“Death! Death! Death!”
“Shetanna! Shetanna! Shetanna!”
Within six hours, nearly three million landers armed themselves and swept out to overwhelm the advancing enemy forces.
The enemy was caught completely off guard and swept away in a tide of intense blaster fire and grenades. The unleashed ferocity of the pent up locals finally ignited an incredible firestorm in the hearts of the defenders. Led by Shetanna and the Marines, they could not be withstood by any force. Nor one ten times as great.
Naero, Gaviok, and the Marines barely had time to rush here and there, to take out the remaining Dakkur and a few of the remaining possessed. They fought as bravely as ever, but it was the fighting people of Delevor who won the day.
By the time the Allied forces began to pour in the next day, the locals were in charge of their own defenses, and the Marines and Intel only acted as advisors to them, helping them mop up and hunt down enemy stragglers.
*
Alliance, Spacer, and even Mystic forces continued to converge on Hezzen-5.
About the same time that enemy reinforcements arrived.
Above the planet, a furious naval battle erupted, two days later.
Onworld, the final assault on the enemy stronghold got under way.
Naero acted as the distraction once again, her favorite role.
Bust in, cause maximum damage and mayhem.
Something she exceled at.
She had prepared herself for this assault for an entire day, building up her reserves, honing her skills with Baeven, Gaviok, and Khai, discussing strategy.
The enemy’s dense, living shields still barred their way. A lethal, active barrier, immune to most weapons.
Naero could feel the waves of Darkforce energy lashing at her like the whips of a billion devils from hell itself.
First she transformed into an energy form. Then she went into her partial Dark Beast mode. That was the key to the process.
She wasn’t just Chaos energy, not just Darkforce.
Naero became every form of Cosmic Energy there was–in perfect harmony.
She stood twelve meters high and was unstoppable.
She hit the enemy’s barriers running. She strode through their strongest, most lethal defenses, and they melted before her.
Not without strain or effort–or even suffering–but she penetrated them with sheer determination and defiant force of will.
At this level of Cosmic awareness, she could vaguely make out Danner nearby, like a bonfire of Darkforce power. He shrieked, twisted, and laughed maniacally in his prison restraints, trapped in the private hell of one of the enemy’s megagenerators, that continually tormented their hosts and sucked them dry.
Danner’s bottomless sources of Cosmic force were beyond scary.
Naero hated to admit it, but Danner had always been strong–even stronger than her.
Danner was pure destruction. Madness. He thrived because he fed the Darkforce on endless hate–something they both shared and understood intimately and extremely well.
At times she pitied Danner, and all that his life of agony, fear, and malice had twisted him into. He had never known the love that she and Jan had known. Danner had never known a moment of true happiness as a real, fully-functioning person. Naero cursed all of their hated foes rolled up into one. No person should ever be forced to endure such a life, especially her brother’s twin–her former blood.
The enemy transformed all of Danner’s hate and might into the Darkforce, in order to power their efforts, and hurl those forces against Naero and everyone else.
Baeven agreed with her.
Danner served the enemy far too well, both as a power source, and a potential weapon.
One way or another–that needed to end.
Naero clenched her fists and crossed her forearms in front of her, leaning into the vortex of Darkforce annihilation as she punched straight through it.
Her third eye burst into blue-violet flame.
Wings of light and darkness flared and feathered out from her back, beating like her thundering heart, sweeping her forward against the Cosmic hurricane of destroying force that the enemy unleashed against her.
She perceived and sprung their trap–on purpose.
As long as she was crashing through the front door anyway, she might as well announce her arrival for all to see and hear.
The enemy counterattacked.
She endured the brunt of it in her fury, keeping the enemy fixed upon herself, making no attempt to deflect it. That alone kept those destroying forces from laying waste to the planet surface, for hundreds of kilometers in all directions, and incinerating whoever survived among her companions.
Some of the energy, she absorbed. Some she shunted into her Dark Beast to sate its ever-burning hunger. Even more she reversed, and sent straight back into the universe itself.
But no matter what it cost her–no force in all the universe was going to keep her from penetrating that enemy stronghold.
Even if doing so tore her to atoms.
Finally, she reached the other side. She launched herself at Danner as soon as she spotted him.
Her blinding, all-out attack smashed into him, and shredded the megagenerator with her weapons as they tumbled and wrestled, and fought.
Danner stared at her with his burning eyes, and laughed and laughed.
The enemy retaliated again.
Multiple weapons slammed into Naero, batting her around.
But the damage was done.
Without Danner boosting their Darkforce energies, the enemy defenses around their stronghold collapsed.
Solid stone near Danner and the Dakkur hordeship erupted–bursting and exploding in glowing shards like a volcano.
Baeven and Gaviok led the strike force up from where they waited for Naero’s signal. They had tunneled right through the planet’s bedrock.
They and the strike team punched into the enemy hordes, right behind the Mystic Enforcer.
Naero recovered and shrank back down to make herself less of a target. She swept toward Danner to rip him free of the remains of the shattered megagenerator.
She was ready to either fight him to the death, or take him prisoner–whichever way it went.
But a wormhole appeared behind Danner and sucked him away, into the Dakkur hordeship or somewhere else. Naero couldn’t even sense his presence any longer.
What was going on?
Baeven and Gaviok pressed their attacks on either flank, and the strike force rallied behind them.
Even as the enemy ship prepared to launch.
Naero had a bad feeling suddenly, that they were all being played.
She tried to contact their ships.
“Jia, report.”
The response came back garbled.
“Naero…Bae…help…enemy…swarming all over us. We…can’t break free!”
The link went dead.
The Dakkur hordeship blasted off.
It was all a decoy, a clever diversion.
Naero wondered why Admiral Korleth Tulkas had not shown himself.
Korleth was up in orbit already, going after the enemy’s real objective–Jia and Govae’s body. They would stop at nothing to obtain them.
They would torment Jia, and strip her mind of all of her secrets, and destroy her for all time, just as they had done to Govae. G’lothc spirits would then have two perfect hosts in such immortal, android bodies. Then they could lay waste to Ur-Jahal, and all else thereafter.
Naero transported up to The Star Fox.
Admiral Korleth Tulkas and a score of G’lothc-possessed, Dakkur Champions swarmed all over the Drian ship, tearing it apart from the outside.
Jia and S’krin attempted to defend themselves and their ship, but they were outnumbered.
And with the naval battle up in the black still anyone’s game, no one was going to come to the aid of a small, unknown vessel.
“Jia, I’m here,” Naero announced from the hold. The ship
continued to rock and take damage. “I’m going out to knock them off the ship. Get out of here the second you can break free. Don’t worry about me–they’re after you and Govae’s body!”
“Understood!”
Om, get Alala and The Darkstar up here to help. The Dagger can still cover and pick up Baeven and the rest.
On it.
Naero transported out into space, adjusting her energy form not to need air.
She smashed into the possessed Dakkur in her partial Dark Beast mode, knocking and ripping them spinning off into the black.
Destroying them didn’t matter. All she had to do was get Jia free so that she could run.
She fought the foe beneath the vessel and spotted Admiral Korleth Tulkas, also glowing with possessed, G’lothc Darkforce power.
He had transformed and swollen up to twice the size of the others, a huge monstrosity, crammed with destructive power. He tore a gaping hole right through the hull and reached in, fishing around.
Korleth locked eyes with her and snarled over the open comlink. “You filthy, rutting, Spack sow! Will we ever be rid of you? No one up here to save you now. I will peel the hide from your guts and devour your entrails and heart, before I grind your skull between my jaws!”
Naero set her stance to do battle, gathering all her might and abilities.
She gripped her Ur-metal blades and clenched her teeth. “Bring your worst, monster!”
“I will personally exterminate your troublesome kind from this universe!” Korleth came at her impossibly fast.
Naero matched him. Speed for speed. Blow for blow. They thrashed forward and back, fighting bitterly.
Korleth ripped at her with his claws. He snapped at her with his great crushing maw.
Naero shattered one of his thick legs with a single blow.
He grunted and whipped around, nearly cutting her in half with his regenerated tail.
She barely flipped over the attack to dodge it.
He leaped high into the vacuum at her and they wrestled, both of them crashing and spinning back down into the vessel, fighting and trying to crush each other.
Naero cried out and flip-kicked Korleth three times, blinding fast, shattering his front jaw and many teeth, knocking him back end over end.
Korleth grappled with her, and smashed her repeatedly into the ship, doing considerable damage to both, but he also knocked more of his minions loose, hurling them into the black.
Naero startapped and swelled with renewed energy, feeling her own consciousness slipping away, winking in and out for an instant.
She plunged her blades into Korleth multiple times, hewing him wide open.
The last four of the possessed Dakkur Champions stopped attacking the ship and rushed to their stricken master’s aid, trying to overwhelm Naero.
They bowled her over, while Korleth regenerated.
One by one, Naero focused on each of the possessed and slew them, crushed them, and disrupted their energies.
When all was done, Naero cackled softly as one half-mad.
She could feel it, just like before. She was losing it.
She still had wits enough to try to protect the ship, although why became fuzzy and increasingly unclear.
By this time, Korleth reached into the breached hull of the starship, and pulled out his prizes. Jia in one massive, clawed hand, and Govae’s inert protoform in the other. The admiral laughed at her, still spewing taunts and threats, bristling with shifting horrors rippling out from his writhing flesh.
“At last, we have won. And you’re still too stupid to perceive what all of this means. All of you shall fall before us!”
Naero sensed it too late. A terrible Darkforce blast shot out of Korleth’s maw, channeled right through him. Power enough to incinerate her. Korleth held this attack ready just for her.
A green sphere swept in. Khai suddenly interposed himself and Yii between the two combatants. He took the brunt of the energy attack at the last instant. His defensive sphere shattered.
Khai and Yii were blasted, and left floating out in space, dead or dying.
Naero kept laughing and saw her opening to strike. She shot straight at her foe, even when Korleth snapped his crushing jaws onto her extended right sword arm.
That actually hurt.
The soaring pain awoke her lust to kill.
Destroying everything around her became an irresistible desire.
She swelled up even larger.
In an instant, Naero whipped to one side and snapped the creature’s thick neck against the crumpled hull of the starship, as if Korleth’s spine had been a dry stick. She pulled her arm free from its twitching jaws.
“That, was for Zhen!” she snarled.
It still thrashed and boiled with Darkforce transformations trying to attack her. Naero tore off its head in a feat of raw power.
She incinerated the abomination with white-hot beams from her eyes, roasting it to death in her hands.
Korleth’s molten, acidic blood boiled into the vacuum of space.
Naero barely remembered to retrieve Khai and the Driathans. She stuffed them all back into The Star Fox.
She giggled and kicked Korleth’s thrashing, charred, headless body away from her. The thing went spinning off into the void.
Rational thought became more difficult each second. Her name.
If only she could recall her own name. Who she was.
Then everything would be fine.
But the headless body of her defeated foe shook itself and surged back toward her, glowing with strange energies. Had she gone completely crazy?
The raw ragged wounds of the corpse itself seemed to be chortling at her with grim, eerie voices. The voices even linked with her mind and used telepathy to communicate.
A new dark, shifting blob-like head pushed and stretched its way out of the ragged, steaming wound, wreathed in Darkforce power.
Red eyes and a grinning red maw tore open like a deep, jagged slash.
“Fool. Even now, you cannot control your powers. They are slowly destroying you. Submit! Bend to our will and serve us. Come closer so that you might become our next vessel!”
Some impossible force dragged her forward against her will.
A voice roared in her mind.
Somehow she remembered.
Om?
This cannot be. It is becoming a G’lothc, or at least the shapeshifting form of one. Naero. Join with me. Regain yourself. We must destroy it–before it takes us over. If it gains command of us and our powers, it will destroy everyone we care about!
Naero. She was Naero Amashin Maeris, and all that meant. That was it–and that was enough.
Nothing was going to take control of her.
A G’lothc? They were actually fighting one in the flesh?
The Star Fox shot away and cloaked.
The horrible thing fell upon her in the black. She sensed its power and its hungry desire to gain control of her mind and abilities. It was filled with Darkforce might. It tried to absorb her, just like in her nightmares.
Naero fought back and acted instinctively. She shouted back at the abomination in her mind with defiance.
GET OFF ME!
A thick blue-violet beam of energy from her third eye punched into the thing, impaling and obliterating its core from yawning maw to tail.
In an instant the horrific thing broke apart. First it exploded as its powers disrupted. Then it collapsed like a small singularity and imploded, consuming even itself.
It collapsed into a small, dark pin-point that threatened to pull Naero inside of it.
The white-hot beam from her third eye struck the phenomena a final time.
The pinhole drained nearly all of her energies from her in an instant.
They cancelled each other out.
Then the phenomena winked out of all existence, without warning.
At last, Naero’s battle and all of her frightening madness came to a crashing halt, leaving her completely limp and exhausted.
Yet she still remained herself.
That by itself was a major victory, and the Driathans were still safe. Hopefully, Khai wasn’t dead.
It was a good thing that she floated in space. She couldn’t have stood up if she wanted to. Splitting pain erupted in her skull, as if invisible foes tried to pull her head apart with red-hot, metal hooks. She felt her growing Cosmic sickness make her want to vomit.
The Darkstar raced back in to gather her up.
49
Naero waited patiently while Acting Medical Officer Trudi Cheyenne checked over Khai with her healing sight. Her skilled hands and senses rapidly studied the Oden Champion’s internal functions and energy levels.
Naero was very fond of Tru–but she still missed Zhen greatly.
Trudi shook her head and then turned to Naero with an impressed grin.
“I don’t know which of you is more fascinating to examine–you with all of your growing, weird abilities and energies–or this stunning green, indestructible god and all of his powers. Both of you are equally amazing healers and unique specimens–of I don’t know what.”
“I don’t understand,” Naero said. She knelt at Khai’s side and did what she had secretly longed to do again. She ran her hand through his long, flowing golden hair, brushing it aside from his handsome face with her fingers. His broad chest rose and fell beneath her other hand.
For an instant, it seemed as if his great heart thundered in time with her own.
“He was hurt in my place. Khai stepped in and endured that brunt of that terrible blast that the enemy unleashed on me, there at the end. They meant to destroy me. But Khai saved me; he saved us all. I saw them strike him down and leave him for dead. How could anyone have survived such an attack? I didn’t think anyone could.”
Trudi stopped smiling. “Yes, he was dying, and it has taken him several hours to slowly regenerate. He’s still in some kind of self-induced, healing stasis, but I think he will revive soon. Haisha, N. He sure is a hunk.”
Naero sighed right along with her. “He is that.”
Trudi sighed. “You know, N. It’s still not too late to get out of here. Why don’t you get away with Baeven and his crew? They’ve avoided the Mystics and their hunters before. You can still get away with them and stay free.”
Spacer Clans Adventure 3: Naero's Fury Page 49
