Naero's Valor

by Mason Elliott

  The great decisive battle throughout their galaxy was already joined.

  All sentient life had a stake in the outcome.

  Bravery among the defenders knew no limit.

  Courage and unhesitating valor and sacrifice roared forward in the face of the inevitable time and time again.

  GSA races and species who hardly knew each other battled shoulder to shoulder, giving their lives to save each other wherever it could be done.

  They fought like the fiercest creatures collected from billions of planets, until their cannons melted in the housings, and they drove their burning exploding warships into the packed masses of the advancing enemy waves.

  As was whatever their custom, the GSA valiants burned huge swaths through the Great Adversary ranks, shouting, cursing, singing, or silently defying the enemy to the end.

  Still the free sentient peoples and beings of the galaxy fought for the freedom to live and to strive.

  The Alliance Champions raced from hot zone to hot zone, fending off disaster after catastrophe. They continually broke up into small groups of two’s and three’s, aided by hosts of energy beings and fixer nebulae.

  Naero flashed about using syphyng, doing her best with her own expanded abilities.

  For every battle front they rescued, dozens had to make due on their own against the enemy’s relentless oncoming might.

  35

  Day 8. All of their defenses seemed to be buckling at the same time.

  To Naero, who could sense the strategic combat status parameters all at once, they seemed to have the properties of a broad web of cracking glassteel, fracturing, flexing, and fragmenting, but not yet crumbling to away in shattered pieces.

  None of the leaders or Champions within the GSA could prevent that by any combination of their actions. The building pressures and factors at work in the massive war were that great and chaotic.

  Naero attempted to re-assess the overall situation with Om to see if there were any further options. The ability to get creative slipped away with each day that passed.

  Naero, for good or ill, all of these matters are going to be decided within the next few weeks to come, if not days sooner. Viable options are fading. Can we call upon Shetharra? She might be able to help. What about any of the new Dreamers?

  Naero sighed. Om, Shetharra is currently committed to the Songs of Power learning process, and her Mystic training. She cannot be pulled away from either one, and she is the only one who can facilitate both, at the same time. I cannot do what she does. If the songs process does come through, we might have a chance. Any delay would be insane on our part.

  Just thought I’d ask. She isn’t in tune with me the same way that she is with you.

  That’s because we’re Cosmic mother and daughter; our bond and our links are truly unique.

  I’ve checked and so have others, Om. The next generation of budding young Dreamers is still too young and undeveloped to join the fight in any way that would make a difference. These days, like Shetharra, they are all locked in their second three year time dilations on the Spacer Mystic Homeworlds. None of them can get out of that; they’re already committed, no matter what will take place in the main galactic time stream.

  We have no choice but to keep going, keep trying everything that we can come up with.

  I’m trying, N, with everything that I am.

  I know, Om. I am as well. Haisha, we’re in a typhoon of shit without a way out at the moment.

  The GSA forces were never outmatched one on one, but they were definitely outnumbered on the whole. Even with all of their reserves on the line, their finest efforts would only buy them perhaps another day or two.

  All of the Alliance worlds and sentient species sent every warship they had, new or old.

  The fixer nebulae and the expanded naval shipyard program pumped out new fleets and refitted old ones at an amazing rate, almost faster than they could be crewed.

  This ever thinning margin was one of the diminishing differences between maintaining the viability of the main war, and certain defeat.

  The Forty-Nine Spacer Clans sent nearly the entire Spacer Navy, and all of their merchant fleets to join the secondary battle lines forming up around the most vulnerable regions of the Alpha Quadrant.

  There, Humanity and its last allies would make their stand.

  Soon both battle lines would merge and become one and the same.

  Outside help did reach the GSA, slowly at first, from multiple, widespread, and even unsuspecting sources.

  In the Beta Quadrant, the fanatical HFM saw the burning writing of doom on the walls of the black, and joined the fight to protect the teeming colonial areas.

  If they fell, everyone would perish.

  The Wellington Irregulars called up every fighting force and ship that they had access to. Their precisely placed batteries of the amazing Dalineth Vortex beam cannons were the only thing still holding the enemy in check across their areas of operation.

  That fragile super-tek was still in the process of being implemented on a large scale throughout them and the GSA. If they could fully implement that tek across the face of the war as a whole, it could save many lives and buy them further time.

  Jaer’s people remained the masters at making those weapons work, which other teks claimed was still more of an art than a science.

  The Delta Quadrant was even less explored, but the expansion areas on the borders and fringes were also stuffed with heavy colonial populations, ripe for the slaughter.

  The Gamma Quadrant remained in its state of near constant war. Riel’s defenders there were already fully prepared and fully engaged. The new tek, rep allies, and fixer nebulae came in very handy. They too continued to learn how to operate the lethal, crazy vortex cannons.

  It was good to know that the galactic distress call did not go unheeded.

  Finally forces from other species either joined up with the GSA navies, or attacked the Great Adversary wherever possible.

  Naero’s first contact teams did their best to bring these volunteers into the fold, and if possible, share data and information with them in order to coordinate their efforts.

  Even with their new allies, the main plan of delay remained intact.

  As the enemy hordes penetrated the populated areas, the defenders activated all available planet defense screens. Then they went on performing a punishing fighting retreat, all the way back across the Alpha Quadrant borders.

  The Gamma Quadrant actually proved to be the strongest position of the four, because they had already been more or less fully mobilized and at war constantly from the start. They had been preparing for just such an event for a long while.

  That greater duty was now thrust upon the defenders in every known location.

  There would never be any open space to colonize if this enormous enemy push succeeded in wiping out any possible opposition.

  Theirs would be reduced to just another lifeless galaxy, subjugated by the G’lothc.

  All sentients that existed anywhere began to see and fear that. It was high time for everyone to come together, and fight as one against the common foe.

  Races and beings never encountered before kept sweeping in from out of nowhere. They joined the fight and assailed the enemy from the rear, the flanks, and all vectors.

  They heeded the great call to the galactic battle for survival.

  Perhaps they too saw the last chance to harm a terrifying foe that might have also been attacking and crushing them for a long while.

  These beings were definitely not part of the Alliance, at least not yet.

  But the enemies of the Great Enemy became the friends of all defenders, at least for a while.

  New word reached them from the Beta Quadrant key regions. The Kuldek attacked the Great Adversary in one large area. From the far rear, the implacable Gixx saw their chance and brought their considerable forces to bear against the widely feared G’lothc.

  The Astalarian Empire and the remnants of the Voga
Raiders were forced to fight for their lives whether they wanted to or not, just from the enemy hordes sweeping through their regions. Everyone fell under attack. The enemy sought to beat down anyone who resisted.

  Yet even with all of these other forces joining the fight in every area, the invader advance could only be held back for a few days longer, but in no way defeated.

  Day 11. Naero experienced another cumulative change from the songs learning process. She wasn’t sure how it was going to help them yet, but she had gained a new, greater awareness of the Cosmic vibration frequencies of most Ultrium structures and formulations.

  She perceived them now on an intricate level that no one else could, except perhaps Shetharra.

  When she looked at warships, or Ultrium tek, she understood them and their material composition completely, at every possible level–at a glance. She had a growing mastery over them that was well beyond teknomancy.

  The Kexx had once been the absolute masters of matter and energy conversion and creation by force of will and imagination.

  They wished miracles into being.

  They willed them into existence on a fantastic scale.

  Naero and her oldest daughter slowly began to acquire the puzzle pieces of such enlightenment.

  But soberly, the completion of even a portion of that process was still slightly less than a fortnight way.

  So much to learn.

  There remained no guarantee that such knowledge would give them what they needed to save themselves and their galaxy.

  If they could hang around long enough to try to make use of such power.

  36

  Day 15. The first few unaligned lander worlds on the colonial fringes were wiped out, nine at first, with more to follow. No one could stop it.

  The merciless G’lothc pressed forward with their many strategic advantages.

  Chaladek-4 had been the first planet to fall.

  It would not be the last.

  The enemy Phage waves scoured the planet clean of all life in less than four standard hours. At least it was not a more populated world like many others in the enemy’s path. Only about four hundred million landers perished.

  Once they were within the enemy ring of dominance, no help could reach them.

  The GSA made sure to broadcast some of the horrific remote vids from that planet’s demise to all of the others.

  Then Baetor-2, three hundred million; Mokol-5, six hundred million; and Dermest-1, ninety-three million. Most of the heavily populated worlds of multiple billions that were next were still scrambling to get up their planetary shields.

  Would they get them operational in time?

  The deadly enemy plague continued to spread much more rapidly than many hoped. Naero and the GSA had tried to warn the landers all along, but those planets and systems refused to pay heed to what was coming straight for them.

  Now they had paid the ultimate prices.

  This was not a campaign to subjugate and enslave.

  This was a war of extermination, to destroy all unwanted life in the galaxy, as the G’lothc had done once before.

  If things weren’t bad enough, reports reached them that one of the outward worlds, Vemmer-3 fell to the enemy when some power collapsed their planet defense screen. Thirty-seven million colonials lost.

  These were the same defense screens that had been once thought to be impenetrable, but they had not yet been upgraded with the new Pelani refits.

  The defenders needed to know if the upgrade would have made a difference.

  The GSA sent spyfixers racing in to investigate this catastrophe. Had the screen tek failed in some way? Had it been sabotaged on the ground, somehow?

  The data they sent back proved even more alarming.

  The Vemmer system’s G class yellow star was actually in the process of radically altering its basic Cosmic composition. The star’s energies slowly but surely converted over to being dominated by the Darkforce. An actual star was being corrupted and transmogrified right before them.

  Once the corruption process reached over fifty percent of the star’s mass, waves and solar flare blasts ripped forth from it and attacked its own solar system with Darkforce power.

  Vemmer-3’s planetary shield was obliterated, along with most of the planet.

  All that remained was a lifeless, glowing, burned out rock in place of a once living world, teeming with sentient inhabitants and other life.

  Nor was Vemmer-3 and its star and system an isolated instance. Another G class star, Kerune, and two M class stars, Gaipo and Peliku were also in the process of being corrupted and taken over by this Darkforce stellar corruption.

  Naero herself had barely heard of this evil practice, a fleeting legend from the ancient days. Yet the G’lothc had either regained or re-learned this power to subjugate even living stars and turn them into Darkforce power sources and weapons of terrible destruction.

  This was but another reason that the Kexx and the Drians had exterminated the Great Adversary across several marred galaxies. Om uncovered fleeting references to such foul practices.

  Once converted over to the Darkforce, after a while, the process became un-reversible. Entire stars became both horrific weapons, and additional Darkforce power sources for all G’lothc goals. If caught in time, the Kexx could in fact reverse the corruption and return the star to its proper existence. Stars that were too far gone had to be destroyed. They became a threat to everyone, and they could be used to infect other stars in a chain reaction.

  In essence, Om, like everything with the enemy, we’re looking at a star disease. How typical.

  Star Vemmer attacked anything that came near it, and at greater ranges.

  It began to infect other stars nearby, and there was no stopping it.

  Strategic projections revealed that it had taken several days for the infection to take over an entire star. Soon it would spread to dozens, scores, and hundreds or more. Stars that were type G and M class seemed particularly vulnerable. Oddly enough, K class and other stars did not appear to be infected yet. Perhaps they were resistant in some way to the Darkforce Cosmic energy flows and signatures.

  These corrupted stars would lash out at anyone who opposed their masters. The G’lothc might even be able to control and direct them as strategic weapons.

  They would become rallying points for the already superior numbers of the oncoming enemy hordes.

  It went without saying that any planets and their populations trapped in such systems would be forfeit, wiped out entirely almost from the start.

  Some small comfort remained in the fact that not all stars were vulnerable to this intense corruption. None of the existing GSA teks or high level Mystics, energy beings, and thinkers could yet determine why.

  Even Naero and Om had no idea.

  This new enemy power would completely tip the scales against the galactic defenders in a matter of months. No rival power could fight the enemy hordes, and the very stars themselves at the same time.

  This could doom their entire galaxy.

  Little hope remained, but it was high time for all of the confused lander worlds to step up and get with the program, before all was lost.

  Naero used Kexxian syphyng on an immense scale to link with and speak through all of her existing reps, through all of the Shetannas on all of the lander worlds.

  She could not have accomplished such a feat even a day before.

  The cumulative effects of the Songs of Power process continued to advance and unfold.

  Together Naero and her surrogates swelled up into the spheres like Titans, and called out directly to the lander leaders of those worlds.

  They also called out to the people, to everyone great and small.

  I AM NAERO AMASHIN MAERIS OF THE FREE SPACER CLANS, CLAN MAERIS, AND THE GSA. MANY OF YOU KNEW MY BRAVE PARENTS, THE ANNIHILATOR AND THE INVINCIBLE CYCLONE, WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR LIBERTY’S SAKE. THEY FOUGHT THE SAME GREAT ADVERSARY THAT ALL OF US NOW FACE–THE TERRIFYING G’LOTHC, A HYPER-ADV
ANCED ALIEN SPECIES BENT UPON DESTROYING ALL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE. THESE ABOMINATIONS SENT THE EJJAI INVADERS AND THEIR BLOODY MEATSHIPS TO WIPE OUT HUMANITY ONCE BEFORE, TO MURDER YOU AND YOUR KIDS.

  I AM THE SHETANNA, SHETANNA PRIME, YOUR ORIGINAL ANGEL OF DEATH WHO STOOD BETWEEN THE EJJAI AND YOUR CHILDREN AND HELPED FIGHT THE INVADERS TO THE DEATH–THEIR DEATH. MANY OF YOUR WORLDS WOULD BE LIFELESS CHUNKS OF ROCK AND METAL HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR MY PEOPLE, THE SPACERS. HAD WE NOT BLED AND DIED FOR YOUR SAKES. YET NOW THE SAME ENEMY HAS RETURNED, WITH A FORCE SO GREAT, THAT IT RIVALS THE STARS THEMSELVES UP IN THE DEPTHS OF THE BLACK. COMPARED TO THIS FORCE, THE EJJAI WERE A MERE HANDFUL OF TOURISTS.

  WE STOOD TOGETHER THEN, AND THE TIME HAS COME FOR ALL OF HUMANITY TO STAND TOGETHER NOW, ONCE AGAIN AND BE COUNTED. YOU ARE OUR STARS, AND YOU NEED TO FIND YOUR POWER AND YOUR STRENGTH AND BURN BRIGHT AND RADIANT AND TERRIBLE BEFORE THE COMING DARKNESS.

  Zillions of people stood upon her words.

  Naero Prime clenched her great fists and raised them, calling out to all.

  WE FACE EXTINCTION. THEREFORE RISE UP AND DO BATTLE. DO BATTLE BESIDE US. YOU ARE A GREAT AND MIGHTY PEOPLE ONCE YOU DECIDE TO ACT. THAT TIME MUST BE NOW.

  LET THOSE WHO CAN FIGHT, FIGHT WITH ALL OF THE COURAGE AND POWER THAT YOU CAN MUSTER. JOIN THE FREE SENTIENT SPECIES OF OUR GALAXY TO FIGHT FOR THE FUTURES–THE VERY FUTURE EXISTENCE–OF ALL OF OUR CHILDREN NOW AND THOSE YET TO COME. FIGHT NOW AS YOU HAVE NEVER FOUGHT BEFORE. STAND BESIDE US AND SEND FORTH YOUR NUMBERS TO MATCH THOSE OF THE GREAT FOE.

  LET THOSE WHO CAN HEAL, HEAL. THOSE WHO FIX THINGS, FIX THEM. LET THOSE WHO CAN PROTECT AND COMFORT AND FEED THE INJURED AND THE HELPLESS, DO ALL THAT THEY CAN.

  WE ARE ALL ALLIES NOW IN THE GREAT CAUSE OF SURVIVAL, AGAINST THE SAME GREAT ADVERSARY WHO MEANS TO DESTROY US ALL.

  Slowly at first, but growing in power on each and every world, Humanity raised their fist to defy the coming darkness.

  Fight! Fight! Fight!

  Naero smiled and hoped that the enemy could hear that rising rallying cry echo across the quadrants.