Naero's Valor

by Mason Elliott

  The explosion from the attack kicked us out of that sphere, N. You’ve reduced by several orders of magnitude. In a way, we’re lucky you did. We could not have endured another such assault. Studying all related data scans. This is something quite new. Give me a moment.

  We don’t have time, Om. Three entire enemy freeze troop bases are still pouring out their forces. We must take them all out or they’ll overwhelm us and our allies. I’ll try tapping again from the next sphere magnitude down from where we were. You stay alert and try to detect any those further hyper beam attacks directed against us.

  In the next proximity sphere Naero could still tap the energies she needed, but doing so was much more difficult. She stood only three thousand kilometers high in this scaled down dimension.

  She focused and destroyed first one enemy moon base, and then another.

  Only one remained.

  Naero almost sensed the next enemy attack.

  Om cried out in her mind.

  Flash out!

  Om’s warning almost came a few nanoseconds too late.

  The same concentrated Darkforce ray lashed out at them.

  How was such a powerful beam even possible?

  No! The Darkforce hyper beam was actually being channeled and focused through the higher spheres themselves.

  Even as Naero fled, another shot pierced both of her legs in her energy being form.

  Om severed them at mid-thigh, barely making good their escape from the resulting giga-explosion in less than a blink.

  Naero blacked out for a few instants, blasted out into the in between once more.

  Retreat and regen immediately, Naero. Our energy being form is badly damaged.

  No, Om. You’ve sealed off the damage. I’ll recover soon enough. We still need to destroy that last base. I’ll go down two more spheres and use some more of the tapping techniques that Baeven showed me. We can still do this. We must. Stay with me!

  I’m always with you, but we’ve been lucky too many times so far. This hyper beam can kill us, even with our reaction time, and you blazing with Cosmic force. Don’t you see? That’s how you keep attracting its wielder’s attention. You’re like an energy beacon right before you attack! That’s how you keep making us a target. These attacks zero in on your pumped up energies. The ray originates somewhere out in the deep space of the Beta Quadrant. It focuses through the exact sphere we are in like using a lens and strikes incredibly fast. We can barely avoid it!

  Frost it, Om. I’ll jump into the next sphere, make the final attack, and then you flash us out a few nanoseconds later. Focus everything on detecting and evading another attack. Get ready.

  Now!

  They went in, Naero less than eight hundred kilometers high in this sphere. She damaged herself somewhat more inside, by tapping the heavy duty energies she needed.

  A serious regen session was not going to be optional for her severely crippled energy form in the aftermath.

  She and Om sensed more incoming attacks even as she unleashed hers on the final enemy base, taking it out.

  Multiple hyper beam attacks came at them this time, rapid fire. Not just one ray, but several.

  No way to avoid them all.

  They had one chance.

  Om flashed them away from certain death within less than a breath of SpaceTime.

  It was so close, that Naero barely felt the first burning touches of four of the beams just beginning to bore into her head and torso.

  Naero shrank down through the spheres to her normal size back on Haidel-3, completely depleted.

  She fell like a meteor.

  Naero plummeted down into the dense forest near the still raging battles, very weak.

  She went immaterial just before they cratered into the ground.

  Naero’s initial regen took several long agonizing minutes, the pain keeping her from blacking out.

  Om, we’re almost helpless. Can those strange beams reach us here?

  I don’t think so. They seem to be specifically keyed to the higher Cosmic spheres. They can’t focus on us at lower levels. I’m just going through all of the data we’ve collected. Those attacks were…more than unusual. Actually, they don’t make any logical sense, on a magnitude that should be impossible.

  As long as we’re safe for now, let’s solve that mystery later. At least we eradicated those bases. Get us back in the game down here, Om. Our friends still need our help.

  Haisha! Are you kidding me? We should be on a medbed with our healer friends going over us!

  Get us back into this fight, Om!

  They could not regen her energy being form or take one of her others, no matter what they tried. Naero finally transformed back into her physical form.

  They still struggled to regen, even with her back to being simple flesh and blood.

  Naero closed her eyes and sang Song of Making #8.

  That was the most constructive thing she could think of under the circumstances.

  ANALETHAR THA VAE JA NESHEL KUU VAENA! KU SHENAL ZEMBAKAR HALISHIDO HAVANU BEVENI. RATHELAN ANAVA CHOHAELA NESHEL KUU VAENA!

  She finally tapped into Haidel-3’s K-Class star and formed four Ultrium starfighter wings, complete with rep pilots in a matter of mere minutes.

  Naero directed two wings to assist Baeven and her fleets up in the black to prevent any other dropship forces from reaching the surface.

  The other two wings she sent directly over the battlefield in close ground support.

  Our regen only stands at twenty-three percent, Naero. Your other reps have gone on to attack the enemy mass driver fields. Those batteries will be destroyed. But they have already ceased firing, even though they could continue doing so.

  Good enough, Om. Keep our regen going. At least I can still help out on the ground at this rate. Locate our friends.

  Jia is close at hand, still attacking the enemy’s substantial artillery batteries at these coordinates. She’s making good progress, but there are so many. Damn it, Naero. You’re still far from a hundred percent. You’re weak, and vulnerable. Why push it?

  Even down like this, I’m still way better than anything the enemy has on surface, Om. We can still make a difference. Let’s ride!

  The longer they allowed the battle to continue, the more defenders would die.

  Naero drew her Ur-metal short swords, went into stealth mode, and flashed over to where Jia fought the enemy big gun emplacements. She opened her third eye.

  A third of the enemy batteries had already been neutralized.

  Flames consumed them.

  Jia attacked in stealth mode on her gravwing from up in the sky. She dropped timed ordnance and microbombs onto key batteries or ammo dumps. She was long gone before everything cooked off.

  The resulting chaos and confusion blazed spectacularly.

  Enemy mind slave forces poured anti-aircraft fire and small arms fire almost in every direction out of their frustrated terror.

  They had no idea how their batteries kept exploding. What was attacking them and how? Naero could sense all of that in their minds and intercepted it over their links.

  Good. Let the enemy wonder. Let them panic. While Jia hit them from up high, Naero would decimate them at the ground level.

  She was barely able to assume her lowest level energy form and started at the opposite end of the line of artillery positions to add to the enemy’s confusion. She raced through battery after battery, running and leaping at up to seventy kilometers an hour.

  Naero sprayed multiple Cosmic attacks and energy bombs behind her.

  They didn’t go off all at once.

  Any enemy troops that got in her way melted into goo.

  Naero and Jia sprinkled exploding death all throughout the enemy positions, taking out the artillery that kept pounding the hills in the battle zones where the defenders maneuvered and were entrenched.

  Perhaps the two champions did their work too well.

  Had there been stores of ammunition they hadn’t noticed?


  The entire crest of the distant high bluffs and the mountain range itself exploded, well beyond anything Naero expected. The granite cliffs broke apart and crumbled.

  Naero paused at that exact moment, feeling a bit woozy from her efforts as her regen broke off.

  Ever since those strange hyper beams struck her, everything about her had been off.

  The next thing she knew she plummeted down into darkness, countless tons of burning wreckage, rock, and debris piling in on top of her energy form, threatening to smash her.

  She tried to go immaterial again, but this time she was too weak.

  Naero! We’re being crushed, you idiot. Flashing us out!

  Naero came to under the stars, watching the lights of the ongoing naval battle up above them in the black.

  She gasped, breathing hard. She had lost so much life force energy that she had once again reverted back to her original physical form.

  This also meant that she had been very close to death.

  Enemies approaching. Very weak. Systems damaged by the blast. No stealth. Gravwing…inoperative.

  Naero rose up, staggered to her feet, and stood her ground. She activated her Ur-metal energy blades.

  Swords working just fine, Om. There’ll be at least three more attack waves before the enemy stops swarming at us all. We’ll have to hold out against them or find somewhere to hide.

  This current batch has locked on, N. Here they come!

  Hundreds of enemy shock troops closed in around her; she could sense that much still.

  Gravtank battalion waves inbound, Naero! Ten standard minutes.

  Naero engaged troops in combat armor, four and five at a time head on, up close. Her blades slashed cut and stabbed through metal, plasteel, and flesh.

  Ur-metal sliced through anything that existed in the known universe. Nothing could resist her blades as long as she had the moxie to wield them, not even energy shields. Naero kicked, wheeled, and slew anything near her in a maelstrom of golden, razor sharp death.

  She cut a four meter high mutant Ejjai hulk into pieces where it stood, like felling a tree.

  The skull of Sangen mek general and her armored mek helmet pulverized like a melon beneath the might of Naero’s stomping feet.

  A rifle team of Nexor soldiers, blasters roaring, fell to her blades as she whirled and scythed through them in flashing arcs of incredible speed.

  A Xaxattaran battle android mutant commander led another enemy unit against her.

  Naero sliced it up into exploding sausage.

  The enemy continued to close in.

  Naero and Om slew them by the dozen, by the score, moving from growing body pile to yet another.

  The furious enemy slew each other more in their rage than they inflicted any harm on her, flinging grenades and charges that only took out one another.

  Naero kept moving and fighting, but she and Om both knew that she depleted her fading energies as she went.

  She desperately needed to hide and regen, but where? With her energies this low, she couldn’t star tap, and her usual full array of Cosmic powers was limited or not available to her at all.

  What had those strange rays from the attack in the higher spheres done to her? She wasn’t recovering as fast. Something was definitely wrong with her.

  Hundreds of enemy troops, meanwhile, still hunted her.

  Battalions of enemy gravtanks closed in.

  She could hear the hum and whine of them approaching, while she only grew weaker.

  Naero and her spyfixers quickly collected weapons and explosives from her dead foes, teknomancing what she could to serve her immediate needs.

  Not enough time to set traps, but she and her fixers could lay a few mines to slow her enemies down.

  The blasts would also tell her which direction they were coming from.

  A cave, N. I’ve located a network of natural caves that exists about a kilometer underground, leading from one patch of these foothills to the next.

  Those caves could buy us precious time.

  But the Ejjai mutants might still track her by scent, if need be.

  Let’s get down there Om. I’m losing it. I need to sit down and regen.

  Naero hid deep within the caves, too weak to do much of anything else.

  30

  An hour nearly passed, before the enemy hunters made it down that far, coming at Naero down in those caves.

  By then she recovered enough that she could tap and transport out close by and make a break for it.

  Explosions from more mines took care of her stalkers in the caves.

  Yet something was remained horribly wrong with her.

  What was going on? She was still so weak. She could not heal properly.

  She made it a few hundred meters before she ran right into four Nexorian scout tanks and about two dozen support troops.

  She cut down troops in her path, leaped upon the first tank, and stabbed all the crew that she could reach. Then she tossed an activated microgrenade inside the turret, before leaping onto the second tank.

  Small arms blaster fire went off everywhere as tank one exploded.

  Tank four swung its main gun around to blast her.

  They succeeded in destroying tank two. Naero had already leaped onto tank three by that time, killed some of the crew, and left behind another grenade.

  Then she hit tank four. She sliced the energy cannon barrel off and destroyed two autoguns. The crew tossed out grenades at her, but she spun them away and sliced off two hands.

  Microbombs flung into tank four finished it off.

  She went after the remaining troops in the forest, cutting them down in rapid order.

  An entire gravtank division encircled her and prepared to light up her position.

  Naero meant to leap straight up right before they fired, but she stumbled and almost fainted.

  Jia flashed in, scooped up Naero, and flashed out right as the tanks opened fire. Om had sent out a distress call with only instants to spare.

  Jia’s shields endured the first point blank cannon blasts.

  Naero forced herself to shake it off and keep fighting.

  They fought, raced, and flashed from hill to hill, taking on the entire division.

  Naero’s starfighters above them zeroed in on the enemy attack waves that swirled in around the two Alliance Champions.

  Jia and Naero shot off in one direction. All of the enemy forces in the vicinity gave chase.

  The two GSA Champions turned at bay up a large rocky hillside.

  Just as the tanks opened up on that slope, Poly ripped into the enemy ranks from the rear and the west.

  Hippolynna, warrior princess of the Shai Mantids now fought as a fully trained Alliance Champion.

  In her final battle mantess form, she towered fifteen meters high and fought like the behemoth she was. Her carapace had shifted to dark, flat black, with bright pulsing, glowing green highlights, and a fierce blazing ferocity in her glowing eyes.

  Wide concussive beams lanced out from her eyes, slicing through gravtanks, meks, and ranks of armored enemy mind slave troops.

  She smashed and slashed through more of the enemy at the same time with her gigantic claws, flinging ravaged tanks and pieces of meks and troops in several directions.

  Poly rampaged through their packed ranks, heavily shielded, ignoring the many attacks that struck her.

  She focused on destroying the large number of tanks and meks assembled for battle in that location.

  From their vantage point up the rocky hillside, Naero and Jia zapped separate tanks and meks that Poly missed or could not reach.

  From the skies, Naero’s starfighters swooped in on ground support bombing and strafing runs.

  The final waves of enemy reinforcements poured into the area, as the battle reached its crescendo.

  The enemy objective shifted to an all-out attempt to wipe out the three GSA Champions.

  Pitted against so many foes, even with Poly fighting like a veritable whirlw
ind, the issue still seemed in doubt. Three battered champion warriors could not withstand the sheer concentrated firepower of several entire armies forever.

  A ring of fire erupted around the outer circle of the enemy forces, immolating and hemming them in.

  The Wellington Irregulars unloaded their remaining artillery pieces, tank, and autoguns directly into the foe in overlapping waves of fire that walked in.

  Following that crippling barrage the battered defenders turned the tide.

  Their last few meks, armored soldiers, and grav troops came on firing and hurling grenades and demo charges.

  Some of the enemy fought and died where they stood, becoming completely overrun. Then much of the very last of the fighting turned hand to hand.

  “Try to regen,” Jia advised Naero, who leaned back against the base of the rocky cliff, breathing hard. “N, you’re so weak. Why are your energies down so low?”

  Om tried to explain.

  Then Naero spotted danger and pointed out at Bodii and her fighters with one hand close by. “Look! Get us over there!”

  The Iceni Queen and her fighters pushed forwards, fighting hard.

  Concealed enemy forces sprang up from among the dead and went on the attack from the rear. An old Ejjai trick. Naero knew it well.

  They meant to cut down Bodii and murder her from behind.

  Numerous advanced weapons morphed out of Jia’s Ultrium body and put out a blistering array of fire, focusing on the hidden enemy meks and tanks that arose.

  Jia flashed Naero in, interposing her between the defenders and the charging attackers.

  Naero wheeled in behind Bodii and barely fended off the brunt of several attacks that would have slain their friend outright.

  She fought the foe face to face, and toe to toe.

  Her whirling blades cut the enemy in half and severed heads.

  Crushing spin kicks sent them flying a hundred meters away or more, ploughing through their comrades.

  The Iceni Queen sliced with sword and blaster pistol ready in front of her. A glance back took in their fresh peril sweeping at them from the rear.

  She cried out in Iceni battle code. Half of her forces immediately came about to take up the fight as it bore down at them suddenly from that direction.