Naero's Valor

by Mason Elliott

  27

  The GSA went into closed debate back at the fringes of the Alpha Quadrant. They needed to carefully decide what their next moves should be.

  All of their resources and assets were in building modes, and spread incredibly thin nearly everywhere.

  These planning sessions covered vital, important decisions.

  But Khai told Naero that he could cover for her during the bulk of those discussions.

  Before any other crucial missions could be assigned to her and the Alliance Champions, Naero split back to Kalathar to quickly check on Shetharra and her ongoing Chaos Wisdom training once again.

  Naero felt thankful once more that she had an entire system set up so that she could watch over her little duck’s progress, whenever possible. But she also had to make sure that she didn’t interfere in any way. If she got in the way at all, the Mystics would certainly shut her out of the process.

  At least things finally began settling down after the “Incident.” The isolated Mystic community was still mostly in shock after the unexpected destruction of the Sologene System and its training world.

  Naero’s quick visit also made it possible for her to see Master Gaviok, her great abani. Naero relished that, even if he went straight to the obvious as soon as they met.

  “Sologene-1 and its star were completely destroyed during the course of your oldest daughter’s very first trial,” he noted. “As astonishing as that feat was, nothing can be done now but learn from that experience after the fact. Losing that facility, however, has been a great setback for all of our plans for all of our adepts. What a pity.”

  Naero sighed. “I know; everyone feels that way. It could be years before we can construct another.”

  It was not known how long it would actually take to replace such a valuable training system once again.

  “Shetharra says that she’s already exploring some way to speed up reconstruction of another one using the Songs of Making. She felt very bad about destroying it, after the fact.”

  Gaviok grinned at her words. “Normally the Mystics would laugh at such a suggestion. Yet with Shetharra, they do not know what to believe any longer. She just might be able to pull it off. I’m glad our light child made a full recovery. I can’t wait to send her off to Masters Jo and Tree. She confounds me each day, Naero. I feel like she’s teaching me more than I am teaching her! It is very taxing. I’m doing everything I can to try to challenge her.”

  Naero let out a deep breath. At least Shetharra’s survival was no longer an issue. Her miraculous Urtomium dampening suit continued to work perfectly. There had been no further mishaps.

  As a matter of fact, Shetharra’s armor opened up an entirely new field of study in itself. No one had ever studied Urtomium before because it had never existed before.

  Every Mystic or tek who examined this hyper alloy became obsessed with the miracle nature of this advanced material and its properties and functions.

  Entire teams of researchers lined up, waiting for Shetharra to take some down time or rest, so that they could study her veil.

  For all intents and purposes, Urtomium was indestructible to all tek and energies that they knew of. That was just one of its highly fascinating capabilities.

  Then Naero and Khai explained to the Mystics and the Alliance Tek experts like Ty and Alala that there was absolutely no way to get any more Urtomium, or to manufacture it in small or large quantities.

  That pretty much ended the direct interest in the hyper alloy. What good was Urtomium if they could not get or make any more of it?

  The dampening suit functioned at optimal levels and in any sphere. If and when Shetharra attempted to do something over the top, even for her, the suit would glow very brightly, pulse with Cosmic energy being shunted away, and then—nothing would happen.

  This did, however, keep her from either exploding or imploding, with extremely negative consequences for those in her immediate proximity.

  It did not keep her powers from continuing to grow, but now she couldn’t use them inadvertently to obliterate herself or those around her.

  Again, many of the Mystics were incredibly grateful for all of that, and not just her parents.

  The sum total of Shetharra’s miraculous powers and talents still remained quite beyond spectacular to any known scale.

  As Naero watched her oldest daughter continually meditating, practicing, and going through her training exercises, she felt re-assured things were finally going in the right direction.

  Two familiar voices suddenly squealed with glee and then popped in on either side of Naero.

  A pair of young cuties with long red hair and freckles flanked her and hugged her very closely.

  Naero embraced her young twin cousins back and they all laughed together.

  Aunt Sleak’s girls, Anya and Nuvi were also hard at work on their Mystic training among the adepts.

  “N! N! N!” they exclaimed in unison.

  “My sweeties!” Naero replied. “How are you?”

  “I’m great,” Anya said. “Did you know that Shetharra quickened our talents again just a few days ago? Haisha, we’re more powerful and stronger than ever.”

  Naero blinked. “No. I didn’t. You guys were so strong already.”

  “I can transport out to a hundred parsecs in my new energy form,” Nuvi boasted. “It was easy. Anya can already transport an entire battleship. I can only do a heavy cruiser for right now.”

  “Shetharra told us we were going to become something called ‘Dreamers,’ now,” Anya added. “She told us that there are a bunch of these special songs that she wants to teach us.”

  “Once we learn most of them,” Nuvi said, “She wants us to start teaching them to all of the Mystic children among the Forty-Nine Clans.”

  Anya raised her hands to the stars expansively. “All of us will teach them to the Alliance Mystic younglings, and then she says that a new age of light shall begin. And we shall help lead it!”

  Anya and Nuvi hugged each other and smiled, laughing and speaking in unison once more. “We shall all become the ‘New Dreamers’ of the Future!”

  Naero laughed until she sobbed. “Yes, you will,” she told them, through all of her tears of joy. “All of you shall indeed become the Dreamers of all our tomorrows. And we shall make sure that all of your tomorrows are there for you. I swear it, by the blood of our mighty people that makes us strong!”

  Naero spent a few days thereafter working with her young cousins, and teaching them all she could. Shetharra could not always join them.

  They learned to star tap higher level Cosmic energy flows safely, how to take stronger energy being forms, and explore the lower spheres with both Naero’s and Shetharra’s wonderful assistance.

  Their teachers all warned them away from the highest spheres for the time being. Even the High Masters had not learned to reach them yet. But the GSA and its champions had no counter for that deadly hyper beam.

  The twins learned so very much. They learned it all quickly, and with ease. Having excellent guides made a huge difference, plus on their own they were already very talented and smart.

  Now they could go forth to instruct others about what they had learned.

  Shetharra seemed quite capable of quickening all of the young Mystic adepts that she came into contact with. She quickly became their leader.

  “Mom, I’m going to start taking them into my copy of the KDM that is within me. They need to start mastering the Songs of Making. My Seven will help us. Of course I’ll keep you and the masters updated on our progress.”

  “As long as the Seven agree to it, that’s fine. I’m sure they’ll protect the KDM better than I ever could. Are you enjoying working with High Master Gaviok?”

  “He has a great love for me and you, and that makes things very nice and easy. I know that Master Gaviok worries about being able to challenge me enough, but he’s an excellent teacher and he doesn’t even realize it. He helps me see things in new ways, in ways that non-hum
ans do, and that is so valuable.

  “I like studying Chaos Wisdom, although it can be difficult. If you take it in the wrong directions, it can be very destructive. It could make you mean and indifferent to others. Gaviok is not like that at all. In his own way, he has a bigger heart than anyone I have ever met. He can be extremely tough, even vicious at times. But there is a good reason for everything he tries to teach us. The universe itself can be very cold and harsh at times. We need to fully understand that. Thing are what they are.”

  Many of the other young prodigies blossomed and flowered right along with her and the twins, but Shetharra was clearly the first, and the mightiest among them, even with the limitations of her Urtomium dampening suit.

  Anya and Nuvi also helped lead the way. Shetharra had many duties of her own to attend to as an adept and could not be everywhere. They often filled in as her seconds. The twins also grew in wisdom and power with each passing day, as did many others among the young Dreamers who developed side by side with them.

  Shetharra continued to surpass them all.

  *

  Naero and Khai went in secret and disguised to a meeting in the Alpha Quadrant with many planetary leaders from the unaligned worlds. Intel just found out about a series of such meetings going on in many places scattered throughout thousands of lander worlds.

  Baeven and his people stayed with their old lander starship next door at the starport. “I’m gonna take a nap,” he said with a yawn. “Let me know if anything exciting happens with the landers.” No that they expected that.

  Naero knew that her uncle was trying to make a joke. She and Khai still wanted to find out what was going on at all of these meetings. And if there was a way to encourage the unaligned worlds to join the GSA, it still might be worth the stopover.

  They posed as agents and mouthpieces from the HFM. The real HFM people weren’t very involved in this region yet. In truth, their string of setbacks had curtailed many of their recruitment efforts for the time being.

  Some attitudes were changing.

  The many lander counterparts grew more and more fearful about all of the data flowing in about the many fierce threats that abounded out in the other three quadrants. That’s why these low-key or secret fact-finding sessions were taking place throughout many of the unaligned worlds.

  Even reckless colonials weren’t stupid. Nobody wanted to charge out into the black just to die.

  By now, many landers knew that the HFM had suffered greatly in their first blundering forays into the Unknown. But these unaligned worlds still feared placing their trust, and the fates of their systems into the hands of Spacers, who more or less spearheaded the GSA.

  They trusted the other allied alien sentients even less than that.

  Naero and Khai could secretly blend in as a couple of low level HFM recruiters and negotiators.

  They met up with a few hundred lander representatives in a dumpy old hotel auditorium near one of the spaceports on Jendar-4. The smell of bad caffette drinks, and stale, bland local pastries filled the air.

  But the way the landers scarfed it all down, you would have thought that these meager offerings were a sumptuous banquet.

  Various speakers took the stage, reporting about any number of situations in the Beta and Delta Quadrants. About half of it was kicked around and turn out to be speculation and conjecture.

  Naero and Khai got their turns to speak. She had used biomancy and her shapechanging abilities to make both of them look like regular landers. Nothing fancy.

  Big green Khai would have been too distracting, and Naero herself was simply too well known. These meetings were all with regular humans.

  The two of them didn’t have to embellish anything; they told the truth. They didn’t tell anyone what to do, but they both spoke at length about some of the threats that existed out there in the Unknown. They backed all of it up with loads of public data that was available to anyone, if they people looked on the Webnet.

  If they went light on the normal HFM recruitment crap, nobody seemed to notice or miss that.

  Like everyone else at the conference, they answered questions after their talks ended. Then the main group broke up into smaller sessions and workshops on different topics in the lesser meeting rooms.

  Naero was actually thinking about her and Khai bugging out early. They had seen about as much as they needed to, and they had done their duty. They couldn’t waste much more of their valuable time on this situation.

  Then something weird happened.

  Naero was on a panel with five other people, in a discussion with a closed room of about two score chairs, only half of them filled with lander world agents.

  They were discussing the HFM encounters with the Voga Raiders. Two big goons came up behind Naero. Other pairs walked up behind some of the other panelists, and grabbed them roughly.

  People shouted in surprise, things like, “Hey, let go of me!” and “What are you doing?” The panelists who did not get grabbed quickly began taping mouths shut with strap tape.

  There were less than thirty people in the room.

  Twenty of them shifted into the forms of creepy G’lothc mindwraith slaves, who fell upon the few terrified lander people in the audience to capture them.

  These creatures took over other sentient beings and covered them with a viscous layer of biomancy slime, charged with Darkforce energy. These insidious mind wraiths took over their hosts minds and bodies, and could also twist them into hideous, monstrous battle forms. They only revealed their forms when needed, and could phaze out, allowing their hosts to look like normal sentients, and blend in.

  Then they would continue to infiltrate an unsuspecting population, and take over anyone they wished when the time was right.

  “Welcome to the service of the G’lothc. Your minds and bodies will be of great use to us in the support of our many coming victories. We will use you to help us take over others, including your families and friends, in order to hide our efforts and keep everyone silent. When we finish with your bodies, all of you useless vermin will suffer and die in torment. Your pitiful lives are meaningless anyway. Better that they should assist in our triumph. Look on helplessly as we destroy all of your worlds, and your entire species.”

  Naero looked up at her captors calmly. “Oh, really?” she said.

  Then her third eye opened.

  The two landers holding her were already too far gone to the effects of wraiths. She couldn’t save them.

  They gasped as she flash burned them into collapsing piles of ash on either side of her.

  The landers she could save Naero stunned. Those who had not been taken over yet, she freed from their bonds.

  She incinerated all of the possessed who were already beyond help. If the wraiths merged with their hosts for too long, there was no going back. A quick death was far better than the agony that the wraiths promised to their unlucky victims.

  Next, she used biomancy and psyonics to carefully separate the mind wraiths from the helpless landers. All of the wraiths she destroyed, with no hesitation. They were evil parasites, twisted by the Darkforce.

  If anything, they were the real vermin. They weren’t even technically living things.

  The surviving landers would have been shocked and horrified if Naero had not stunned them.

  Naero went to check on Khai.

  She linked with Baeven and Company and let them know what was happening.

  The enemy was at work here.

  Her husband was still in his disguise. Khai could not reverse the shapeshifting process without her help, but he was still who and what he was inside.

  Nothing could change that.

  He must have summoned Yii with good reason.

  Naero could sense him and the Cosmic sword up ahead somewhere, outside of the hotel, and racing toward the starport. Weapon fire, blasts, and explosions repeatedly came from that direction.

  The enemy put up a huge fight.

  She followed the path of total destruc
tion that the Mystic Enforcer left in his wake.

  Dozens of piles of bubbling dark green goo dotted a running swath of blasted devastation.

  These were also the remains of yet more enemy mind wraiths, too fused with their hosts to save the landers trapped inside. Yii had that effect on them. If a host could be saved, Yii stunned them with the sword’s powers, and blasted away the actual parasite.

  Crumpled lander bodies lay everywhere to either side.

  At least these poor souls would survive and recover.

  From the looks of things, a large number of the enemy mind wraiths had attempted to jump Khai and many other landers in one of the adjoining ballrooms.

  Naero grinned, imagining their great surprise.

  Enemy weapons and grenades had gone off. The signs of combat stained everything around the area.

  Khai drove them out through the blasted wall of the hotel, and across the city street into the starport.

  The enemy fought and died by the hundreds all along that entire swath of destruction.

  The battle led into a waiting bulk mining ore hauler.

  Khai was inside, still fighting, from the green explosions and detonations that rocked the craft, and broke it up into burning pieces.

  That ship wasn’t going anywhere.

  Lander fire suppression teams converged on the scene, along with local law enforcement.

  She found Khai in one of the big holds that was now torn wide open.

  He had just finished freeing the last lander hosts of the mind wraiths.

  The floor of the hold was covered with stunned lander bodies of many types and ages, even small children. And many more piles of green goo.

  Khai thumbed back at the next hold up ahead of them. “Lots more possessed waiting on the other side of that bulkhead. There must be thousands of mind wraiths in there, just thrown around in piles, waiting to be sent out to take over this world.”

  Naero took a deep breath and steeled herself, gripping her Ur-metal blades tightly in her fists. “Let’s get this over with. All of these poor victims. And we know very well that at least a quarter of them will already be lost. They’ll have to be destroyed.”