Naero's Valor

by Mason Elliott

  Orith, the Adamant spoke next. WE SHALL ALERT YOU ON YOUR PROGRESS AS THE EFFORT CONTINUES. GO NOW, AND DO ALL THAT YOU CAN TO OPPOSE THE GREAT ADVERSARY IN YOUR PRIME MATERIAL PLANE. YOU MUST SURVIVE IN ORDER TO COMPLETE THIS MIGHTY TASK!

  Orean shook her head and clenched her fists. “Honestly, I don’t know if we can hold out as long as you say we must. But we’ll find a way. We always do. We have to.”

  Heno, the Compassionate embraced them both. MIGHTY MOTHER AND DAUGHTER, IF ONLY YOU COULD PERCEIVE THE POTENTIAL THAT WE CLEARLY SEE WITHIN YOU BOTH. EACH OF YOU HAS A DIFFERENT DESTINY. EACH OF YOU SHALL COME INTO YOUR OWN BEFORE YOUR ENDS AND BE FULFILLED. DO NOT DESPAIR.

  “Well, thank you, all of you, for your guidance and wisdom,” Naero told them. “Where would we be without your great help? Surely we would be lost.”

  “We love them for what they are, Momma,” Shetharra said plainly, “and they love us for what we are, and for what we shall yet become.”

  “I just don’t want to think about ends right now, especially if they’ll come to us sooner than normal.”

  This made Elta, the Radiant herself laugh. WHO CAN SAY WHAT SHALL COME TO PASS IN ANY END? EITHER OF YOU MAY TAKE THE NEXT JOURNEY TOMORROW, OR SEE THE LAST MOMENT OF OUR UNIVERSE, BILLIONS OF YEARS HENCE. IF WE HAVE LEARNED ANYTHING ABOUT THE TWO OF YOU, IT IS THAT YOUR AMAZING DESTINIES REMAIN YOURS TO CREATE. NO END IS CERTAIN!

  “We go to battle, against a great and terrible foe,” Orean noted. “You know them well. I understand that we must hold. I just wish that we had more time or help than we do. I wish we weren’t so alone.”

  ALONE? the Word said unto them. For the first time, Orean noted that the Seven had formed a bright and towering circle of light around them both.

  WE, ARE ALWAYS WITH YOU, AND THE GREAT MYSTERY OF ALL THINGS IS EVER PRESENT, THOUGH WE CHOOSE OR FAIL TO SEE ITS FORCE OF WILL AT WORK. WE AND OUR ENERGIES HELP MAKE IT UP, AND WE ARE AN IMPORTANT PART OF IT. IT IS THE BEGINNING AND THE END. IT IS ALL THAT HAS BEEN, ALL THAT IS, AND ALL THAT WILL EVER BE–IN THIS AND EVERY UNIVERSE THAT WILL EVER BE POSSIBLE. ALL THINGS EXIST TO TEST US AND OUR UNIVERSE, AND TO GIVE US THE CHANCE TO BE WHAT IT IS THAT WE CAN BE AND WERE MEANT TO BE.

  HOW CAN YOU THEREFORE BE ALONE? YOU HAVE BEEN MADE MIGHTY, WITH ALL THAT YOU REQUIRE TO FACE THE TRIALS THAT COME BEFORE YOU, WHETHER YOU KNOW THIS TO BE TRUE OR NOT. ALL FREE SENTIENT BEINGS SHALL BE COUNTED AMONG THE MULTITUDES THAT SHALL STAND AS ONE. GO FORTH AND FACE ALL THINGS WITH COURAGE, THEREFORE, NO MATTER THE END, AND SAY NOT THAT YOU ARE ALONE.

  Orean humbly thanked their Seven, embraced her oldest child, and the two of them parted, each to follow the paths unfolding before them.

  34

  The full might of the poised G’lothc attacks finally detonated like massive explosions across all existing fronts, and many new ones, with a horrific abandon that could not be endured by any mortal force of arms.

  It was a feat of miracles simply to spread out, regroup repeatedly, and survive to make a stand and fight again.

  The GSA fell back and mostly pretended to crumble, just as might be expected at first. Maneuvering tactics, however, could only delay the numberless hordes of enemy fleets for so long.

  In certain places the battles shattered and swept some of the defenders away for real. Every fleet could not be careful or quick enough; some were merely unlucky.

  The swarm unleashed by the trio of G’lothc Prime Leaders kept coming, surging, and advancing ever forward.

  What powers could stop, let alone hope to defeat such a massive force?

  The GSA constantly struggled to stave off an inevitable rout.

  Yet somehow many elements of the enemy advance pursued too quickly, stretched out too far ahead, and found themselves swiftly cut off and crushed, time after time as the fighting progressed.

  The GSA front line elements took every possible advantage of the enemy’s overconfident determination and reckless bloodlust. Wherever the foe made mistakes, the Alliance pounced with all of the fury they could muster.

  Countless lethal traps sprang up in the face of the enemy onslaught, and the foe fell into such traps in huge numbers. This happened so much, that the enemy forward movement was repeatedly stalled, confounded, and checked by half.

  Alliance forces in all four galactic quadrants, spearheaded by the Spacer Navy and their allies, barely had the time to bring up concealed forces to hold the line against this vast new enemy offensive.

  The largest naval battle of that age, the greatest in millions of years, quickly expanded on a truly breathtaking galactic scale.

  Yet the defenders knew that it could only be a matter of time before their thin lines broke.

  All the while, in the peerless spheres of the Kexxian Songs of Power, transformed counterparts of Naero and Shetharra worked tirelessly at transforming themselves into full-fledged Dreamers.

  Dreamers who could even the odds in the new Great War.

  All the enlightenment that they gained each moment would slowly accrue, and pass on to their Primes along the way, and in full once the whole learning process ended and they finally re-joined after the SpaceTime time dilations.

  Whatever their surrogates learned or knew, Naero and Shetharra Prime would eventually fully comprehend and be able to apply…in the end.

  If the G’lothc did not slaughter them all before then.

  Which end would reach them first?

  As each day of desperate struggle ticked slowly by, the enlightenment gains were slight and slow to build, if not non-existent.

  Small things changed subtly at first, like dust and pebbles that were the harbingers of a cascade of avalanches.

  Tapping from some of the spheres grew much easier.

  Energies and flows opened to them and became easier to manage at higher levels. Awareness and perception sharpened in many slight ways.

  Then on Day 3 of the war, Naero’s latest batch of replicants could suddenly tap and replicate almost as well as she did. Even Om noted that any functional differences between them had become negligible.

  They could also assume some of Naero Prime’s lower level energy being forms and perform some of her Mystic abilities at those levels. That would be helpful, but they still could not use any of Naero’s higher level abilities, attacks, and skills.

  The Kexx also told Om and her about a Kexxian Dreamer Cosmic technique referred to as syphyng–a more advanced form of splitting. Via syphyng, Naero Prime could physically speak and converse with others through all of her reps at the same time.

  That would indeed be a communications feat. She wondered if she could work out a situation where doing so would prove useful.

  A hundred of her latest reps went out that day to join the fight.

  Many would not return.

  Whenever one of them perished, surrendering her life to save many others, Naero felt their pain and sacrifice very keenly.

  She used syphyng to spread the latest upgrade further out to all of her now near countless population of replicants in an ever-expanding wave of transformation, even though they were all stationed throughout the galaxy.

  Something else had changed with her Cosmic abilities.

  Naero no longer needed Om’s help tabulating and sorting through all of the mass of experiences transmitted from her rep multitudes.

  A portion of her existence was now completely and instantaneously in sync with them. They now shared data, information, and experience at an accelerated level of acute awareness, as needed. Together they automatically filtered out the trivial, the repetitive, and the mundane, also on a much more efficient level.

  Then she discovered that if she wished, she could link–nearly merge–completely with Sharrah, with Kali, or with Neiko, or any of them.

  She no longer needed the less advanced splitting technique. She could see now that that had been an intermediate stepping stone. Her new abilities were far more reaching and precise.

  Naero Prime could merge completely with any of them, anywhere in Galax
y in the flash of an instant, and still be herself, with all of her most powerful abilities.

  She could go anywhere they were in an instant.

  She explained these incredible breakthroughs first to Khai, Baeven, and the other Champions. Within hours they fully prepared to test her new powers out and push them to the limit.

  Klyne and Intel quickly understood that by using this advanced syphyng ability, Naero could flash herself anywhere that she had a rep. She could spread out her crucial assistance to many more locations than before

  She spent the next day testing that theory.

  Forty-four hapless Alliance fleets had been cut off by a couple of hundred enemy fleets within the uninhabited Malistine System.

  Her reps Talishalla, Vettari, and Khalysta led the last stand aboard their flagships as the foe kept them hemmed in. The far superior enemy forces prepared to hammer them to dust.

  Naero Prime flashed in by merging briefly with Vettari, and then popped back out into the black in her own form once more.

  Faster than thought, she exploded Cosmic blasts all along one key vector, tearing the enemy trap wide open.

  Everything happened within the same instants, faster than thought.

  Battle sisters, recall your fighters as you withdraw. I’ll keep the breach open. Tow away your disabled ships that can be saved and refitted.

  I’ll drive the hulks into the foe to confuse and distract them.

  She popped suicide reps into the lost ships. They’d activate jump drives and overload power cores using teknomancy without hesitation.

  Thirty-three GSA fleets began to jump out to their next viable rally point, far from that deathtrap.

  Naero Prime and her suicide reps pounced as the foe tried to close the breach, aided by the equivalent of eleven defender fleets comprised of all the ships that remained strong enough to fight the blistering rear-guard action.

  They all bravely bought time for the others who were much worse off to make it out.

  Naero shifted into her near Darkbeast form and wielded Heartcleaver with ferocity and vengeance against the oncoming tide. Only she could summon and control that version of her energy being transformations. No other rep could take a battle form that was anything close.

  She fought from within a sphere that had her energy form ten kilometers tall.

  The enemy warships were now like dangerous toys to her in scale, but there still seemed to be thousands, all trying to either blast or drain her energies.

  Racing among them at high speed, she cut a burning path of destruction through the oncoming hordes.

  First scores and then hundreds of ships broke up and cooked off in her wake.

  More enemy reinforcements flooded in from several directions.

  There seemed no end to them.

  Scans revealed the packed enemy horde still to be parsecs deep.

  Naero Prime found her unique battle form more powerful than ever, thanks to her newly ramped up affinity with the Cosmic spheres.

  Had Elazethrek, the Least of the Six still existed, Naero Prime might have now been able to take such a monster on by herself.

  Thirty-three GSA fleets escaped.

  Naero swept back the way she had come, but on another vector arc, plowing through the G’lothc fleets and opening the breach again, as it nearly closed once more.

  Three of the eleven rear-guard fleets had been all but vaporized.

  Even Naero could not save them all; the volume of concentrated destructive enemy fire was so great.

  She’d already felt Khalysta perish, fighting valiantly to the last.

  Naero slashed out in another arc of death.

  The last surviving GSA fleets limped away.

  Naero Prime covered their escape with a massive Cosmic hyperbomb that would take everything out and even scar any stars and their systems within three parsecs.

  Om confirmed that no GSA ships would be overtaken by the blast.

  She flashed out to avoid damage from the explosion herself, to another even more dire situation spinward, along the main line of battle.

  Hundreds of such terrible plights awaited her attention. Even with the aid of the other Champions and energy beings, the GSA as a whole could only deal with so many problems at a time.

  Now that all of her reps enjoyed the recent upgrade, they could send out their own batches of energy beings and suicide reps.

  At least that was something new and improved.

  Fleets and crews that could be rescued worked to slow down the enemy advance. They refitted in the waiting fixer clouds and rejoined the main fight ASAP.

  Naero Prime Flashed from battle to battle as needed, lending her aid where it was most useful.

  Next, she could occasionally summon more of the Alliance Champions in to assist her in tough fights, if the distances were not too great.

  There was always a drawback.

  By the end of a standard day, Naero Prime could hardly move or think, exhausted and completely drained.

  She required precious hours of regen while the main enemy onslaught continued.

  Instead of reaching a few dozen hot zones, however, she had turned the tide in well over a hundred within a single day.

  She and Om would need to adjust her strategy and pace herself in order to keep going longer.

  Her amazing efforts clearly saved many more lives.

  She and the other GSA Champions spent all of their time putting out fires by rescuing such large groups of fleets that found themselves cut off, trapped, and facing certain destruction. If broken out in time, these valuable fleets could fight again within a matter of hours.

  These slight dividends from the Kexxian Song work going on in the KDM spheres helped, but they still only delayed the enemy advance.

  Even Naero and the GSA Champions could never be everywhere they were needed. Many Alliance forces had to tough it out on their own.

  Many still perished. All-out war was still what it was, and showed o quarter or mercy.

  In all four Quadrants, the Great Adversary still held the upper hand with far greater numbers that they had fanatically built up for decades in advance.

  There was a finite limit to what even Cosmic power or bravery could do on their own against numberless slaves. The depletion rate was simply too great.

  The master GSA strategy hinged entirely on delay in order to survive, stymie, and confusticate the enemy at each step and every turn. They bled the foe wherever they could as a secondary strategy.

  The attached lander observers grew fearful and terrified to the point of panic and mental breakdown at the battle scans they watched, and hurriedly tried to report home to their leaders. They attempted to raise the alarm among their heavily populated worlds back home, about what was taking place within the depths of the black.

  Doom cast out its dark cloak of shades, approaching thousands of lazy, slumbering, stubborn worlds and their bloated, unsuspecting billions.

  The blackness of space was now visibly lit brightly for all to see, set ablaze with the flames and fires of the colossal war. These enormous threats blazed tremendous beyond all the former reckoning of recent ages.

  Many of these reluctant worlds still could not bring themselves to believe the magnitude of these looming threats, and were convinced now more than ever that their own observers were somehow being brainwashed or threatened into spreading GSA lies and propaganda.

  The conversion rate wasn’t even fifty percent yet.

  These dire threats were, in fact, incredibly real and frightening beyond belief, to any who witnessed even a portion of them.

  What were the crazy fools waiting for? Their vapid intransigence was maddening. Frustrated GSA negotiation teams worked night and day on every unaligned world.

  Naero had already ordered fixer nebulae to be stationed at the ready nearby, to begin refitting the old lander fleets as quickly as possible, the moment the proper political agreements were reached.

  The defenders of the galaxy had held the Great Adve
rsary off for a total of four bloody days.

  Naero wept in Khai’s arms as they both took their few hours of regen.

  “Four days,” she muttered. “Haisha! How are we going to hold them off for twenty more?”

  Khai stroked her weary head. “We cannot. We can only do what we can, my heart.”

  She sniffled, snuggling in. “In a day or two they’ll begin to hit the fringes. We can’t stop that. They’ll start to overrun some of our forward shipyards.”

  “Our brave comrades there will keep pumping out our warships until the last moment, fighting all the way,” he said. “We have other shipyards being erected in our rear areas to replace them.”

  “We need to be there Khai. My reps and I can crew those last ships with more reps so that they can instantly join the fight. When things fail, we can get our people out and blow up the lost shipyards behind us. We can’t let the enemy use them against us.”

  “We won’t. Everyone understands that already. We know what’s coming. Rest now, my beloved. The sooner we finish our regen, the sooner we can take another battle shift. Please, close your eyes, and sleep for a while. I will hold you in my arms, and watch over you as I replenish myself.”

  The GSA might be able to hold the enemy off and delay them for a few more days–a week at the most. Every trick and scheme and tactic would only avail them so much. Eventually this war would exhaust them all.

  Shifting formations alone could never hope to turn defeat into victory.

  After that, the enemy would breakout from countless areas, slam into the settled regions of the fringes, mostly the Alpha Quadrant and their bulging lander populations with terrible violence.

  Even the hastily prepared defenses would only last so long.

  The potential destruction and loss of life among such helpless quadrillions could hardly be calculated.

  The GSA continued to use their ever-expanding deep space mapping fixers to send out repeated distress calls to all sentient races in each quadrant that could intercept it.

  They sent the distress calls out to sentients they had yet to meet or know.

  If any other interstellar races knew of the great foe, and many had most likely already suffered at their hands, the time to rise up against them and turn back the dark tide of obliteration was now.