Her Ur-metal battle blades formed in both hands, and her scarlet katanas over them. Blue-violet energy blades jutted out of her armored form.
Naero enveloped herself in a wreath of Cosmic flame as she fell upon the enemy, spinning and buzzing through their packed ranks at impossible speed. She sliced, kicked, and wheeled through them like an energized buzz saw.
Shredded piece of enemy troops and fighting vehicles burst and exploded, scattered and sprayed all about the landing area and the enemy vessel.
Dozens of the Dakkur commandos converged on Naero like seeker missiles, attempting to hold her off and drag her down by their sheer numbers.
At the last instant, she translocated right beside Govae.
Her attackers smashed into the deck and each other. Others bounced off the ship or were absorbed by its activated defensive fields and destroyed.
Naero swatted Danner aside and focused a Cosmic blast around him that would have obliterated a battleship. She leaped in his place and ripped Govae’s capture pod away from the other five G’lothc generators. She fought with all five of them at once, wheeling and kicking, trying to break free and escape. She nailed the generators with mindforce blasts, disruptor beams from her third eye, sonic blast screams from her mouth, punching and kicking and tearing at the writhing things in her battle fury.
She broke free and leaped away with Govae’s body, and centered another Cosmic detonation on the foes directly behind them.
Her explosion flung her and Govae into the far wall of the hangar, smoking and on fire. The destruction was so intense, that it severely damaged the five generators, Danner as he raced back in, and the G’lothc ship itself, tearing a great gaping, burning wound out of the side of the enormous living ship itself.
The vessel reeled and writhed. Naero thought she even heard it shriek psyonically in rage and pain, as it absorbed the wound she had inflicted upon it.
A mass of writhing tendrils and tentacles seized Danner and the other damaged generators, drawing them inside the strange ship itself.
Within seconds the huge G’lothc cruiser came fully alive, tearing itself free, calling up shielding, and preparing to shoot away. It hovered about the open maw of the hanger. It didn’t even attempted to swing around so that it could level its guns at them.
Let them run. Naero remained with Govae, fighting and tearing at the rest of the enemy capture pod, trying to free the Driathan from the enemy’s insidious tek, even as it continued to cling to him.
The pod itself fought her until she sliced it away from Govae with her blades, and flung it aside.
Naero finally pulled Govae free. He lay unconscious and nearly dead from what she could sense, or heavily stunned.
The remaining enemy forces in that area poured into the open hangar from all directions, now that the gigantic squid prepared to depart.
The Dakkur and legions of Ejjai closed in around Naero and Govae.
A holo of the enemy leader–a Dakkur Champion–appeared in front of the enemy hordes.
“There is no escape. Give us the Driathan and surrender, or else you die, Spack bitch.”
Naero spat on the ground before her. “No way in hell. Just try to take him, and I will butcher you all!”
The leader smiled his wide smile of crushing teeth and hissed.
“Death it is then.”
Naero smiled her battle smile. “For all of you.”
Their leader held up a claw and forestalled the attack for an instant. “I am Admiral Korleth Tulkas. One day, I shall see you added to my master’s trophy collection with all the rest of your pitiful kind. You stinking, Spack weaklings, who dare to think and pretend that you are so mighty.”
She recalled his voice, the one speaking to Ullogk and the others.
Korleth was just another Dakkur toady as far as she was concerned. But he was also possessed by a G’lothc spirit wyrm that had yet to transform, and that made him even more formidable–once he did.
“In and take her, my servants, yet keep her alive. We need more of her ignorant kind to power our generators.”
Hundreds of foes rushed her.
At first Naero held them off.
Then she impaled every attacker within ten meters on multiple rods of Cosmic force, spearing out in all directions.
She detonated the rods, slaying, crippling, punishing, and wounding foes in expanding waves beyond them.
Naero plucked up Govae and leaped away.
Baeven and her friends burst through the complex walls, and fought their way toward her position the next moment.
The remaining enemy forces spread out and rushed to cut them all off.
A green glowing comet blasted through the G’lothc ship, severing a handful of the tentacle cannons. It smashed into the Dakkur, scattering them like ten pins.
Khai rose up from the resulting crater unscathed, and went straight at the enemy ranks.
Units of Dakkur unleashed a torrent of fire from their advanced weapons, and charged at Khai to mow him down.
Khai ignored their concentrated blasts, completely invulnerable to their heaviest weapons. He waded right through them, his sword Yii absorbing energy and flashing faster than thought.
Yii sizzled as Khai flashed through them, blinding energies hewed and sliced the enemy and their tek to bloody, twitching pieces, and disrupting explosions.
“Unleash the horde!” Korleth Tulkas’ holo commanded.
A big troop carrier dropped down quickly.
Hundreds of hatches crashed open, dispensing waves of Dakkur troops. They swarmed toward the attackers, even as they pulled together to defend themselves.
Even Khai could not destroy them fast enough. He wisely flanked Naero and her friends on the right.
Naero shielded their position briefly, but she knew it could not hold.
Admiral Korleth’s holo swelled to gigantic proportions and drove them on, his amplified voice booming. “Take the three Cosmic Spacks and the other Driathan prisoner. Slaughter all the rest!”
The holo winked out.
Jia took Govae in her arms; his form began to shift as if it were melting. “My poor brother. They’ve murdered him. He’s dying!”
Baeven shouted. “We’re all going to get murdered here if we don’t do something radical, Naero. Come, my battle brother. It is time for us to teach these scum another lesson–as we once did.”
Baeven began to swell with a mix of both Chaos and Darkforce energy. Burning green disruptor blades emerged all over him. In an instant he stood ten meters high.
“You cannot do this,” Naero screamed. “I know! Baeven, if you fully unleash it–you cannot control it. You’ll destroy us all.”
He smiled down at her and Jia. “Then you two must bring me back before I do–before all is lost, including myself.”
He turned his face toward their foes and snarled. They were about to break through.
“Prince Gaviok. Fight beside me!”
“Ever ready, my brother. We will make them recall the sack of Koguloth, and the fall and ruin of its dark king and his fierce queens.”
Gaviok swelled up into his own gigantic mantid battle form, larger than Baeven. He turned jet black in his rage, and smoldered with deep scarlet Chaos flames.
The two of them strode before their comrades and bent to the attack.
Even as the shield collapsed, the Dakkur appeared to recognize them.
The entire horde drew back in stunned terror, shrieking and screaming.
“The Great Slayers! Fall back to the hordeship. The Great Slayers have come upon us!”
The Dakkur hissed in abject fear. Hundreds of them soiled themselves in terror.
“They destroyed and ravaged an entire homeworld. How can we stand before them and prevail?”
“You cannot,” Gaviok roared. “Let the vengeance of the Shai fall upon you!”
He and Baeven charged right into them. And in the tumult and carnage that followed, the Dakkur armies struggled and battled not to kill–but to
flee.
Even Naero had trouble following their swift movements. Baeven and Gaviok fought like enraged behemoths, crushing and mutilating the packed masses of their foes to either side.
They slew them by the score in blurs and flashes within the space of each second–until the enemy broke, completely terrified and routed.
Gaviok and Baeven ran them down and continued killing them wholesale, destroying everything in their rampage–even attacking the huge troop carrier.
Naero felt it. Something was wrong.
The severely damaged complex buckled, shuddered, and collapsed–tens of kilometers all around them.
The enemy sprang their trap.
“We have to get out of here,” Naero said. “They’re going to destroy this entire complex, and bury us along with it!”
She led them back toward their only possible escape route–straight up.
Jia carried Govae in her arms. All of them activated their gravwings and fled the total chaos and destruction taking place behind, below, and all around them.
Anything living back down there wasn’t going to stay living for very long.
The G’lothc ships rose up and opened multiple wormholes. Many more Dakkur rained down, cutting them off and dragging down into the collapsing structure.
Naero lashed out at several that fell on her, slaying several before they all slammed back into the unstable structure.
Khai sliced his way through several dozen more swarming on him.
A Dakkur champion blasted Jia point-blank with some type of shoulder mounted energy cannon.
Jia screamed, throwing herself in front of her helpless brother Govae, trying to shield them both.
Naero shattered the thick skull of her last foe with a single rocking kick. The crushed and broken corpse flung back lifeless.
She turned at bay and launched herself right into Jia’s attacker. She drove him straight through the thick walls of the complex and into the next section. All while the many levels all continued to cave in.
The champion commando swatted her back through the breach with an energized tail lash.
Only Naero’s own shields and Cosmic protections kept her from being sliced in half.
Khai broke free and struggled to keep the enemy horde from seizing the stricken Driathans. He slew many with Yii as they piled at him.
Naero’s allies rallied around Khai, fighting back to back. They seized Jia and Govae and attempted to fly out.
The champion exploded out of the breach and grappled with Naero, dragging her down, crushing her to the ground. She struggled to break free, strength against raw strength.
Her Dakkur opponent pulsed with his own dark, tainted energies.
And transformed right before her, while she still wrestled with it.
She had not expected it to shift shape, but there was more than one of the foul presences contained within its rippling form.
Black tentacles and extra snapping heads and raking claws and constricting limbs exploded out from the thing. They grappled and shot out and enveloped Naero, dragging her down by surprise and wrapping around Naero’s throat and face. The things throttled, and strangled her, tearing at her and scorching her with Darkforce energy as they tried to absorb and devour her.
The howling maws of the thing raved.
“This Spack bitch is far more dangerous to us now than we ever guessed. Should we destroy her now? Yes, indeed. Yes, let us kill her, now. Tear her apart! Kill her, and consume her flesh!”
Naero struggled to keep fighting. She struggled to even breathe.
She fired Cosmic lightning right through the Darkforce-infused abomination, but it stayed on top of her, crushing and twisting her to death each second. More of the things continued to boil out of the one.
A bright flash.
Yii’s shining blade scorched its way through everything it touched.
Her attacker shrieked in rage and pain and drew back, releasing her.
Khai severed all of the dark tentacles choking her in one bright, expert stroke. Yii missed Naero by a millimeter as it sliced through a ravenous enemy skull, trying to rip at her face with its jaws.
Khai sliced the vile things away from her like a surgeon, and the roiling, twisting abominations vanished in bright flashes of Cosmic energy. Naero gasped and choked down air as she fell free, struggling to recover.
Khai glanced down at her in brief concern, and then strode toward their foes, undaunted.
“The G’lothc were wisely exterminated from the universe once before,” Khai told them. “Their immense evils shall not be allowed to return. Go back to your Void of death, foul spirits. Your vile kind shall not be allowed to prevail here–now or ever!”
A dozen of them boiled together and tried to shift and combine with each other, swelling to huge proportions to fall upon the Enforcer.
Yii flared and incinerated an entire ring of the fell things, all about them.
The possessed Dakkur yielded and gave way before such might. They pulled back slightly and gave ground, avoiding Khai and his amazing sword directly. They fended off Khai’s probing feints and thrusts with bursts and blasts of Darkforce energy. Even those energies disrupted each time Khai’s sword came against them.
Yii could negate the Darkforce itself.
More foes transported in and sought to overtake him from behind.
Naero flashed back in, wheeling and kicking, battering them away.
She nailed them with blue-violet lightning from her blades and gutted them.
Naero and Khai fought side by side and back to back with their glowing blades as the shifting things cut them off and sought to drag them down again by sheer weight of numbers.
In less than a standard minute, the circle of death about Naero and Khai grew over their heads, as the two of them cut down and shredded any foe that came within their reach
Ruined, blasted enemy faces and severed heads and limbs writhed and snapped, and twisted among the quivering mass of the enemy fallen.
The fell G’lothc spirits animating the violated mass of flesh chortled, still manipulating their broken hosts, grim voices speaking in unison.
“Ahhh…the Swordmaster of the Cosmic Prophecies, doomed to fail and die alone. The preening Oden half-breed, and his little Ur-metal stick that he prizes so much. We have long planned how to deal with you and your meddlesome race, wretch. Yes, indeed. We shall deal with your upstart kind–once and for all! You shall become our slaves. All shall feel the weight of our yoke.”
“Wrong, you vile demons. You will perish before the light of my blade. You have no weapons that can harm me!”
The monsters laughed. “Servants, drag this fool down and kill him before our eyes. Seize the female. We command it to be so!”
Most of the remaining possessed Dakkur broke off fighting with the others. All of them rushed in and fell upon Khai and Naero, dragging both heroes back down with them into the depths of the collapsing abyss.
Several of the monsters swept at Naero as they all fought in mid-air, shifting form, shrieking and grinning.
“We’ll finish with you, Spack whore–after we’ve slain this green fool.”
Naero used her gravwing to try to rise back up. Khai tried to fight free as well, but the enemy was bent upon pulling them down, and ripped at them and piled on to bury them.
As more of the possessed boiled over Khai, a mass of the things broke off, combined, and shifted shape right before their eyes, into something huge, hulking, bipedal, and menacing–towering over the Enforcer.
This new creature wielded two long, molten-looking blades in its claws as it advanced.
Naero immediately sensed something strange about both those blades.
They were also forged out of Ur-metal–the same precious substance that Khai’s sword was made of.
“Khai, look out!” Naero race in and deflected several attacks at Khai’s back as he fought with the others. Sparks and Darkforce lightning shot forth where Naero’s own blades clashed with
the blades of this new foe.
They spiraled down, continually dragged ever down into the collapsing sink hole. Naero voiced a battle cry and rushed her foe with her own flashing blades, driving the monster back. Huge chunks of rubble began to topple in at them from above.
The Enforcer emitted another green blast sphere, obliterating the lesser creatures all about them.
“Khai! Get out. I’m right behind–”
Yet the monsters she still battled with laughed and translocated in that exact instant.
Naero just missed running the vile things through with both of her Ur-metal battle blades.
Khai cried out before Naero could turn and reach him, even as he whirled and blocked the first cut of one of the enemy’s blades.
The shapeshifter appeared directly behind Khai and Naero, the other strange dagger stabbed up to the hilt in the Enforcer’s back. The point jutted out the front of the Enforcer’s broad chest.
Khai gasped in shock and agony as the enemy sneered.
“Ahh, what a pity, mighty champion of the Oden. How we shall enjoy devouring your skull.”
Khai thrust back and buried Yii into the shapeshifter’s face in defiance, with the last of his might.
The creatures shrieked and snarled. “Even that will not save you, wretched half-breed! With you dead–all of your people are next!”
It reached around with it’s other ur-metal blade to slash Khai’s throat open and take off his head.
“Get away from him!” Naero screamed, fighting through the others.
Naero slammed into the monster with a flurry of wheeling, spinning kicks. She severed its limbs and thrust it away from Khai as he fell.
She flipped and drove the force of both her feet into the thing’s ruined head, crushing against and driving it through three thick support beams, drilling it into a thick wall that crumpled around the impact.
She grabbed it by one leg and arm, spinning around rapidly, swinging it into walls and supports as she battered it.
Finally the thing attempted to stab her with its remaining Ur-metal blade. Naero delighted in a Cosmic knife fight, and pressed the battle against her foe, rapidly cutting and ripping the thing to shreds.
As it quickly became clear that she held the upper hand, it flashed away.
Spacer Clans Adventure 3: Naero's Fury Page 42
