If not.
She was on her own for quite a while.
Get us out of here, Naero. The enemy has a lock on our proximity. Multiple targets, firing on our location. Destruction imminent!
Naero got them away just in time.
She returned to the island hangar. None of Vane’s vessels were large enough warships to make a difference in an all out fight. And she had no crews to operate them in any case.
Thus far, she did not sense any other Mystic adepts on Janosha other than herself.
Again, very odd. There should be at least two. The two she and Hashi saw before they left for the wars.
Perhaps the enemy had already already killed or captured them.
Either way, the foe would eventually locate the cave complex, Master Vane’s body in stasis, and the other secret hangar in the mountains near there.
Only a matter of time.
Perhaps enough time to get the Tua away into hiding in a safe place. If there was such a thing.
Could she even explain the danger to them and convince them to hide? To thousands of simple Tua?
If help did not reach them soon, they were all royally dead. Or worse.
And something else she hadn’t considered.
How could she get Master Vane’s body away if she couldn’t get into his shielded chamber?
She went straight to Bahan and Iika first.
They went to their knees before her and tried to kiss her hands.
“We are so happy to see you, Naero. Where have you been?”
“We’ve missed you so. Everyone in the tribe has. We owe you our lives, our happiness.”
She pulled them up to their feet. “No time to chat, guys. I need you to take all the Tua away from here and go into hiding, as far away as possible.”
They stared at her.
Then they started laughing like they didn’t believe her.
“Look, I’m not kidding.”
How could she explain it to them in a way they would understand? They didn’t know anything about advanced war, or what a hi-tek military force could do to them all.
“We have nothing to fear,” Bahan said. “We are under the protection of the Great One, who controls all of Janosha.”
“And you are great among the halaena. You would not allow any harm to come to us. No creature on all of Janosha can best you.”
“You two listen up. A threat has come, from the stars. A powerful danger brought by many enemies. I don’t know if I can defeat them all. I am one, and their numbers are countless, like the grains of sand by the sea. Even if I fought them here, the battle alone would destroy these caves and kill all of you in a matter of minutes. I could not stop that from happening. I cannot fight them all at once, and protect the Tua at the same time.”
Their eyes swelled up very wide and large. They covered their mouths with their hands and trembled violently.
“If this is true,” Bahan said, “you must re-awaken the Great One. He will know what to do.”
“He has not come back yet, and I don’t have time to reach him. The great danger could be upon us any second. You and your people have to flee. Right now. Do you have a place to hide?”
Iika paused and looked down, her eyes moving rapidly, her shaking fingers playing with her lips.
“There are…other caves. The deep trees. The other tribes. They would help hide us from these…these bad ones.”
“Get going, as quickly as you can. I’m going to try to draw off as many of the bad ones as I can to another continent and try to fight them there, far away from this place.”
Convincing the peaceful Tua that they had to gather up whatever they could and flee was easier said than done.
It took almost half a day to get them all out of the caves and moving. Many of them still looked back, wondering why they had to go somewhere else, when there was no danger that they could see yet with their own eyes.
“Do not come back to these caves,” Naero warned then. “Not until I or the Great One comes to you and tells you that it is safe to return. You must promise me that. All of you.”
They still did not understand all of her words.
“What does that mean?” Bahan asked. “Prom-miss?”
“It means that you will do what I told you to do. And you will not change your mind and do something else.”
“Very well,” Iika said. “We prom-miss to do as you told us. We will leave and hide. Fight well to vanquish the bad ones.”
“And return to us soon,” Bahan added. “So that all can be well again.”
“I’ll be all right. As long as I know that you and your people are safe.”
“We will sing for you!”
Naero nodded and smiled as she left them. She had done all that she could. And she lost valuable time doing that much.
Now she needed to focus on completing the necessary distractions she had planned to keep the enemy focused on her. To delay them and keep them busy.
Om, how are Twinky and our fixers doing?
Even Om sounded surprised.
Well ahead of schedule. I don’t know what Baeven did to them, but he really has them souped-up.
And we must leave a few behind here to warn us if the enemy stumbles onto the secret hangar nearby or Vane’s cave. Just for luck, we’ll hide one of the ships in another place for a last ditch escape, if we need one. Once we have Master Vane’s body.
I’ve been thinking a great deal about this, Naero. What do you think the enemy is after more…you and the KDM? Or High Master Vane?
Both I’d imagine. We’re prizes and batteries to them. They’ll take whatever they can get. Our job right now is to lure them away from this area and keep them from finding it. If we can hold out just under two days, help will come and perhaps Master Vane will even return on his own to help out. Other assistance will continue to pile in.
No more time to waste.
They transported to one of the other continents where they had already converted three starships into several hundred thousand advanced fixers. Twinky kept them busy every second with the plan.
They focused on fabricating what would appear to be a secret, entrenched military base.
From there, Naero and Om used specialized scanning fixers to locate the enemy.
“Got them,” Naero announced. “Several pockets of invaders, roughly the equivalent to five fleets by their ships and numbers.
They had many units of ground forces sweeping Janosha, searching intently and destroying everything in their path. They scorched the very earth in their passing and left nothing alive in their wake.
Naero and Om, prepared to give them something very real to focus all of their attention very soon.
Delay was the key element. Keep the enemy busy.
To make her plan work, she had to draw them in, and make it all look utterly convincing.
58
An Ejjai strike force moved through the dense jungle. Coordinated waves of armored shock troops supported by gravwing scouts and skirmishers, close assault hover gunships, and gravtanks. They fought mostly with particle beam cannons, rapid-fire blasters, and various explosive ordnance.
Numerous units such as this combed the entire planet of Janosha, dropping down and fanning out. The enemy deployed them to hunt down Master Vane’s hiding place.
This continent of Janosha, like all the others, teemed with a wide variety of life.
Great feathered sauropods. Colorful carnasaurs in various sizes, that hunted alone or in packs. Flying reptiles. Various insect species as big as the Tua or larger.
The heavily armed invaders gunned them all down with indiscriminate abandon and feasted upon their flesh as they proceeded.
Ejjai literally lived to torment and slaughter all things that lived. Laughing Ejjai troops bloated themselves on mounds of raw, shredded flesh they left in their wake for their meatships to collect.
The invaders gorged themselves until bloated.
Then they forced themselves to vomit their st
inking guts out, so that they could fill their wanton bellies again. Repeating this process until even their greed and hunger met its obscene limit.
Most of the carnage went to waste, rotting in the summer sun in the enemy’s passing, until the supporting meatships came down to collect it.
Even the mightiest denizens of the jungle fled in terror before the ruthless invaders. Hunting parties of the Ejjai encircled them and drew them into horrendous kill zones, again and again. Until even the killers grew weary and exhausted from the extreme slaughter.
At last Naero and Om succeeded in regenerating her power and abilities.
Time for The Dark Angel of Death go to work in earnest, and unleash her plan.
Masked and cloaked all in black stealth armor, Naero skirted around this strike force. She swept around their perimeter. Still cloaked, she quickly eliminated their ring of scouts with her flashing, scarlet Chaos swords.
Just before the Ejjai discovered how blind they were, she slipped in among their ranks with all her enhanced speed and attached proximity microfusion mines on most of the battalion’s of gravtanks.
Shettana gave one teknomancer signal.
And their armor exploded all at once.
She sprang high into the air over the chaos and came crashing down, planting both feet into the final lead gravtank. She pulsed with layers of pure Chaos energy.
Her gravwing helped her adjust her density until she struck with the smashing force of a small comet. She crushed the shattered tank into the ground. Beheaded the startled Ejjai commander and crew before they could attack, revealing herself for the first time in the midst of all the destruction.
A hail of fire erupted, focused straight at her from every direction.
She vanished, and the panicked Ejjai cut down each other down with their own weapons in the resulting crossfire.
Fixers projected a gigantic holo of herself. Blood red Chaos katanas blazing in each hand.
Her warning echoed and boomed with the power of the voice.
It seem to resound at the enemy from everywhere, and not just the projected image.
Invaders of Janosha. Your masters brought you here to die. There will be no mercy or escape. Suffer and die at the hands of Shettana!
The fools cursed brazenly and fired at the holo, pouring useless attacks through it.
Naero took out their remaining few tanks. Then the gunships.
She shot down or slit the throats of their gravwing troops, leaving them floating and gushing blood up in the air.
After that, she went on the hunt for their ground forces.
Some of the Ejjai shock troops, so cocky and confident before, broke and ran.
The stragglers she took out quickly and quietly.
Those that tried to band together in groups she blasted to death with micro-missiles and grenades.
Finally she left one alpha female alive.
And rammed her up against a galu tree by her throat, stripping her of her weapons an armor. Neutralizing the suicide bomb inside of her chest.
Naero used the voice again.
“You will be my courier to your masters. Tell them what happened here today, and how quickly and easily I did these things to their most elite forces. Soon you all will be trapped, and killed without quarter or mercy. Your mission has failed. You filth think to bring war and senseless destruction upon our sacred places? Then you shall suffer the death of fools and cowards. And you shall perish by my hand.”
Naero released her. The alpha fell down, cowering and cringing in blubbering fear.
Naero spat on the wretch, and the terrified creature flinched again. It curled up in a whimpering knot, begging for its life. Even after Naero opened the catch drains on her suit and dumped her stored urine on the wretch.
She did so as a very specific, direct insult to all the Ejjai as an entire species. To the Ejjai mind their could be no worse affront–the worst conceivable to them and their ways. One that they would be sure to understand entirely, after their own fashion.
Naero vanished, returning back to her fake, hidden base to rest and regroup. Truth be told, in her weakened state, that fight took a lot out of her.
Even she grew exhausted from such efforts, and channeling large quantities of energy from the massive Janoshan flows.
Naero pushed her abilities and her knowledge of them to the limit. Gambling with fate once again.
She needed to eat and drink badly. Repair her gear and reload and re-arm, with the help of Twinky and her fixers.
“Hey, babe. You look a little tuckered.”
Naero giggled and then winced. “Please, Twinks. Don’t make me laugh right now.” Everything hurt too much. Even just breathing.
She choked down food and lix in a hurry. Barely tasting them. The war she waged single-handed against the invaders now turned on her terms.
The Ejjai commanders would be livid. Furious with hate as soon as her little slap in the face reached them.
But lest she thought to have any time to rest at all–the enemy response was not long in coming.
Swift and massive.
Naero. They’ve taken the bait. They’ve encircled this entire region with most of their forces and warships. They’ve begun an eradication campaign of carpet bombing and missile strikes, blasting anything that lives in an attempt to locate us.
I’m sorry for that, Om. But let them flail around. In a few more hours we’ll flip on the shields around the base here. That will draw them all in and make them converge around this one point.
We want them to bunch up. We hold them off for a time, frustrating them as long as we can. As many of them as we can get, as close as we can get them to come in. We want them convinced that we’re hiding and protecting something extremely valuable here. Like we’re trying to hold out until help arrives.
Are you certain about this plan, Naero? You want to actually cause a Cosmic blast on a similar scale to the one we struggled so hard to avoid? A Cosmic detonation such as that could vaporize everything within two or three hundred kilometers!
I’m counting on that, Om. We don’t really know how soon any help is coming, if at all. We need to take out as many of them as we can. If we manage to take out enough of them, the survivors might think twice and break off to fight another day. We can’t just hide; we have to act. If we just keep our heads down, they’re sure to find Master Vane, or stumble upon the Tua. Those bitches kill anything they find. We have to risk everything to take them all down.”
So many variables. What if you cannot transport us in time at the last instant? You will be controlling many complex functions all at once, juggling huge amounts of varied energies, taxing yourself to the limits–our limits–when our form is already tired and weakened at best. How long can we keep this up?
No choice Om. We begin the main show shortly. You’re the only back-up I have until help arrives. If the enemy takes me out, you and those Kexxian protocols you keep bragging about need to make sure the enemy goes down in flames–whatever happens to us. We can’t let them find Master Vane, or the Tua.
As you Spacers say, I shall do my duty to the utmost extreme. But my access to the full array of the KDM’s defensive protocols is still not entirely complete.
Naero rubbed her eyes and chuckled.
I’m sure you’ll give them hell, Om. Now please. We don’t have much time left. I’ve stuffed myself with food and lix. Help me regenerate as much as I can get back for the final push.
I am with you, Naero.
*
When the appointed time arrived, the enemy closed in on their position any way. Naero ordered Twinky to ignite their heavy shield waves over their fake base.
In an instant, it would light up all over the enemy scans.
The foe quickly converged, concentrating all of their intense firepower at trying to disrupt those massive shields. And crack the base wide open to be plundered.
Naero’s head already felt on fire inside, and she had yet to tap in directly to the Janoshan co
smic flows and open the floodgates, as she had done only by sheer, ignorant accident once before.
Now she did so on purpose, intoxicating herself again. In seconds, so close to transforming into pure Cosmic energy and losing herself in the intoxicating flows.
She heard herself screaming, as if her waking mind yelled at herself from far away.
The sheer paradox of agony and pleasure–blinding, staggering. Her physical form doubled over and fell to one side, convulsing and struggling to maintain control.
Shields buckling.
Shields failing. They enemy is punching through.
Naero heard herself start laughing, like one insane. Laughing against the raw pain and ecstasy.
Get ready Naero. Naero? Unleash the attack.
You must transport us away from the blast epicenter at the same time, or we’ll be disintegrated along with them!
Yes. Destroy them.
Destroy them all.
Suddenly it was her Dark Beast deep within her that responded. The evil monster lurking inside her, hungering–lusting to be unleashed. It knew exactly what to do with all of that power, and slowly fought her for complete control.
It wanted to feed on all the power it readily sensed and swam in. It wanted to kill and destroy anything it could find. It relished destruction on the most basic and massive scale possible.
Then at the last instant, Naero recognized the same vile energy signatures and confirmed their nature for certain.
Darkforce energy. The same sickening, terrifying force the enemy commanded.
Her own Dark Beast was truly made up entirely of and fueled by its own brand of raw, Darkforce power.
Power which only existed to annihilate and destroy all else.
It wasn’t just the enemy who were tainted, soiled, and corrupted by such naked, negative power.
Naero bore that taint of pure, darkest oblivion deep within her very core. A sickening, seductive, destroying negative power anchored deep within her very being.
So much a part of her that she would never escape it.
And that dark epiphany shattered Naero to her very soul.
Perhaps Master Vane was right. Deep within she was in fact a terrifying monster–just biding its time–lurking and waiting to be unleashed.
Spacer Clans Adventure 2: Naero's Gambit Page 39
