“No, I won’t give up that easily. We have her genetics. We can biomance. What about a clone?”
Jia slowly shook her head. “Naero, no.”
“Why not? We make a clone. We put her soul back into it. She’s alive again.”
Jia sadly shook her head again. “It won’t work.”
“A replicant then–an exact copy, even down to the neural net. I’ve made them myself. I can do it.”
Jia took her hands. “You can only make replicants while the original is still alive. That won’t work once the person is already dead.”
“Then it’s back to the clone idea.”
“No. That won’t work either. No one can do so, Naero. Not you. Not anyone. Not even the Kexx or the Drians could conquer death.”
“What?”
“Why do you think the G’lothc are having so much trouble with their hosts rejecting their spirit possessions? The Cosmic energies of the host eventually rejects the soul essence. Even if you made the best clone or replicant possible for Zhen, it would never be an exact, perfect copy of her original body. You could put her soul into another body, but she would merely die again, and suffer greatly.”
“Is there nothing we can do?”
“There is…something. A procedure the Drians gained from their allies the Kexx. With your help, we could make it work, since you already have her soul. But I warn you, Naero. It is limited in scope and far from perfect.”
“How limited? What will it do?”
“I will not bring Zhen back permanently, but only revive her for a short time, in order for her to settle her affairs, say her goodbyes. The way she never had a chance to.”
“How short, Jia?”
“Hours. Not even a full, standard day. Every case is different. At first she’ll be all right, but eventually, she’ll start to weaken. Then she’ll die again, in about an hour. No pain. She’ll just go to sleep and not wake up. Would that be worth it, Naero? To see your friend die all over again?”
“Yes,” Naero said, without hesitation.
She knew what Ty would say.
What Zhen would say. What Naero herself wouldn’t give to have even another few minutes with any of her loved ones that she had lost.
“What do we do, Jia?”
“This is only going to work once. We’ll have to repair her physical form with your biomancing.”
“We can close the wounds and repair the flesh. What good will that do? She’ll still be lifeless. I know that much from my replication experiments.”
“Then your insights will help greatly. You can directly control and manipulate Cosmic energies, Naero. Using the techniques I’ll teach you, we can bring her back to life–but only for a short while. You’ll need to speak to Tyber once he’s cogent enough to–”
“I know what Ty will say. He’d give his own life–just to have even a few more seconds with Zhen–not to mention a few hours. But I’ll talk to him, when the time is right.”
“We don’t have long. We’ll need to prepare the body and keep it frozen until we’re ready for the procedure. And then you’ll have to put Zhen’s soul back inside her.”
“It will have to wait, until after we deal with this enemy threat.”
Jia hesitated, and then nodded.
*
The enemy chose not to let the week to ten days or so pass quietly.
The very next day, nearby Spacer Marine units from General Walker’s Bravo Command and all the other Marine divisions began to pour in across Hezzen-5. Most of these forces were ship’s troops, or troops stationed on nearby systems.
Now that they were fully exposed, large units of Ejjai, backed up by Dakkur and the possessed, had scattered all across the Gigacorps border world and were causing untold havoc and death.
The locals, about a billion total, were no match for the invaders.
Easy meat.
The Marines hunted the enemy down in good order, but even they had trouble with the possessed.
Naero and Gaviok joined the hunt, ready at a moment’s notice to pop in and help deal with any greater threats.
Then something worse happened.
Within a single day, almost everyone on the planet became violently ill.
Landers, Spacers, the enemy–everyone who wasn’t in a sealed suit.
Naero, the enemy plague has finally struck. The biowar missiles.
She gasped inside her helmet. What about our countermeasures? Is everyone going to die?
Too early to tell. The enemy strain is virulent, still attempting to mutate, and fulfill its original objectives. Our countermeasures are trying to fulfill theirs.
What can we do?
Don’t come out of that combat suit until it’s resolved. I don’t want us suddenly transformed into a puddle of biomatter.
That would be inconvenient.
She got on her link to Baeven. “This is what the enemy was waiting for all along, just as we warned. This attack will saturate the entire Alpha Quadrant. That’s what they were waiting for–our enemies expected over ninety percent of us to die.”
“And instead,” Baeven said, “for the time being, everyone’s just too sick to stand or function. Good thing the enemy is also affected.”
“Not the Dakkur,” Naero warned. “They’re immune. And the Ejjai that are still in sealed suits or vehicles can still fight. That’s going to be a problem. We’re rallying all the Marines on our side who can take them on, but we’re still way outnumbered. Damn that wormhole!”
“Naero, a small percentage of the locals and our people are immune…including me, Jia, and Danjen. S’krin wasn’t so lucky.”
“Interesting. How small a percentage are unaffected?”
“Two, maybe three percent at most. That’s all.”
“Better than none.”
“But it’s random. And they are already overwhelmed, dealing with the sick–and the enemy attacks.”
Naero fumed. They really missed Zhen’s expertise with bio-weapons now. “Coordinate all data with the Intel bio-weapon teams. Maybe they can come up with something to help tip the scales. If someone has an immunity, that needs to be studied.”
“I’ll have your people take care of that,” Baeven said. “Intel and I still don’t play well together.”
Naero received an urgent alert on her wristcom.
“Gotta fly. Literally. Something’s gone hot, Baeven. Keep me posted.”
“Give ‘em hell, Naero. I’ll join you when I can.”
Naero’s battle smile snapped up. “You know I will.”
The remaining enemies who could still act decided to go for broke. Abandoning their own stricken forces, they regrouped and attacked the largest gigacity onworld–Delevor–home to over eighty million people, packed into an urban area of about four hundred square kilometers.
It was a bloody mess. The enemy raiders scattered everywhere, causing death and more death among the sick and the helpless locals.
Naero despised Ejjai–and the Dakkur were even greater killing machines.
Om, send our fixers in. I want every enemy out there pinpointed. Tell the Marines to bring in ground and air support. Coordinate all firing profiles to reducing the enemy, as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
Naero, to modify one of your metaphors, those are an awful lot of needles to find in countless haystacks.
Lots of people are dying right now, Om. Let’s get in there and do what we can.
The Spacer Marines and other personnel who could still fight performed beyond their best.
Everywhere they located the foe, fierce fire fights erupted, and took the enemy down hard. In the face of such horror, even Baeven and Khai went on the hunt, in the areas Naero and the other units couldn’t reach yet.
They went in and took on the largest pockets of foes the fixers could locate, and single-handedly taught the enemy the true meaning of fear and terror.
But the battlefield was too spread out, and the defenders simply didn’t have enough personnel on the
ground.
The battle raged over three terrible days and nights. More Marine companies trickled in, but the defenders still could not contain the mindless, spreading destruction.
Three days of intense fighting, and they only cleared and secured one quarter of the battle zone.
Losses among the stricken civilians became sickening. Most of the landers remained helpless from the plague, unable to flee or even hide.
Naero kept hunting, fighting, and killing, exhausting herself several times over. The advancing Marines and a few local defenders marched in right behind them in rotating shifts, every four hours.
Whenever she collapsed from utter fatigue, Gaviok slung Naero onto his back as if she were an infant, secured her in a modified nanorig, and kept tracking the foe.
The mantid prince became her dauntless champion.
Gaviok alone could match Baeven’s ferocity in combat. And where the Destroyer went, the enemy soiled themselves, fled, an died. The mantid moved with incredible speed, churning and smashing through their foes. He shielded himself and Naero with Chaos energy, and not even starship batteries could touch him. Ejjai, Dakkur–the possessed–Gaviok moved through them efficiently in a blur of death. He left them eviscerated or pulverized and crushed.
His mandibles, claws, and legs tore through gravtanks, gunships, and armor as if they were paper. Scarlet beams of destroying energy lanced out from his three eyes, sliced through warships, and cut down entire swaths of attackers. He trampled the enemy and kept fighting.
For the enemy, Gaviok became a nightmare unleashed.
While Naero drained herself, and was forced to periodically rest and regenerate, Gaviok had the endurance to stay on task, and continue hunting and killing the enemy raiders.
No rest. No let up.
She often came to amid the cries of dying foes, took up her weapons, and re-joined the fight.
Another two days of grueling, close-in combat, and they had secured half of the battle zone.
They got a break of sorts, at the start of day six.
Naero, Intel bioweapons labs found a way to boost our countermeasures. The plague will subside for us, and start to kill the Ejjai. The labteks haven’t been able to make it work against the Dakkur yet.
The Dakkur are far fewer in number anyway. Taking down the Ejjai will eliminate their numbers, and inoculate our worlds against further invasions.
But other reports flooded in from every area.
Now that the locals started feeling better, they were fleeing in abject terror. They fled by the millions, scattering in all directions, sometimes right into the bloody claws of the enemy.
The chaos and madness were near total, and that was only going to make things much worse.
We need to organize these landers, Om. Have Intel use our fixers to spread the word. Tell the non-combatants to find a safe place to hide, with enough food and water for three days. Bunkers, basements, mines, underground strongholds. More help is arriving each hour, and this madness will end. Anyone who can and wants to fight, have the fixers make weapons and grenades for them. Intel will instruct them how to organize themselves into fighting units. The fixers are our lifeline to the local population. These people can fight back, and we can help each other turn the tide.
Their efforts had limited success throughout the next day. The population as a whole was still weak and demoralized from the effects of the plague, malnourished and dehydrated. And they were terrified of the enemy–with good reason.
The humanitarian effort of dealing with such an explosion of refugees quickly became overwhelming, and while the main battle was still being prosecuted, it had to be left to the landers.
Only the fixer clouds could help with logistics, but that was considerable.
Another priority alert reached Naero and Gaviok.
What now, Om?
Naero, a large battle group of the enemy is forming up around one of the largest remaining population centers that our forces have yet to reach. Our foes have encircled it with thirty thousand troops and are closing the circle, killing all that they find.
How many landers in that circle, Om?
Almost twenty million, packed into domes and pyramid complexes. And we have no one to send.
Send us, Om. How many Marines do we have attached to us?
Nearly a thousand.
Thirty to one odds. Less than a full battalion, but they had to get in there. Naero got on the horn to her Marines.
“Leftenant Colonel Steiner, this is Strike Fleet Captain Maeris. You and your Marines and reserves feel like jumping into an all out firestorm today?”
“Well, when you put it that way, N. How can we resist?”
She shunted the SitDat to him via Om, so that he and his team could start planning up front.
“That’s going to be one helluva shitstorm to dive into,” Steiner admitted.
“We go in hot, and it only gets hotter. We’re pulling in what ground and air support we can cobble together. But we’re the only hope that any of those people have of surviving the next standard day.”
“N, it’s still going to be a blood bath. You know that, right?”
“It never stopped.”
Steiner nodded. “But I agree. It will be unbelievable if we don’t go in. Damn it! We’ll have all the help we need in just another day.”
“Heinrich, my friend…none of us have an extra day.”
“When do we hit them, N?
“Now. We hit them now, as hard as we can, with everything we’ve got.”
48
The enemy was shelling the enormous local domes and pyramids of the gigacity with scattered artillery fire as they tightened the noose and swept in on the trapped population.
Marine air support began knocking out the enemy fighters and gunships, while others strafed exposed enemy armor and artillery units in coordinated attacks. Close assault ships took up defensive positions over the population centers, blanketing main approaches in interlocking waves of fire. But the foe was still too numerous, and too spread out to contain them all.
The defenders could slow them down and punish them–but not stop them.
Gaviok went out into the teeth of the fighting, taking on the possessed wherever they reared up.
Naero made an attempt to rally the terrified locals.
The night before, she startapped and made two dozen replicants of herself, in full-on Shetanna mode, blazing red katanas and stealth armor, bristling with weapons and ordnance, like some futuristic, warrior goddess.
Each of her replicants went out among the local population to speak with them and their leaders. A heavy rifle team of fierce Marines and a fixer cloud accompanied each replicant. They were all linked to the original, and they could converse, but they would also echo her words if need be.
And each of Naero’s reps could fight with her battle prowess, weapons, and basic skill–just not all of her full array of Cosmic abilities. Those only Naero herself could unleash.
Wherever they went, the story was the same. The locals and their leaders looked stricken, and cowered in abject fear before the might of the advancing foes.
Naero and her replicants chose key vantage points where tens of thousands could see and hear their words. They used the voice. The locals put her up on every vid and holoscreen nearby.
“People of Delevor, citizens of Hezzen-5. This is it. Your moment of truth. Your call to arms. You must stand together, and rise up and fight!”
Many protested. “We’re not soldiers. We’re not warriors. We’re just people! How can we fight these monstrous invaders?”
“Who are you to tell us what to do?”
Then a murmuring began in the crowds as people began to recognize the legend that stood before them. It spread like fire through a dry forest.
“That’s Shetanna. Shetanna has come! It’s her, I tell you. I saw vids about her from the High Crusade. No one can fight like her. The enemy are terrified of her. She’ll help us!”
They cried
out to her.
“Shetanna! Shetanna! Shetanna!” And as they shouted her name, hope began to grow and sweep out from those locations, while the battle raged and pounded all around the outskirts of the enemy ring of death.
Naero lifted her hands to speak, and they all grew silent.
In other corners of the battle zone, Naero’s replicants took their cues from her before similar crowds.
“Good people, my forces and I will fight to defend you to the last warrior, to the last drop of blood, but we cannot prevail alone. Any of you who are able to fight must arise, take up arms, and help us. You must fight beside us.”
The crowd still resisted.
Naero shook her head. “Alas, our numbers are still too few. We are outnumbered thirty to one. Fearful odds, yet we still fight on. The enemy are thirty-thousand strong, yet you are millions. If you want to fight, step forward. We will give you weapons. Your numbers can turn the tide before we are all swept away. Don’t just lurk here, waiting for the enemy to burst in and kill you all. Stand by us! Fight beside us!
“Who will defend your precious children and your helpless ones against the invader, if not you? You have all heard the terrible accounts. You all know very well what the enemy will do to them. This day will decide if you all live or die. If you are to die, is it not better to go down fighting? I say it is!
“Stand with us. Fight beside us, and your numbers can turn the tide. Your numbers can defeat this foe and crush them, if you will only fight beside us. What say you all?”
‘Fight! Fight! Fight!”
The throng took up the chant, and brave men and women, teens and the middle-aged, came to the fore, ready to be armed for battle. Naero could still see the fear in their eyes.
The fixers quickly broke down nearby items and equipment from shops, dwellings, and restaurants into raw components, and began passing up blaster rifles and grenades in large quantities to be distributed.
“I am Shetanna, the Dark Angel of Death, and I shall lead you into battle. Together we shall teach our enemies to rue any day that they seek to invade our worlds, and butcher our children! Rise up with your numbers and crush the invaders. Rise up good people, and find the great strength within you all. Let us fight together. Death to the invaders!”
Spacer Clans Adventure 3: Naero's Fury Page 48
