“Let’s move, people,” Baeven said. “We’ll dock the ships again, and go through this one-shot wormhole together.”
“One problem I’m seeing,” Naero said, absorbing the tek data flowing through the fixers.
“I see it too,” Jia said. She turned to Baeven. “The Cosmic energy requirements. They’re off the charts. Powering the wormhole will not only burn out the device completely–there’s a chance that it could kill you both.”
Baeven smiled. He didn’t even glance back at Naero. “What’s a little risk among friends and family?”
Less than two hours later they ignited an unstable worm hole, aimed toward Dotar-2.
Naero couldn’t even lift her head off her medbed.
She kept drifting in and out.
Baeven had fallen into a coma. Jia lay wrapped around him–only her advanced Driathan healing abilities keeping him alive, as his body struggled to regenerate.
“Proceed through the wormhole,” Om advised. “We have eighty-seven standard seconds.”
Warning alarms went off.
“What is it?” Naero asked. She forced herself to sit up.
“It’s Khai,” Tyber said. “Coming in hot. He’s trying ram right into us. We can’t go through a wormhole cloaked. All shields up. Max acceleration.”
“He’ll try to damage and disable us,” Naero said. “Or he’ll phaze right through our hull and immediately go on the attack to subdue the ship and crew. He’ll stun everyone with his sword, and neither Baeven or I can fight him right now.”
“Another ship uncloaking,” Alala said. “Naero, it’s The Flying Dagger. It’s firing all batteries on the Enforcer. No effect; they’re just batting him around.”
“At least they’re delaying him,” Naero yelled. “Get us through that wormhole!”
“Entering now,” Ty said. “Both of our new friends are attempting to pursue.”
“Don’t let them!” Naero screamed. “Shut the wormhole down. Negate it and leave them behind us!”
“We can’t. It’s already unstable and collapsing at its own rate of decay. We can’t disrupt it without killing everyone.”
All of them sped through the wormhole’s tunnel and radiant light show. The effects seems to mesmerize all who stared out at them.
With nobody paying direct attention, Naero rolled off her medbed and crawled on her hands and knees over to an open scanning station.
In seconds the wormhole spit them out the other side.
The emerged into a far distant arc of the Cygnus arm in the Gamma Quadrant.
Now they were on their enemy’s turf, in unexplored space.
Then everything went dark on board.
All of their ships lost power, dead and drifting through space at hypervelocity.
They struggled even to maintain life support.
They experienced a total energy drain and power loss. Even their advanced fixers clattered lifeless to the floor, like useless balls of scrap metal.
This was something they certainly didn’t expect from generating and utilizing an unstable Cosmic wormhole.
Minutes turned into desperate hours.
Without power they were all forced to get into EV suits and use emergency lights and battery packs.
In less than two days, they would all suffocate, freeze, and die.
Naero finally got some of their hundreds of burned out fixers working. She sent a few out into space to try to locate either The Flying Dagger or Khai, if they were close by.
Only Jia seemed unaffected. Her miraculous android body did not require life support.
More and more, Naero could see why the G’lothc would hunger for such indestructible, immortal, self-repairing synthetic bodies to use as their hosts.
At least Naero and her friends were still generally speeding in the direction of Dotar-2.
Too bad most of them would be dead, frozen popsicles by the time they shot past it.
Getting a weak telepathic message from Baeven.
Focus on it, Om.
Naero. Dotar’s star. Tap its Cosmic energy. Use its flows and your teknomancy to restart our drives. Have our pilots sling us around the star and juice us up. I can’t move yet. You must do this.
Baeven, like you, I can’t walk yet, after powering our wormhole. I can’t even stand up.
At least you’re conscious, still. Find a way, or all of us and our crews are all dead. Don’t let that happen.
Okay. I won’t. I’ll find a way. Where’d you get such a crazy idea?
Baeven laughed weakly. Khai just told me–telepathically. He’s out there, somewhere, trying to do the same thing. Even that sword of his has temporarily lost all its power. He said that you alone would understand the concepts involved.
She did. So, going through that strange wormhole disrupted almost everything it seemed–even Yii.
The stars. Of course. The stars were the answer. Always.
Energy. Raw Cosmic energy.
She had less that two standard days to figure out a way to startap and convert that power into a form they could use directly, before they were all dead.
They maintained contact with both The Darkstar and The Flying Dagger through the reviving fixers.
Tyber’s crew relayed that they were limping along, still docked with them.
Om was somehow protected by being inside of Naero. But both Jia and especially Alala were also badly damaged from being part of their vessels. The crews struggled to put up old-style solar collectors and restart their failed drives.
A truly inspired idea, but it wouldn’t work fully enough on its own. Yet it did give them emergency power and buy them more time.
Naero ordered the same. Solar collectors all around.
No sign of Khai. If they located him, they would assist him. Naero still did not want to be responsible for his death or that of any Mystic. Part of her hoped that he’d find a way to survive as well. She didn’t hate Khai. They had been friends once and helped each other greatly. In fact, she admired and respected him.
But she couldn’t let him capture her. She couldn’t go back yet to take responsibility for her actions. Not until the current enemy threats were eliminated, and she discovered a way to cure her own Cosmic disease.
Khai was simply doing his duty as the Mystic Enforcer, and she was a wanted criminal on the run. She couldn’t fault him for any of that.
Technically, she remained both an outlaw and a murderer.
The solar collectors gathered power–enough to get some of their systems back up, even life support. Yay!
At last, their basic sublight propulsion restarted.
Naero also regenerated. She startapped a bit, and could finally sit up without passing out.
“All ships,” she commanded. “Get us closer to Dotar’s star. Throw up what deflector shields we can. Dagger, this is Naero. You might want to dock with us. We’re going to go into a safe, but close orbit around the star, and prepare to slingshot us all around it. It’s going to be tricky, but I’ll try to siphon off and convert the energy we need to restart our power cores and our drives as we pass. Run diagnostics and fixer repairs on all systems. Whatever you do, don’t let us get sucked in to the star’s gravity well.”
Enel laughed over the link. “You got it, boss. Want us to make you a sandwich too, while we’re at it?”
“That would be very nice, smartass. Tell Eugene thick slices of Spum on Govanian pumpernickel, please. And a borbble of cold Jett…while you’re at it.”
“Fresh out at the moment, Captain. Good to hear your voice, sir.”
“Damnation. Take us in then, as close as we need to.”
They danced upon the edge of oblivion, all three crippled starships docked together, lost in the unexplored Gamma Quadrant and spinning dangerously close to the nearest sun.
In Naero’s current condition, startapping might yet prove fatal. And the additional distraction of a sudden flare up of her Cosmic sickness did not help matters, either. Pulsating sores of disrupting,
infected Cosmic energy, fed by the Darkforce, erupted all over her flesh, causing her intense pain.
The air was suddenly rank with psyonic ichor, fetid ozone, and putrification.
Naero attempted to use her weakened abilities to lick at the star as if it were an immense lollipop of Cosmic energy. Power–both she and their ships all needed power to restart their cores and save themselves.
To pull that off, they had to get in dangerously close to the star.
Too close, and they’d all be reduced to a puff of atoms on the solar winds.
If she were in better shape, the process might prove easier, and safer. Yet she and Baeven were both still drained and beaten up from getting them there–spending all of their Cosmic energies to power the unstable wormhole that brought them out that way, on their dire mission.
Naero reached out tentatively with another, tiny feeder ribbon, struggling not to open herself up to too much power. She and Om both knew what would happen then. A runaway, out of control power surge, building to a huge gigablast.
She struggled to avoid such a fate, almost too late.
Even the small feedback rush that shot into her smallest feeder tendril was nearly overwhelming in her reduced state.
The rush of pure Cosmic force raced through her sick, and damaged body, transfixing her, consuming her last defenses.
Such power. Raw Cosmic energy beyond description. Naero gasped and tried to swallow.
That power nearly destroyed and incinerated her.
If she allowed it to suck them in, they would all be disintegrated.
Instant flaming death.
Om screamed in her head, but she could not make out his words.
Waves of Kexxian defensive protocols lashed out and melted and vaporized in the face of such naked might.
They struggled against a star itself–to war with and absorb those destructive energies and make use of them.
Om attempted to save them. More Kexxian defenses erupted and ramped up exponentially, in expanding bubbles and spheres.
Naero screamed. Her veins, her heart, her brain. Every atom of her brimming with Cosmic force. Her Cosmic disease was both fed by such energies, and destroyed by them.
Even her Dark Beast fell back in sudden shock, bloated and blitzed on energy in a sudden, besotted coma like a drunkard.
Her friends and crew…her family.
They were all that Naero could think of and recall.
With one wave of her hand she spent most of her power to fling their ships back from the impending destruction, restarting all three fusion cores at the last instant–even The Star Fox.
Naero finally understood too late, as she barely managed to transform into an energy being.
She had managed to save the others, even as the star pulled her into its gravity vortex.
Yet somehow, for the moment, the Kexxian fields around her stabilized.
She swam or soared through the intensely hot, expanding energies of the star’s surface, as if it were an immense sea of energy.
Then she caught sight of Khai, the Mystic Enforcer, moving under his own power and force of will.
Bright green and glowing in his own energy form, he swung himself around, far outside the fierce core of the star, recharging his sword Yii within the might of the sun itself. Just as it had been created, in similar fashion.
Naero struggled to move toward him, still unable to keep herself from slowly being drawn in further, in her weakened state.
He looked her way, sensing her approach. Khai called out to her telepathically.
You’re moving too fast, Naero. You’ll be drawn into the core. You won’t survive there long. I know that fact, better than anyone.
I can’t stop myself; I’m sick and damaged. Please, catch me. Help me, Khai. I’m dying!
Khai strained and strove for her, the look on his face suddenly frantic.
He just missed her fingertips as she continued to spiral in.
“I can’t reach you in time!” he said.
Naero smiled sadly, as an extreme calmness and serenity washed over her.
Like all Spacers, Naero knew that one day she would return to the stars.
She just did not expect it to be this soon–not while she still had so much to do. So much she still yearned to accomplish.
Naero took no further thought to herself. Her worries and fears were all for those she loved–for those who would remain without her.
A scant few months before, through all the many perils that she had faced, up to this critical moment, no one could have told her that she would stare such a stark fate as this directly in the eye. The most recent events of her life flashed rapidly through her mind as if they were vids.
Instants seemed to dilate into days.
She nearly swept past Khai again.
He lunged forward–expending his own energies, finally grasping her outstretched hand and pulling her back close to him, controlling their movement.
Khai telepathically shouted above the constant roar of the solar flows, trying to explain their situation.
Relax and listen, Naero. You’re safe for the moment, but we both must focus our energies on continuing to circle the core without letting it pull us in. The only way to escape the star’s gravity is to increase our velocity and ride the expanding solar flows back up toward the surface, and shoot out, kind of like a solar flare. Do you understand? We’ll need to work together, if you want to break free.
Naero clung to him at first, gasping breathless in her energy form, that did not need to breathe. She calmed herself against the comforting luxury of his broad chest–so seductive. With Khai in his energy form, having his powerful arms wrapped around her was a little too enjoyable. Khai was normally a huge, muscular, hunky guy in either form, and she was so small in his arms.
In their energy forms, she suddenly realized that everything was beyond intense. All was light and every sensation. Everything was heightened a thousandfold–including all of her feelings, pent-up needs, and emotions. Normal minds weren’t used to such hyper-stimulation.
When she looked up into Khai’s impossibly golden eyes, she nearly lost it. He had just saved her life, for the moment at least, and she felt both close and extremely grateful to her old friend.
Naero felt an overwhelming urge to kiss Khai, and much, much more after that.
But she was just barely able to pull herself back from the brink.
Such thoughts were insanity. It was just their situation and the heightened rush of stimuli making her feel all of that and more. It was too much. She needed to get control of herself.
Let’s call a truce, she called back telepathically, her mental voice also roaring to be heard over the constant din as well. I’m not here to fight you, Khai.
Then come back with me quietly, Naero–as my prisoner. If you give me your word, I will not restrain you.
She shook her head. I can’t, Khai. You know I can’t–or do you? Do you know what our enemies are up to? What they are planning, way out here in the Gamma Quadrant? They’ve implemented a full scale invasion of our galaxy, where we can’t even see or fight them. And they’re winning, Khai. They’re crushing, and destroying, and killing anyone or anything that tries to stand before them. Hundreds of defenseless worlds have already fallen. Numerous sentient races and cultures already wiped out. And our foes will grow in power until they are ready to attack and overwhelm our quadrant in the same exact way. There’s too much at stake out here, Khai, and you don’t even know the half of what they’re plotting.
Khai looked at her sadly. I have my duty, Naero. When our truce is over, you will need to fight me.
Naero lifted her head and returned his fierce glance. Did you hear anything of what I just told you? I will do what I must. I will fight you with every ounce of power I have, if need be. But I do not do so simply to avoid capture. This is bigger than any of us or our petty squabbles. Please, listen to me. It doesn’t have to be this way. Just let me tell you where we are and why we are o
ut here. What happens out here will decided the fate of all of our peoples–of many peoples.
More of your tricks to deceive me, Naero? To make me care about what you say? You would make up anything to–
What about the enemy biowar missile attack, heading for our quadrant, Khai? Right this moment as we speak?
Preliminary scans revealed no such pending attack, Naero.
These are high tek enemy smartweapons. They can cloak and avoid all normal forms of detection, in order to slip through our defenses. The attack is coming. We can prove it.
How convenient. An invisible alien attack that no one can detect or prevent. And instead of chasing after you, everyone’s supposed to scurry around, chasing our tails, while you get away.
Naero smirked and pushed away from him. Are you always this dense, Khai? Would you just shut up and listen for once? So, you think we’d risk our lives to go all the way out here in the middle of nowhere in the Gamma Quadrant–just to avoid you? This isn’t about either of us, or the Mystics. Please, for once, give me a chance and listen to what I have to say.
Khai frowned. We need to focus on increasing our velocity and riding the solar flows back toward the surface. If we’re lucky, we’ll spot a solar flare about to discharge. We can ride it out, but this is going to take a while. While we do so–go ahead if you wish–tell me about these so-called enemy threats of yours. I will do my best to try to listen.
She looked up into his eyes and felt herself going all to pieces again.
You will? Was it just her, or was it him too?
If he even felt a tenth of what was racing through her, they were in serious trouble.
The Enforcer looked back into her eyes very intently.
Of course, Naero. I’m not just some mindless, robotic goon. I care deeply about our people, just as you do.
Whoever started it, they were instantly kissing the next second, wildly and passionately, their Cosmic energies merging and mixing and flowing freely between them, nearly beyond control.
In their energy forms, neither of them wore any clothing or gear.
How convenient.
Inside the star itself, they were literally on fire with desire, glowing hands and mouths slipping and spinning and yearning all over each other.
Spacer Clans Adventure 3: Naero's Fury Page 39
