“We’ve yet to find any of their original cloning facilities. If they ever weakened humanity enough, they could renew the war at any time, with very little effort. This attempt may have just been practice. A dry run.”
“But where are they?” General Walker asked. “Where have they gone? What are they plotting?”
“I think we’ve caught a break and we should take it,” Klyne said. “Naero, now that The High Crusade is over, we’ve only just begun to hash out issues with the Corps. A process which will mostly take quite a while.
“And for you, Naero, on a more personal note, all three of the Mystic High Masters are demanding that you to return to them for further testing and training. Good timing. All three Mystic Homeworlds will be open to you to travel to one of them over the next two weeks. I strongly suggest that you do so. The autumnal equinox of the standard calendar starts tomorrow.”
Naero’s blood felt like it froze in her veins into ice daggers.
“Good timing…” she muttered.
She blinked and stared at Shalaen.
Both of their eyes widened in terror. The same fear struck them.
Naero whipped her head back to Klyne.
“The enemy stole secrets from Hashiko’s mind.”
“And mine,” Shalaen said.
“They desperately sought knowledge about both the Mystics, and on temporal manipulation.”
Klyne put it together as well an instant later.
“They’re going to attack the Mystic Homeworlds.”
“The invasion was all just a heavy feint. A distraction. That’s just what the aliens wanted. All of us focused here on the Invasion. Haisha! We’ve played right into their hands!”
Shalaen gasped. “They’ll capture as many of the Mystics as they can and enslave them all. Suck them dry in those Darkforce generators. What if they capture one or more of the High Masters?”
Even Naero covered her mouth with one hand.
“They’ll have power sources…unlimited Darkforce energy that they can do anything with. Anything.”
“I’m afraid it gets worse,” Klyne said. “At this time, all three of the High Masters are in stasis, while their minds are in the Astral Plane at an inter-galactic, inter-dimensional conference with other sentient beings from across the universe. They cannot defend themselves. Their physical bodies lie completely helpless.”
“Get as many fleets there as soon as you can,” Naero said. “I bet those three worlds will fall under heavy siege as soon as the three planets come back in sync. That’s where the aliens will hit us hardest and do their worst.”
Shalaen nodded. “If they take out the Spacer Mystics, humanity will be set back for centuries.”
“Leaving us ripe for further conquest,” Naero said. “And our new alien adversaries will use all of that power to make themselves unstoppable.”
Walker studied the tactical reports.
“All they have to do is hold us off for two weeks until the temporal windows close. Then they’ll have three years to finish the job.”
Naero shot to her feet. “I’m leaving for Janosha this instant. With Hashiko gone, High Master Vane will most likely have only two adepts guarding him and his world. I have to get there. ASAP.”
“There are few ships that can jump there fast enough,” Klyne said.
“Let me worry about that,” Naero told him. “I know a few that can.”
“Can the High Masters be contacted and told to return their minds to their bodies?” Shalaen asked.
“It’s difficult, but we’ll do our best,” Klyne said. “This is an Alpha Negative Priority Emergency. We’ll coordinate orders en route. Let’s move, people!”
He didn’t have to tell them twice.
Naero and Shalaen transported back to The Flying Dagger and launched their fleet within minutes.
Baeven and The Shadow Fox, and Alala, Tyber, and The Dark Star could easily join them along the way.
Naero made the urgent distress calls.
56
“Jia,” Baeven called out to his unusual ship’s unique AI. “We need every ounce of speed.”
“Sorry, Bae. Proceeding at maximum velocity. Yet we still will not reach Janosha for 3.17 standard days.”
“And what do the long range scanners show?”
Naero was afraid to ask.
Jia took a moment to check them and respond.
“As we feared, massive enemy fleet presences converging on Janosha. Including the alien Dakkur hordeship. They will reach all three Mystic homeworlds in 1.739 standard days.”
“Analysis of the Intel fleets and defenses.”
“Current forces remain insufficient. They will barely slow the enemy down.”
Naero closed her eyes and sighed.
“They’ll fight and die for nothing. Where is the alien G’lothc shadow ship?”
“Converging with a similar enemy strike force on Taeha. An even larger strike force is heading toward Oorrii.”
“Interesting,” Baeven said. “Our alien nemeses have divided their forces. They only seem to have the one Dakkur hordeship, and the one G’lothc shadow ship. That’s why they’ve sent twice as many Ejjai to Oorrii. So, they do have limitations to their tek, their resources, and what they can do.”
Naero snorted. “Haisha! They’re about to assail all three of the secret Mystic Homeworlds all at once. I’m guessing they’ve calculated the odds and put them in their favor. They have no intention of losing.”
“We’ll be there in three days. They will have to hold. They will need to survive until then. Nothing else can be done.”
Naero clenched her fists and gritted her teeth.
“A lot of bad things can happen in three days time. And Janosha will be the most vulnerable of the three.”
She turned her head.
Without Vane and especially Hashiko there to defend it.
It wasn’t just Vane’s body in stasis and any others.
Naero knew firsthand what the enemy did to the worlds they invaded. Every life form on Janosha would be at risk.
Including the peaceful Tua. Her friends.
No…her family.
“I have to get there faster!”
“We don’t have any way to do that,” Baeven said.
Naero reached out with her Mystic senses.
She was tuned to Janosha and its energies from three years of working with it.
She could barely sense those energies from such a distance away.
Perhaps when they got closer.
She’d have to keep checking.
Baeven shook his head. “Stop. Even Master Vane couldn’t transport to Janosha from this range. You’d kill yourself for nothing in the attempt.”
“I can’t help anyone if I kill myself. But when we get close enough, and I think it will work. I’m going on ahead. So don’t try to stop me.”
“No promises,” Baeven said.
“I’ll fight you with everything I have.”
Baeven looked her in the eye.
“And you’ll lose. Jia. Let’s give her some help, and calculate the odds as they change.”
“Everything’s a gamble,” Naero said. “I accept that.”
Naero prepared herself over the next seventeen hours. Meditating. Channeling Cosmic energy. Resting.
She needed to be fresh.
Within hours, the badly outnumbered Intel forces would come under heavy attack.
Then the polar bases and the planetary defense shields.
They could not hold out forever.
“How long will it take them to locate Vane’s body in stasis?” Baeven asked.
Naero sighed. “It’s well-hidden and passively shielded. Who knows? But they won’t stop until they capture it. And if they can hold us off for two weeks, they’ll have three years to finish the job. And do whatever else they want with the planet and all that raw, Cosmic power. Don’t forget that.”
Just the possibilities made her shudder.
“They’ll
consume every life form,” Baeven said. “Clone plants. Fleet and weapons factories. Meatships. They’ll strip the Mystic Homeworlds clean, and steal every bit of Cosmic power from them and convert it all into massive quantities of Darkforce energy.”
“In three months’ time, they’ll emerge stronger than ever. With any Mystics they’ve captured powering those vile Darkforce generators.”
“What about those wormholes they can make? Can they use those within the temporal fields once they’re inside of them.”
Naero rubbed her dry lips. “I don’t think so.”
Om added, Not in theory at least, but they were after temporal secrets when they stole information from Shalaen and Hashiko.
“But who knows what they’ve been able to learn?” Naero said aloud.
Jia alerted them.
“The potential for surviving a long-range transport attempt to Janosha has gone from the lethal and improbable…to the possible.”
Naero stood up.
She could feel it.
Even at this range. She could sense Janosha’s immense Cosmic power flows, tending toward the Chaos energy end of the spectrum.
And she could just barely tap into them.
It would have to be enough.
“Time to go. See you in a few days.”
Baeven grabbed her wrist from behind.
Naero resisted, glaring at him. “Do we really need to fight?”
To her surprise. Baeven pulled her to him and hugged her.
What’s more. She felt a vast amount of Cosmic energy flowing directly from him.
Surging directly into her.
Baeven gave her his own energies.
He released her and stepped back, staggering slightly from his efforts.
“I’ll have time to regenerate. You won’t. Stuff like this always takes more out of you than you think,” he said.
“I…I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Get there alive and do your duty. Give old Vane a slap on the puss for me.”
Naero smiled wide. “Will do.”
She focused.
Then transported.
Baeven was right.
Such long range efforts did take more than she thought.
Haisha! Would she even make it as it was?
Even with the Cosmic force Baeven gave her, she felt her energies waning fast. Too fast.
Would she hit Janosha alive? Or completely burned out…and dead?
57
Naero crashed into jungle trees on a familiar volcanic island with tropical birds and marine reptiles.
Luckily she knew the place. Vane kept a small, secret starship hangar concealed beneath the volcano.
She crawled to it through the jungle. Then staggered.
Finally she made it the concealed entrance.
Om barely teknomanced them inside.
Exhausted from her emergency journey, unfortunately she had sapped all of her energies just getting to Janosha ahead of the other defenders.
Now she desperately needed time to regenerate and recover her strength.
Time she did not have.
She connected herself to Janosha’s flows and slept in the secret hangar, curled up in a corner on the floor.
She awoke a few hours later, and located some food and lix in one of the remaining ships.
Master Vane was not going to be happy at all when he returned.
She’d broken in on his carefully guarded toys. And more or less disobeyed him in almost every way.
Too bad.
She would need a cloud of fixers to make her ploy work. And great, she still wasn’t up to full speed yet. Transporting that far had nearly killed her.
She pulled out Twinky from her kit. The little guy woke up at her touch, bobbing and winking at her with his one eye.
“What’s cookin’, good lookin’?”
“You are.” Naero sucked in a deep breath. Then she gave Twinks his marching orders.
After that she had to lie down again. It took all of her remaining strength just to get the fixers multiplying and doing their thing.
Two more hours passed.
Then without any other warning, planetary defense sirens and alarms went off.
The secret hangar locked down on its own, shielding and passively cloaking itself completely.
Naero staggered over to a com console to assess the situation.
Some kind of jamming against three emergency signals.
Signals originating from the defending fleets and coordinates at both poles. Desperate calls for help.
The defending fleets and the Intel early warning bases at the poles were getting hit hard.
The battle heated up fast and Naero could barely stand. What good was she?
Om warned her also.
All given signs and data point to an imminent planetary-wide attack by a massive, hostile invasion force of Ejjai, led by the Dakkur Hordeship. Elite and highly advanced tek.
Help me Om. I need to regenerate faster somehow. I’m no good to anyone like this.
Compensating as best I can.
Why was time always against them?
Slowly she felt her strength return. Agonizing. Knowing full well with every second that passed, that the few allies she had nearby were being trounced and put down hard.
Naero studied the coordinates to the polar advance warning bases.
We can’t just stay here. Twinky and our fixers are already on their way to the coordinates I selected, They’ll get to work. While they’re busy, let’s take a quick trip, Om.
We are still very weak. And we’re not up against a simple Janoshan monster. Don’t go in just with your blades this time.
One of the other ships had an Intel armory. Naero ducked in and geared up. Faster than she could change into it, she teknomanced a suit of stealth combat armor over her flight togs and sealed the helmet.
Shoulder micro cannons. Beam cutters in her forearms. Mark-5 plasma carbine. Micro-grenade casters. Two blaster pistols fixed to either leg. Her energy cutlass behind her hips.
She wore a small mek, locked and loaded. Ready to do battle.
Naero tapped the Janoshan Cosmic flows and translocated them to the arctic. Right in the middle of a swirling, blinding blizzard.
Her stealth armor modified to the surroundings, keeping them camouflaged, cloaked, and virtually invisible.
They dropped into a snow bank within sight of the shattered advance warning base. Still on fire and smoking, but being put out by the weather.
Damn it, she was too late! That meant the enemy was already in system and searching. They had destroyed both bases most likely, and eliminated the planetary defense shield.
She moved in to investigate the ruined base.
At first glance, the Intel people had put up quite a fight. But they had only been a few dozen in number.
All of them dead now, according to the life scans.
Naero entered the shattered base and continued a passive scan as the blizzard around them picked up. Explosives. Weapon’s fire. Lots of both from both sides.
Om did his thing, analyzing the aftermath.
Something disrupted the base shields and cracked the facility wide open very quickly and with little warning.
A stealth ship at the very least, with big guns. Maybe even an ion cannon. Probably the Dakkur hordeship.
The Intel people who survived suited up in combat armor similar to hers and slugged it out.
But they were heavily outnumbered.
Whoever the enemy was fought their way straight in and eventually overwhelmed and blasted the defenders to bits.
Correction. All of the bodies had been ripped or sliced apart and devoured, down to the bone.
Ejjai.
Yet the heads were all bitten cleanly off too, right through their combat armor.
Dakkur.
The green and yellow Dakkur champion thing that killed her best friend Gallan back on Egano-4 had killed like this. It was still a mystery what exact
ly the Dakkur did with the heads. Trophies of their kills?
She continued on and found three more Intel dead just outside the other end of the base.
This trio had gotten out and tried to get away in the storm using their stealth modes, just like hers.
They went down the same way. Ripped up, sliced apart, and eaten. Their heads and helmets missing.
Naero cursed.
Bastards. I despise the way our enemies mutilate our people, Om.
I agree. There are multiple pools and splashes of Ejjai blood from their many casualties, over a hundred in all. They must have taken their dead with them.
They eat or process even their own kind, Om. The vermin wouldn’t waste the meat.
Something else was at work here, Naero. Something far more lethal than Ejjai shock troops.
I know. A Dakkur of the Champion Caste. The same one that killed Gallan.
She went to a com console that hadn’t been shot up. She attempted to send out a secret distress code to the other polar base and the Intel fleets.
No response. No answer from anyone, anywhere.
Perhaps the enemy jamming is too advanced.
Or maybe everyone else is already dead, Om.
She had failed them all.
The enemy is searching this way once more. Do not let them pinpoint our location.
Some of the scanners are still up and functioning, Om. Looks like our foes have done it all by the book. They’ve hit the other base at the Southern Pole the same way they did here. The Planetary Shield has definitely been neutralized and destroyed.
Om. I’m going to try something. The only ships who can receive this type of transmission are Baeven’s weird craft, and my people.
She quickly sent out a coded transmission explaining the situation. All out attack on Janosha by massive, hi-tek invaders. Master Vane extremely vulnerable and still hidden in his trance. She gave what details she could, and the coordinates for her various bases and planned locations on Janosha.
If her message could get through, Baeven would relay the tactical date she had gathered, and her call for help from the Spacer forces converging on Janosha.
Perhaps some of them could find some way to arrive faster. She hoped.
Spacer Clans Adventure 2: Naero's Gambit Page 38
