“The Six G’lothc were known as the Champions of Shadows, each greater than the one before their number. Their leader was called Mothroxokul–the Hand of the Great Destroyer. A dread being. His very words brought death. The other five G’lothc Shadows of the Darkforce were:
Elazethrek, the Accursed.
Asheddethron, the Deceiver.
Nebegtemoth, the Fallen.
Kegrabildimog, the Defiled.
Zokshemarrah, the Betrayer
“Neither side asked quarter. They fought and they slew and they destroyed, until the mightiest three remained on each side, and squared off to decide the fate of the universe. And the enemy did all that they could to flee, to break free, and get away–free to spread all of their evils all over again.
“The last three Kexxian Dreamers clasped hands together and did not hesitate. They sang a song of power that even the G’lothc did not know–The Song Of Unmaking–with the full knowledge that it would also destroy them and everything around them as well. Thus the three Dreamers marched forward blazing with the radiance of the pure Lifespark–The Flame Eternal, and cast down their mighty foes and made an end of them–the masters of Darkness–who shrank back, and cowered in fear, wailing in terror of that great light at the very last…”
Naero gasped. “And then what?”
Orean shrugged. “They all died; and the universe was at last free from the G’lothc and their direct, poisonous influence for millions of years, free to flourish and burst forth with life just as it has.”
Naero let out a breath. “All right, so all knowledge is dangerous, even music, right? Then where do I begin? Is there something that isn’t so bloody dangerous?”
Orean shook her head. “All knowledge can be perilous. Go slowly. You can only hurt yourself. You can’t make any direct use of the knowledge on the first try anyway. You must give it time. The KDM is part of you, but now, you must become part of it.”
Naero gaped. “Why can’t I use it? What good is all of this if I can’t use it? How do I become part of it?”
“You are not one with it yet. You must see it all and embrace it as the Kexx once did, in order to even understand a portion of it.”
Naero lost it. “I can’t stand it! This is driving me nuts. I’m speaking in Kexxian–thinking in Kexxian. How can I get any closer to all of this?”
Orean rest both hands on her arms. “Calm down, N. I said ‘yet.’ Give it time. You are not who and what you need to be…yet.”
“What do I need to be?”
Orean walked toward her and through her once again.
A spike of pure Cosmic lightning seemed to split Naero into pieces. She started shaking and convulsing violently.
Her eyes flashed open.
She was back in her quarters.
Khai shook her violently and stood her up on her feet. “Wake up, Naero! I’m sorry to startle you out of your deep meditations, but we have an emergency. Baeven infiltrated the enemy base!”
Naero screamed.
The spike of agony again, ripping through her once more.
Yet that was but an echo.
Somehow she just knew. “The enemy has grown tired of trying to unlock the Cosmic puzzle of our child, Khai.” She looked him right in the eye.
“Now they’re just trying to destroy her.”
25
Naero spoke quickly to the Alliance concerning the situation. She made it clear what their objectives were.
“We are not in a position yet to take and hold Naggoth. But we can hit it hard and do a great deal of damage. But if we hang around too long, the enemy will be able to overwhelm us within a matter of hours. They simply have too many forces nearby that we have not been able to degrade yet.”
She paused and brought up screens with all of the sims and projections. “There is time to the hit their homeworld hard, and allow our strike force to go down onto the surface and rescue our objective. Any way we look at this, it is not going to be easy. We’ll have to fight our way in, and fight even harder to get back out. And the longer we linger, the harder that will be. I can only ask you for volunteers, do this, and take on this task–for me and Khai.”
Not one leader from any race refused, and working together, they quickly gathered their forces by the hundreds, and solidified their plans along the way.
Naero continued to wince and double over, experiencing only part of the actual pain that Naero-3, Om, and Naero’s unborn child felt as they were being attacked and tormented. Khai continued to support her.
They drove on at top speed, preparing for battle.
Naero brought all of her available replicants with her, nearly an entire platoon.
Strike Force Shetanna would help lead the infiltration and the main assault.
They met with Baeven and his crew. He gave them all the data he had gathered on the enemy base, a bunker constructed deep within a mountain range.
“I couldn’t go in any deeper without triggering their security and their defenses, Naero. I’m sorry. Those hi-tek defenses and troops they have amassed are more than even I could take on alone. It’s going to require an elite army to fight their way in and out of that fortress.”
Naero snarled and looked behind her. “I just happen to have brought one, based upon your initial reports, uncle. I want you and the others to stay up in the black. If something happens, and the enemy makes a run for it again with their prize, I want you and The Dark Star and The Flying Dagger to take them down, or at least track them to wherever they go next.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me with you on this one?” Baeven asked.
“No, I think we can cover the assault. I just want to make sure that they don’t get away again. I’ll have Jan and The Black Spot backing us up on the surface along with our cloaked dropships. I’m hoping to get in fast enough and get back out before they can try to overwhelm us.”
Baeven nodded. “That’s what I would do.” He was hugging her the next instant. “Get back our own, Naero. Devastate anything else that gets in your way.”
“I will. All right people, everyone stay cloaked and form up just like we planned. The signal will go up when to phaze, and when to attack. When the fighting starts there’s no let up. We destroy anything that moves except for Naero-3. Put her in stasis once we free her. She’s probably going to be in bad shape. Once we have her, our primary goal is to get the hell out and make good our escape!”
Naero brought a thousand picked troops to attack the fortress. All of her replicants that she could round up, about sixty Shetannas in number. One hundred and fifty elite Marines. Two hundred each of the finest Lish, Mechan, Sa’shom, and Amavar troops, with the latest phazing stealth armor and the latest advanced weapons.
Her brother Jan and 500 more heavy Marines waited in reserve if they some got stuck.
While up in the black, 4,000 Alliance fleets would surround Naggoth and hold the enemy hordes at bay.
The Alliance struck the enemy homeworld from all sides, sending them reeling in confusion. But that would not last long.
Naero and her forces were already penetrating the base and quickly approached the point where Baeven had held back.
Naero grunted, so close now that she could sense the residual effects of the pain and damage inflicted on Naero-3. The enemy was trying to tear her apart, and Naero’s miraculous, unborn child inside of her replicant was putting up a stellar fight.
Hold on, my little duck. I’m right here. Momma’s coming, and she’s bringing the fires of the Nine Hells with her!
Baeven was correct. Even with all of their gear, if they went any farther, they would raise alarms and start the fight.
Naero startapped, concentrated, and decided to begin that fight on her own terms…with a very big bang.
She centered a Cosmic gigablast right inside the fortress, half a kilometer ahead of them.
It went off like atomics, but without the radiation, and blew one third of the complex wide open into the arid daylight. The blast sheered of
f one fifth of the mountain and scattered it far and wide.
“Well, they know we’re here now, guys. I’ve cleared the way a bit. Everyone storm in!”
They hit their grav wings and raced ahead at top attack speed.
Naero couldn’t make any mistakes. Not with what was at stake. She knew the enemy were certain to have a trap ready to snap her up in. Transporting straight into it alone, like she used to do, wasn’t going to get the job done.
This time she had to be sure. And she brought her own surprises.
Waves of Ejjai shock troops hit them, including the big mutants and a few of the psyonic freaks with the big, blue and orange glowing brains and multiple heads.
In seconds her troops were among them and unphazed, shredding them into hamburger. Some of the Ejjai began to transform further under the power of the G’lothc possession wyrms.
The Shetannas made short work of them.
Then came the Dakkur, and with them Dakkur champions and even possessed Dakkur.
Naero transformed first into her energy being form, and from there into the intermediate form of her Dark Beast–ten meters high. Even her own troops shrank back from her at first.
But Naero wasn’t done with her surprises yet.
Prince Ra of the Shai swelled up beside Naero in his own advanced energy form slightly shorter than herself, and not just with Chaos Force, but with Cosmic energy also. Naero had been coaching him how to open his third eye and channel those energies for weeks.
Now the Dakkur faced two new Destroyers, and they all clashed head on.
Naero and Ra tore and blasted an entire Dakkur battlehorde to pieces, smearing them and their dust across the rocks, backed up by the Alliance strike force.
Huge blast screens, tens of meters thick, had slammed down up ahead of them, clocking their way.
Naero and Ra burned through them with their eye beams and then ripped them open, peeling the hyper dense alloys back as if they were tearing open ripe fruit.
Her people pulled back to phaze and protect themselves, and then she sent forth another devastating Cosmic blast into the core of the stronghold. They all charged into the flaming breach.
They emerged into what appeared to be an enormous, reinforced dome city, fused under the mountain itself–so immense that enemy warships were fleeing and escaping in the distance through gigantic hatches installed throughout the mountain range itself.
The floor was a broad killing field and battle zone, and more enemy hordes charged in from all directions.
At the far end was the complex’s inner sanctum.
That’s where they needed to go. “First Team! Naero roared, startapping nearly beyond her limits. Get in close. Form up around me and Ra!” Two hundred troops did so.
“The rest of you cloak, phaze, and follow in like ghosts. Don’t fight; just join us on that far side.” They vanished and started across.
Naero opened her third eye wide and transported herself and her First Team all the way in front of the Inner Sanctum.
While the enemy hordes were still streaming in the opposite direction.
Another little surprise. Naero, Ra, and First Team were already fighting their way into the complex before the enemy figured out what was happening.
Naero screamed at the pain that knifed and rattled through her.
They were close now. Less than a hundred meters.
She and Ra had to shrink back down in order to go ahead faster.
They tore through the enemy troops in their way.
Suddenly Naero started to feel afraid. As if it all were too easy. Going too fast.
Then the fixers sent out a warning.
The enemy had neutron explosives set all around them, all the way inside. Massive explosions rocked the complex from behind and ahead of them, even destroying the enemy’s own troops left down there to decoy any attackers.
Naero punched open a tunnel below their feet and sucked them down into it, shielding them at the last second with a plug of Cosmic energy.
The firestorm sucked all of the air out. They survived on their suit reserves. She did a quick count to see how many troops she had left. Out of 200 troops, she had 164 left. She had even lost a few Shetannas during the fighting and the enormous explosions and felt their life force and their memories return to her.
Once it was clear they burst out of their escape tunnel and resumed the attack. By then the vanguard of their other forces were also rejoining them, right for the main event.
What the enemy didn’t count on was the fact that their explosives merely served to clear the way for any attackers who managed to survive them.
Naero-3 was close. Naero could feel it.
They blasted their way into what appeared to be another smaller dome structure–this one only the size of a normal city.
A brightly glowing, spinning orb of white-hot energy was being held up in some kind of gravitic suspension field. Several large Darkforce generator hulks, like Meks ten meters tall poured destroying energy at the glowing sphere. These were the same kind of Darkforce battlemek suits that Danner usually wore.
The sphere that held Naero-3 was slowing down and starting to buckle.
“Attack!” Naero yelled. “Cut them all down!”
But something was very wrong.
The Cosmic energy levels just weren’t right. The readings that Naero was teknomancing were all out of whack, registering all over the place.
“Hold back,” she ordered. “Let the fixers go in first. I want to try something.”
She had them unleash an intense, localized EMP burst right on top of the enemy battlemeks.
As soon as the pulse detonated, everything they saw up ahead of them winked out and vanished. All that remained was a large open power coupling spitting out energy bursts.
Energy bursts being siphoned off of the real Naero-3, somewhere else nearby. They were probably fleeing with her even now.
“Sir, they were all holos?” a Marine Captain asked.
With the readings from the fixers there was no time to explain.
Naero tapped, gathered up all of her people this time, and zapped them as far away as she could, even though she knew that doing so would certainly exhaust her this time.
She needed to get them all out, before the multiple atomics all went off around them. That extreme effort would place her in a regeneration coma for a few hours at the very least.
But she couldn’t let them all die in the enemy trap she had led them straight into.
When Naero came to, Jan was holding her. It was night but the sky above her brother was occluded and without stars. Reports and fixer scans recorded that the mountain complex had been obliterated by multiple large, nuclear explosions.
They were now 143 kilometers away from the blast craters, and hiding from the enemy along with their reserves.
“How close did you get?” Jan asked.
Naero sighed. “Not very. They’ve probably taken Naero-3 somewhere else by now. Maybe even offworld. As it turns out, they weren’t trying to destroy Naero-3 at all. I think that was just a ploy to lure me in. It was me they were after, Jan. This was all about taking me down, and I nearly fell for it.”
As her Cosmic energy levels began to return to somewhat normal, she suddenly had a very bad feeling.
“Wait…Jan, something is incredibly wrong. Can’t you feel it?”
He looked around and winced. “I felt something, but I can’t tell what it is.”
Haisha. Oh, no…
“Jan, have you contacted Baeven or anyone in the black yet?”
“No, you ordered strict com silence. I knew you had just exhausted yourself getting everyone out. I didn’t know if you would want to take another crack at it after you regenerated.”
Naero reached out with her Cosmic senses.
Fuck! She was right. Not only was Naero-3 gone, but the enemy had done more than simply trick them this time.
They were probably already completely screwed.
“J
an, do you want to know why the enemy has been conducting all of those temporal experiments?”
Her brother’s head snapped up and he stared at the dark, starless sky. “Oh, shit!” He just caught up with her.
“That’s right, Jan. That’s why we can’t see the stars. They’ve hidden the entire planet of Naggoth in a projected Time suspension field, just like on the Mystic Homeworlds. First we need to figure out what the temporal dilation parameters are.”
“They’ve bottled us up like djinn and marids from those old stories,” Jan said.
Word spread rapidly. Everyone grew worried at the news of them being trapped on Naggoth in a planetary time suspension field.
Naero quickly performed a teknomancy analysis with their fixernet that was still based onworld.
“Hmm…about a standard month is going to pass us by on the outside, Jan. To our allies, the planet Naggoth has vanished, and it won’t reappear for…thirty of their days.”
She looked straight at Jan. “Meanwhile, there are less than fifteen hundred of us trapped here on this world. And the enemy has millions of troops to hunt us down with. And now we can’t go anywhere offworld, we can’t leave, and they have an entire year inside of this Time trap to track us down and kill us.”
And forget about rescuing her unborn daughter, who wasn’t even on the planet any longer.
For the next twelve standard months it was going to take everything that each one of them had just to stay alive. There was no longer any choice in that.
26
Naero brought her remaining people to another of their deep underground, temporary safe zones. She had dozens of them established within the planetary crust of Naggoth on all four main continents. These hideouts were usually a few kilometers down in natural pockets that the fixers located.
They had been doing little more than hiding and fighting to stay alive for two weeks. Above them the Dakkur nations and their millions of allies and slaves labored with gigantic plasma borers to reach the small Alliance force again and again and attack them.
Naero's War: The Citation Series 3: Naero's Trial Page 22
