Everyone involved could profit greatly from that situation.
Any kind of conflict would clearly impede what could be good trade arrangements for all.
But the HFM lunacy of “We claim the entire Delta Quadrant for Humanity!” had to go.
No one was going to put up with that nonsense. The ITO warned the GSA profusely about that. They even went on to describe other groups of sentients as well as other threats that they knew of further out in the black.
Just as Naero suspected, every quadrant appeared to be teeming with interested parties, all of them concerned with protecting their own vital interests. Some were clearly more opportunistic and aggressive than others.
Fortunately, she had not heard anything about the Great Adversary yet. But she knew that they must be out there somewhere, led by the still mysterious Xath the Hidden.
Naero left GSA negotiators behind to hammer out all of the new trade deals and safe passage rights for the lander colonists, including the HFM, through ITO space.
She made further stern warnings to the HFM before she departed, about learning their lesson, and following the strict colonization rules. Then she strongly suggested that they proceed at top speed to help their comrades in other locations, who were even in worse trouble than them.
Next on the agenda, Naero and her task force intercepted fleeing elements of numerous HFM fleets three days later, deeper into another direction within the Unknown Regions.
Many of these retreating HFM ships were badly damaged.
A large number of alien vessels matching the initial descriptions and preliminary scans of the Astalarian Imperial Naval warships quickly approached. They came on in good order and spoiling for a fight.
The HFM seemed to cultivate such a reaction.
From what the GSA learned from the HFM survivors, the Astalarian Navy, with superior numbers, had shattered forty HFM fleets with relative ease.
They currently pursued the survivors with the full intent of wiping them out for their arrogance.
Naero attempted to open channels with this formidable new species of near humans.
She had no desire to war with them, unless there was no other way.
Again and again, the Alliance fell back, holding their formations. But they avoided making direct contact.
The Astalarians made no response.
They just kept coming.
“I’m going to try to make direct contact,” Naero told Kali and Khai. Protect the fleets at all costs.”
“Be careful, my heart,” Khai said with a smile.
“Always, my soul.”
Naero flashed directly onto the bridge of the Astalarian flagship.
First she scanned their minds and gained their language. Then she spoke to them in it. “I am an ambassador of the Galactic Sentient Alliance. We are in no way associated with the HFM. I have come to speak with you and your leaders to resolve our differences peacefully. There is no reason for hostilities between us.”
She had already shielded herself against most normal attacks.
Then deck cannons and autogun fire slammed into her shields.
Naero compensated to absorb their intense fire.
The Astalarian admiral approached her slowly. “Our message shall be a crushing defeat of your forces to those foolish enough to have sent you and these others. Take that warning to your leaders!”
“You are making a grave political and strategic mistake, Admiral. Let us talk first, before there is any further loss of life. We can always resort to combat later, if need be. If you insist.”
“It is you who made the error, invader. You sent these dogs of yours into our regions to pick a fight and lay claim to what is ours, and then conveniently show up in force to make your war seem like our fault. But you have grossly miscalculated, because we remain far more numerous than you.”
“Please understand this. Your numbers will not matter,” Naero told him
The admiral smiled. “We shall see. All forces…attack!”
Naero sent a Cosmic pulse throughout the Astalarian flagship. She killed no one, but she stunned nearly everyone on board, hundreds of people. They would not wake for hours.
She spared the admiral. “Please, call off this battle,” she told him. “Call a truce, Admiral. We simply want to negotiate.”
Then she vanished, blinking from ship to ship, until she had stunned the crews on board all of the Astalarian vanguard warships within a matter of seconds.
That blunted the forefront of their assault and caused great confusion.
The attackers still had other plans, however.
Another large formation of Astalarian warships uncloaked behind Naero’s task force, putting the GSA at what would appear to be a grave disadvantage.
Even as the Astalarians opened fire, they were confounded by the Wellington Irregulars, who also uncloaked, and swept through them at close range, all batteries blazing.
A few Astalarian ships exploded and were lost, but the overall intent was to dismay and disable, not destroy those vessels.
Most were taken out of the fight within minutes.
Together, Naero’s task force and her reserves quickly enveloped the other Astalarian fleets and held them at bay.
Naero returned to the Admiral on the listing flagship.
He finally offered to discuss the situation at hand over the next several standard hours.
Once a preliminary non-aggression pact with Astalarian Empire was signed, Naero departed once more, heading off to deal with the next HFM debacle.
Naero’s GSA task forces had already been warned about the vaunted power of the Voga Raiders.
She fully intended to put that power to the test.
18
They traveled for the next ten standard days, establishing secret wyrmhole relays and baiting traps for the legendary pirates.
Those traps led to scores of running battles and fire fights up in the black.
Time and time again, Naero and Khai, the champions with them, and their fleets sprang into action, leaping from battle zone to battle zone.
By the end of that time, the GSA had destroyed some four hundred Voga pirate ships, severely degrading the brigands in the sectors they passed through.
Many of those latest Voga warships had actually been captured from the hapless HFM, their crews taken and sold into slavery.
Tracing those slaves led Naero to three secret pirate homeworlds, worlds that the Voga Raiders had also enslaved and taken over, just within the past few years.
Numerous fresh pleas for help came from those worlds, but until recently, the raiders had been too numerous and powerful for anyone in those isolated regions to challenge their tyranny.
Naero geared up her ground forces, and the troops of the Irregulars to liberate those three worlds.
Om provided a preliminary assessment from the spyfixers.
The pirates all wallow in their own vices and corruption, based around the few starports on each world that they maintain their strangleholds on. They control who comes and goes into and around those systems. They have degenerated into little more than petty warlords squabbling among each other. These planets have all become lawless, failed states.
We’ll be changing all of that very shortly, Om.
First the GSA ground forces would sneak in and hit hard. Fast moving armies from the Irregulars, spearheaded by GSA Marines would catch the debauched warlords and their goons sleeping off another night of revelry.
Once that all began, the cloaked GSA fleets would sweep the raider fleets from their orbits above before they even knew what hit them.
The three ground campaigns initiated as planned.
Naero and Poly rode down with their GSA 11th Marine Division and Irregular General Khammal Jasper Guglielmo’s 4th Division Zouaves.
The later were a rare, flashy, and colorful lot. They sported, blue, green, and gold, old Terran style uniforms, pantaloons, sashes, turbans, and tasseled fezzes worn over their sleek black combat armo
r and helmets. Their uniforms harkened back to an ancient, bygone historical age, but they still fought with the latest tek.
Most Zouave units were proud, elite, and moved at the quick step with a certain swagger. The 4th Division Emerald Tygers were no exception to that rule. These were veteran troops from many conflicts, who knew well the business of war.
Jasper, as Naero knew the general, was a large flamboyant tall man with ruddy skin, brown eyes, and huge mustachios whose curled ends were capped in gold. His long green military great coat was decorated in gold brocade, and a golden energy scimitar hung from his green and gold sash, along with a large gold-plated auto-blaster pistol on his opposite hip in an ornate holster.
This amazing character would have made a fine warlike sultan back on Old Terra in forgotten ages past. But he took in combat data via his headset and visor array from the slender battlecomp and gravwing combo strapped to his back. A guard of two score fearless Zouaves ringed him at intervals, scanning and watching the staging area for many klicks all around with their helmet tech.
Jasper usually grinned at her, told her how beautiful she was, and how that she should leave Khai and become one of his wives.
Naero smiled back and regretfully declined.
Today they planned their order of battle.
“Naero, your fearsome, phantom Marines will strike the enemy lines and disrupt their command and control centers in ten standard minutes. I would not want to be those brigands right now. After those targets have all been eliminated, then we’ll move in to seize this starport. The same thing action is being coordinated at all six of the other starports held by the enemy. By dawn, we should be in full control of Gavarro-2.”
“Excellent news, Jasper. Let’s see it done. Please let us know where we can assist your forces tonight. I’m sure these pirates will have a few surprises for us. They usually do.”
“I’m sure of that also. Glad to have you with us, N. I’ll send you, Poly, and your reps in when that happens.”
Naero also had a strike force of six hundred of her finest Shetanna reps ready in reserve.
“Glad to help,” Poly added.
“What about the other planets, Sekeesha-2 and Yotal-1?” Jasper asked.
Naero nodded. “Same overall strategy on both systems. Khai and Janner are with Jaer, Bodii, and Fancy and their armies on Sekeesha-2. Baeven and Jia are with Houston and Mo and their forces on Yotal-1. We take the starports by storm and surprise and finish off the pirates thereafter. Alphonse and our fleets will duke it out up in the black. Not many of these pirates are going to get away, but some might. In any case, their corrupt hold on these regions will be broken.”
Things went badly for the Voga Raiders from the start.
But the pirates turned out to be not only tricky, but extremely well-prepared and resourceful. They hurled everything they could against their foes.
They had never encountered any elite force as lethal as the Spacer Marines, who could adapt on the fly against anything sent against them and keep driving.
No ground force in the universe struck harder or with such ferocious precision.
The Voga Raiders initiated waves of varied defenses around each starport.
These defenses took the form of large units of pirate and mercenary troops that had been stationed and hidden in the surrounding hills and mountains, complete with artillery, tanks, and air support. Then vast numbers of hunter-seeker smart mines popped up almost everywhere.
Naero sent in spyfixers to negate the latter, or even better, turn them against the pirates.
Units of warbots, automeks, and drone troops attacked from numerous tactical vantage points. The Voga were nothing, if not inventive, hyper violent, and destructive.
Enemy warships swooped in, configured to fight in ground attack mode.
The pirates resorted to crashing smaller captured starships into Naero’s forces, and activating the jump drives right before impact for maximum shock and damage.
The pirates even unleashed hordes of captured Ejjai freeze troops wearing mind control helmets or collars.
Throughout the starports themselves, the raiders took more hostages, threatening to kill them. They also strapped small children to themselves, front and back to work as human shields.
When it looked as if the liberators were about to seize an area or city, the raiders also attempted to set off atomics and other illegal genocide devices.
Naero’s spyfixers barely detected and neutralized these devices in the nick of time.
As the complex battle continued to flare in several directions, the liberators found their hands full with a very real and expanding fight. They were also quickly outnumbered, much more so than they had originally expected.
The pirates fought for their lives and strove to exact a very high price before they went down. These professional killers had apparently planned for such a day for years, setting up multiple, overlapping defense units and systems.
They must have known that eventually someone powerful would come along and try to burn them out.
Clearly they had no intention of going down quietly.
Naero sent Poly racing out to eliminate any warbots, tanks, and meks. Jasper could also direct them toward any trouble spots in the battle, or enemy hard points as needed.
She split up the bulk of her reps and sent them to dozens of hot spots.
As for herself, Naero launched up into the sky to take down any pirate warships, sky forces, and ground support units that she could engage.
A pirate heavy cruiser and two destroyers pounded a unit of unlucky Zouaves, shredding their unit shields and sending them scrambling for cover. She noticed once again that these were HFM warships that had been captured and refitted by the pirates to the increase their power.
Naero phazed through the heavy cruiser from stem to stern, leaving behind uncloaking Cosmic blast orbs.
The crippled vessel crashed down a like burning hill itself onto nearby enemy positions, completely engulfing all within range in flames. The resulting explosion caused even more calamity and destruction.
With her Ur-Metal blades she summoned a vast spinning wheel of golden Cosmic force. She used that gigantic blade to slice through the retreating destroyer on her left.
The warship broke up and exploded over the mountains beneath it.
The final vessel and its crew had seen enough and sped away from her at top speed.
Naero cast her blazing wheel of energy at the vessel, and brought the destroyer down off in the distance. She detonated those energies with but a thought, just to be sure.
Pirate batteries zeroed in on her and unleashed volley after volley against her from several directions. They pummeled her at close range.
She focused on shielding herself, but constant heavy fire knocked her around so consistently that neither she nor Om could focus enough to phaze or flash away.
They took a concerted pounding.
If her shields went down, even she could be vaporized by such an intensity of direct and indirect fire.
Poly and liberator starfighters above her swept in to attack and strafe the multiple enemy batteries, eliminating some of their rapid fire.
Naero broke off finally and flashed away, forced to regen for a few moments.
Jasper cut in. “Naero, this is an emergency! The pirates are threatening to kill millions of frozen civies that they have packed into a nearby stadium and several large warehouses scattered about. They are not bluffing and are calling for us to surrender. We cannot do that, but neither can enough of our people secure these hostages in time. Can you or Poly do anything to help us out? This is about to get very costly for the natives.”
“We’ll do what we can, Jasper. Poly! You heard all of that. You’re with me! I’ll send my fixers and available reps in first to neutralize most of the explosives and any genocide devices. You help my Marines and Jasper’s Zouaves take out the bulk of their forces, ASAP.”
Poly nodded her black-green mantid head in her
towering Cosmic battle form. “Will do, but there are large numbers of the enemy, N. We can’t manage all of that at once, N. We’re going to take some losses, among the civies as well.”
“I know. Keep it to a minimum, where possible.”
That remained a major problem. Their foes were still too numerous, and the helpless hostages were simply too many and too spread out at too many locations. These pirates were diabolic planners.
First the genocide devices, then the many improvised demolition charges. Her spyfixers and reps raced to neutralize them all, but they could not reach them all.
Some bombs cooked off and detonated nonetheless, taking out both friend and foe. The pirates were not above blowing themselves up in order to take many innocents down with them.
With her third eye wide open, Naero could see what was about to happen. A chain reaction of powerful explosions was going to murder millions of the hostages.
And there wasn’t much that the fixers, reps, or even her brave conventional forces could do to prevent that. “Get our people out, Om. Have them pull back to these rally points and hold the line there.”
Naero made a quick decision and gathered all of the Cosmic energy that she could at that moment. It was the only way to save the most lives.
If she failed, tens of millions would die.
I have to give it my all in about five seconds, Om. It’s going to take everything we have. Hold back a little power to catch us with when I black out and drop. Don’t let us fall into enemy hands.”
“Go, N. Do it!”
She positioned herself for maximum effect and unleashed waves of mass stun fields. They washed over a target area the size of a megacity, between fifty to one hundred kilometers out into the distance in a rough diameter, broken only by terrain and tall buildings, pyramids, and domes.
She would stun both the pirates and any conscious hostages or human shields altogether. The frozen hostages would be saved, but not affected by the stunning waves.
Such a widespread, selective effort drained her almost completely.
Naero's Valor Page 19
