She would unleash her partial Dark Beast in battle for the first time, if she must. But she needed to stay in control, and she had not exactly been herself lately. Too much had changed.
Or perhaps she simply had.
She kept trying to tell herself that her Dark Beast was her–part of her. No matter how many times she tried to accept it, it just didn’t seem real. All of that darkness and evil, lurking deep down inside herself.
It was all her.
It was her.
Herself.
Maybe that was the key to it all somehow, but Naero just couldn’t see it yet, or know exactly what to do with all of that Gordian knot of self-knowledge.
The complete solution eluded her. Not that there was always a solution. As with being forced to kill Master Vane, things did not always work out for the best.
Just the opposite in fact.
Warning, Naero. An intense ship-to-ship battle has just erupted among the enemy fleets above Dotar-2.
As planned. How are our crews doing?
Right in the thick of things. Arming them and all of our fighters with the new ion cannons was a stroke of genius. They’re devastating the enemy ships, leaving them floating powerless, and then cloaking again.
Sounds about right. Ty said they were going to draw them off and keep them busy.
The Darkstar and The Flying Dagger now have the full attention of the enemy fleets.
Two ships? Just our two ships and several fighters against hundreds of enemy warships?
That was in fact the plan. Yet our ships possess the crucial element of surprise–as well as the new improved ion cannons–and all of our current advanced Tek. Both of our forces are zipping in and out, firing rapidly while fully cloaked, systematically neutralizing ship after ship. They’re causing so much confusion that the enemy are panicking, firing in all directions–even zapping each other. The chaos and confusion are nearly complete.
Naero nodded. Yet that’s all just a diversion. “Jia, any luck locating Govae yet?”
She shook her head. “No, but I’ve realized that something is jamming my senses, somehow.”
Got him. Below the surface at these coordinates. Lead our best fighters down there, Naero. Take the battle straight to the enemy. Jia’s right. There is a strange interference pattern, but I’m scanning another Driathan mind signature besides Jia. Unlike her, all of his life signs are weaker. He must be either damaged or injured. Relaying all of this to the team via their stealth fixers.
Jia paused. “Adjusting my senses to compensate. Yes. That is Govae. We all have a lock on him now. He’s hurt. Lead us down there Naero. Bae, Gaviok, protect our flanks. Give us time. Keep them off of us.”
Cloaked and on gravwings, they swept forward into the aftermath of a hellish war zone.
Waves and piles of wrecked Ejjai gravtanks, gunships, meks, and dead shock troops littered the ground as far as the eye could see.
The attack appears to have been planet wide over the last week. The enemy has spent nearly an entire Ejjai freezeworld of forces to overwhelm the planet’s formidable defenses.
Another enemy attack wave swept in before them up ahead, pounding the last defenses and some kind of vast, underground complex that the enemy had penetrated.
All of the enemy units focused around an open complex in the planet, similar to Jia’s back on Zoa. But this one was being blasted, ripped open, and crushed by force.
The Shadow Fox took charge of the landing field and used fixers to set up defensive rings of cloaked auto-gun emplacements. The guns tore up the hapless enemy ships landed there, and held the area against all who turned to attack them.
And the enemy kept coming, from all directions against any type of resistance.
Next, Jia used her abilities and their nebula of spyfixers to refit and bring back online, all of the Driathan planetary defenses within ten kilometers of the base. Hi-tek defenses that had taken the enemy days to chew through, at great cost.
She snarled and opened up on the invaders swarming all around them with considerable fire power from the synthetic planet’s re-activated defenses. The base literally bristled once again with automated, advanced Driathan weaponry and ordnance.
I’m scanning hundreds of Dakkur up ahead.
Enemy assault waves re-doubled their efforts against the stiff, renewed defenses, probing and falling upon them to tear open shields, destroy gun emplacements, and pummel the area once again.
“Whatever’s going on down in that base,” Naero said, “the enemy’s not about to give up without one hellish fight.”
“Then lets give it to them. Attack!” Baeven commanded. “Let’s take these bastards down!”
Jia sent in a wave of floating autoguns to clear a path before them.
Her attack wave got blasted to hell, but the drones did their job.
The attack got them down into the complex.
Gaviok and Baeven flashed slightly ahead, tearing apart any Dakkur or enemy stragglers.
No doubt more foes awaited them up ahead, and more still would eventually pour in behind them.
Naero and her assault team remained cloaked, sweeping in on gravwings, blasting right through enemy units as they passed overhead. They left death and destruction in their wake as they penetrated Govae’s stricken base.
Om and their fixers assisted by optimizing target acquisition and fire control.
Naero lead them forward and held back nothing. She unleashed the full advanced arsenal of her improved combat armor all at once. Multiple weapons and independent AI beam pods. Full spreads of microbombs. Layered waves of target-seeking, predator smartmines. The assault team’s heavy weapons people unleashed close support, rapid fire, phalanx pulse guns.
In a matter of seconds they pulverized the enemy’s penetration teams to incinerated tek, meat, bone, and dust.
Naero sped through the air, focusing all of her senses through the enhanced abilities of her third eye.
With her advanced awareness, she could see up ahead of them.
They’d push forward, only to get stuck in one heavy firefight after another, as the staggered enemy positions stubbornly turned at bay, and gave ground slowly against the assault team’s onslaught.
They battled within an immense underground complex that might very well run under the entire planet’s surface. Naero could sense no end to it.
Heavily shielded Ejjai shock troops had pill boxes and gun emplacements set up at key junctures nearby, backed up by full squads of enemy meks, poised to pour a hail of destroying fire at anything that came at them down the wide corridors of the complex.
The Ejjai were being backed up by hunter-killer units of Dakkur soldier drones, led by Dakkur Champions.
Are we safe here for a bit, Om?
No enemy forces in range. I will alert you if any approach.
“Hold up,” Naero announced. Their assault team gathered in, and she continued.
“I’ve analyzed the area around us. This is no good. This area is too huge. We’ll be fighting in this underground complex for days this way. The enemy has infiltrated the underground base with large numbers of troops. They will eventually wear us down if we keep fighting them head on.”
“What do you advise?” Baeven asked.
“The enemy’s strategy is both obvious and effective, and we no longer possess the element of surprise. They know we’re here now. But they’re not focused on defeating or destroy us. If they take us down, so be it, but their strategy is purely a delaying tactic. They’re trying to keep us from reaching and rescuing Govae.”
This close, Naero used Om and her third eye again to precisely locate the other weaker Driathan signal.
“I’ve located Govae again at these coordinates,” she said, relaying them to her friends. “Our foes have moved him three separate times to evade us. Everybody gather in close. I’m going transport us all into the nearest open juncture to our target, between two enemy holding forces. We’ll surprise them and punch through before the enem
y can move Govae again. Then, I’ll transport right in on top of them to delay them, and the rest of you fight your way in to effect the rescue.”
“We’ll be with you shortly, then.” Jia said. “Help Govae at all costs. We can escape straight up through the complex to the surface if we have to. I can clear the way for us.”
Naero nodded. “I think we will have to do just that. Be ready everyone. There’s something else. The enemy has Govae trapped in something I’ve never sensed before. Some kind of horrific device that they’re torturing him in.”
Jia looked alarmed. “They’re trying to break him, to tear his secrets from his mind and destroy him.”
Naero added, “Whatever this thing is, its Darkforce energies are far beyond anything I’ve ever detected before.”
It made the scary Darkforce generators look like bugs.
“Naero,” Baeven said. “Be careful. The enemy still has tek we’ve never encountered yet. Don’t let them trap you in it like they have Govae.”
“Don’t worry about that. Now, let’s hit them hard and rescue Jia’s brother. Ready? We’re all going in hot.”
Naero steeled herself, startapped, and flashed them in.
42
Waves of strange Cosmic energy thrummed into Naero as she tried to reach Govae.
Yet these waves scorched her with stinging agony when she tried to tap into them. She gasped and drew back in terror and pain.
The enemy had somehow tainted and poisoned the Cosmic flows nearby, transforming them into living rushes of Darkforce torment.
Naero did her best to shield herself and charged forward through the barrier.
At last she broke through.
But doing so stripped her cloaking away. For the moment, she floated up toward the ceiling unseen.
Dozens of enemy troops barred her way forward–into the chamber where the enemy was torturing the Driathan sentinel, Govae.
But these forces were far from normal.
Ejjai, a few Dakkur, even some humanoids and a smattering of other alien creatures. Yet each of them looked impossibly weird and twisted.
They glowed and pulsed from within with strange energies, yellow, orange, red and green. Their flesh had become transparent, like some kind of shifting gelatin or plasma. Some of their veins and bones within them had turned black. They shambled about on patrol, their ruined faces drooping slack–open mouths moved and worked and twitched insanely–as if directed by another will.
Naero gasped.
She had fought against something like this before, at the end of the Annexation War. Back when she faced down the thing that Hevangian Admiral Maximillian Dreth had transformed into. Some kind of energy creature just like these. It had nearly been indestructible.
Then her heightened senses told her what was going on. All of these creatures were possessed by the Darkforce and something else–oozing with malice. Their physical bodies would only hold up for so long before breaking down and being utterly consumed by the Darkforce. Long enough for the enemy to effect their will and complete their mission.
A G’lothc possession wyrm had activated inside each one of these creatures. This transformation was the result.
It did not matter to the enemy if these host bodies were consumed and destroyed in the course of their efforts. These foul abominations were the very source of the bizarre, poisoned Cosmic energies suffusing them, sustaining them for a short time, and permeating the entire area.
A ravaging G’lothc spirit controlled each host. Naero could sense them. She was sure of it.
Om, alert the others what we’re up against.
The next instant, several of the things locked on her presence and came straight for her.
They fought with the same incredible speed and tenacity she had witnessed before, attempting to overwhelm her with their numbers.
The sheer weight and ferocity of their attack drove Naero back at their onset.
Naero gave ground, and at the last instant before they overwhelmed her, she unleashed a massive Cosmic energy blast to fling them back and obliterate a few of them. She was not so defenseless against these things now.
Yet there were so many. She could not face down an insane horde of this many of the things, unless her friends finally broke through to back her up.
Naero transported to the next section adjacent to that area.
Right among a full platoon of Ejjai meks guarding that location.
Her sudden appearance startled them.
Good.
Enemy fire erupted as she zipped among them and between their legs, fleeing further down a wide corridor, back toward the area where Govae was being tormented.
Being small and fast had its advantages…sometimes.
Naero took cover behind an immense, load-bearing support beam, while the blaster cannons of the advancing enemy meks chewed away at the structure to get at her.
Naero slowed them down with another Cosmic blast, but that would not hold them back for long. Their numbers were far too many.
She could retreat again, but that would not solve anything. As the meks gathered for another charge, their masters could be making good their escape, with Govae and all of his secrets.
Naero could not allow that.
Time for something drastic; she could not let the enemy delay and beat them.
Gathering all her strength and focus, she startapped and even dipped deep into her own flows of stored Cosmic energy.
She created dozens of tiny replicants of herself.
They hovered around her, little gravwings humming like sprites, tiny fists clenched, little faces all determined. Little voices eager to please.
“What do we do, boss?”
Naero drew her advanced blaster machine pistol and sprayed the advancing enemy with fire.
It barely slowed them down.
As she ducked back, another intense enemy barrage chewed away at the huge support.
Naero turned to her sprites and jerked a thumb back at their advancing foes.
“Go get those meks, guys. Get in there and take them down. Each one of you pick your targets and set off a Cosmic explosion!
“Will do!”
“You got it, boss!”
“Let’s get ‘em!”
“Hey…I don’t wanna explode!”
“C’mon, guys!”
Naero sent them all in. “No arguments, guys. Just get in there and blast the living hell out of those bastards. I have to get past them.”
Her sprites shot away, determined looks on their little faces.
They streaked straight toward the enemy meks.
Naero flattened herself on the ground and threw up the strongest protective shields she had around her.
Within the corridor and the chamber beyond, the immense blasts and detonations went off, rocking the entire area and nearly collapsing it.
So much for all of those enemy meks.
The support pillar buckled and crumbled. Naero herself was flung back down the corridor by the intensity of the resulting blast waves.
Once she gathered her wits, she translocated past the enemy into the enormous open launching bay beyond.
The attack was getting too hot for their foes, apparently.
The enemy scurried in panic, preparing to depart in the waiting G’lothc cruiser. The damn thing still looked like some kind of mutant, ginormous black squid. More than three quarters of its length was a mass of large, writhing black tentacles and appendages, each ending in a hi-tek weapon.
Naero had seen that enemy ship unleash a barrage before, and recalled the devastation it could unleash.
No doubt this ship proved invaluable in overwhelming the sentinel world’s significant planetary defenses.
Several heavily armored Dakkur soldier drones, in the same black-black combat armor that their ship seemed to be made out of, hurriedly floated some kind of valuable cargo toward the enemy vessel, under heavy guard.
She zipped in closer and noted the form of a tall, glowing silv
er male Driathan, strapped down within the center of a heavy cargo gravpad, with energized restraining bands locking him down.
She counted not one, but six Darkforce generators fastened to his body, feeding off of his energies, tearing at him, and trying to rip out his secrets. They swarmed and writhed all over him like hungry, feasting demons.
This close to him, Naero could sense Govae’s energies and life force fading. He writhed and shrieked and screamed within a pulsating mass of determined foes–slowly tearing him to pieces.
Naero’s blood went to jagged ice in her veins.
One of the generators was twice the size of the other normal ones that she had fought before. This larger one seemed to be directing the others. Even worse.
Just as the enemy turned a corner, heading for the G’lothc cruiser’s loading ramp, she spotted Danner looking out the faceport of the big generator.
At a glance, she could tell that her insane former brother was completely conscious, and controlling the generator he was in willingly–suffused within waves and layers of Darkforce energy.
She experienced so much Darkforce power that she could see Danner’s skull and his twisted, crippled bones, black to the marrow with flickering energies and dark lightning. Control rods penetrated his head and flesh.
This much larger device was even more horrifying, and kept Danner and his inner Dark Beast at near critical mass, feeding and siphoning off him at a much high rate.
Danner had become the enemy’s puppet, tool, and weapon all in one–their primary Darkforce power source.
They were using him to power their horrific devices and break Govae down into scrap.
The very air and reality around Danner seemed poisoned and twisted.
Naero’s rage swelled to the point that her Dark Beast nearly broke free once again.
She shifted from energy being into a partial Dark Beast form, this one still her normal size, but packed with Cosmic force.
Spacer Clans Adventure 3: Naero's Fury Page 41
