

  Naero progressed through Songs of Making #1 through #7.

  She kept working on Song #8 and others, but she just could not get them exactly right.

  She sang the songs, but did not produce any matter or energy.

  Khai sang songs one and two, and stumbled through three and four, to show the variation possible, and the range of development at play.

  Shetharra continued to give both of her parents many much needed pointers, and warned them that they both had a long way to go—especially her dad.

  She suggested that they both spend more time playing with her in the KDM Music Wisdom Oceans. Or they could also meditate and focus in certain spheres of Music and Energy.

  She casually mentioned that according to her Seven, each Song was focused within its own sphere.

  Naero almost fainted at the awakening revelations packed into that one simple statement from her oldest child’s lips.

  Why had she not perceived that ultimate truth before?