The Odyssey Corps delegate fumed and blustered at her. “We aren’t bluffing. Attempts to seize our remaining worlds, and their populations will suffer heavy casualties.”
“Yes, I believe you bastards would do so. But you are behind the times. Have you not seen the vid footage and reports from Krellok-3 in the Hevangian sectors that are streaming across the Webnet? Take a moment and catch up. And in any case, these worlds are not being seized by the Alliance. Far from it. They are being liberated, and turned over to their peoples. The Alliance is not seizing anything.”
“Filthy spack Lies!” the Gelden Corps agent shrieked.
Naero accessed the agent’s history through Om in a flash of teknomancy.
“Delegate Harmon Deveroux of Gelden. Were we lying when us filthy spacks bled and died to save your homeworld where you and your family cowered in fear, waiting for the Ejjai to drag you out and fling you into the meatships? No, you will not be allowed to harm your own populations in order to attempt to salvage and sustain even some small portion of your illegal tyranny. Hear the words that I speak now, and heed them.
“Within twenty four standard hours, Shetanna will prove to the Gigacorps cowards that she is indeed the Dark Angel of Death. Your forces cannot stop her. Your leaders cannot escape her wrath. She is about to perform a miracle of justice across nearly thirty-thousand Corps hostage worlds–at the same time.
“After the first bell of standard midnight chimes, she and her sisters will begin taking out you and your leaders, systematically eliminating them with impunity, until the Corps give up their murderous threats, and withdraw from the wave of liberation that is taking place across the human sectors. Let me be clear; they are going to kill you all.
“The coming New Age will begin with–or without you to trouble it. All of you check with your staffs, on your ships and back on your worlds. Your links will be broadcast across the Webnet.”
Deveroux and dozens of others contacted their hierarchies.
In every one, Shetanna stood at hand, shielded and floating nearby, or even sitting patiently on the top of piles of heavily armed, stunned guards.
“The first bell chimes in less than three standard hours. I suggest you and your fellow managers prepare to take the next journey. For the angels of death have tallied your names, and will begin to mark them off. Within a day, the leadership of the Corps will be gutted from the top down, and you will not be allowed to murder your populations in able to stay in power.”
“Y-you’re bluffing,” a Chikara delegate muttered.
Naero sighed.
A Shetanna appeared floating in the air with her legs crossed behind the delegates, yet she did not take her gleaming violet eyes off the delegates from behind her battle mask.
“Shetanna does not bluff,” Naero stated. “Let’s hang around until the bell tolls, and see what happens. I have nothing to fear or lose.”
The delegates began to look very uncomfortable.
“These talks are over until the Gigacorps have something new to say or bring to the table. And that means capitulation or death. The Alliance is done messing around with you fools, and your commitment to wallowing in denial. And if senseless death begins on any hostage world before it can be suppressed, then all of you Corps lackeys and quislings are forfeit. You will die anyway–with no further negotiations. Do not tempt our resolve.”
The Gigacorps capitulated in full, forty standard minutes from midnight.
When the first bell of the nightwatch chimed, the human worlds knew freedom for the first time in centuries.
The first thing the Alliance forces did was sweep in and hunt down Alien infiltrators. As it turned out, they were already legion.
Khai looked at Naero. “I was worried for a while there,” he said. “What would you have done if they did not give in? Would your replicants really have killed all of those innocent people, without bringing them to justice and trial?”
Naero smiled slightly and grunted. “Gigacorps leaders are far from innocent, my beloved. And they would face swift and summary justice if they chose to make war on their own helpless populations. Yes. I gave my reps strict orders to gut the leadership of all the Corps in the space of one standard day. They would have carried them out to the letter. Intel has been tracking Corps leaders since before the end of the High Crusade.”
Even Khai backed away slightly. “I love you, my heart. But you can be very scary at times.”
Naero looked straight ahead. “It was my intent to break their resolve,” she said. “If I did not make it terrifying and hopeless for those fools to continue living in blind denial, they would not have surrendered. I always make a point of backing up my threats.”
17
In many other vital regions of the Alpha Quadrant, the enemy launched all out attacks on the fringe of the Expansion Zone. They swept across vulnerable, outbound colonial sectors, plunging scores of fringe worlds into all out war and Chaos.
Spacer and Alliance fleets raced to meet this new challenge with courage and swift dispatch.
Admiral Maeris’s fleets were no exception and joined the thin lines of defenders at the most vital point. Khai went along with them to engage the enemy directly and lend the support of the Mystic Enforcer.
The main Alliance plan was to strike back quickly, not only there, but across all sectors in a well-coordinated, massive response to hammer the enemy hard and throw them back.
The enemy fleets facing Naero’s forces massed behind new huge dreadnaughts of alien design, sporting massive firepower. Such vessels did appear to be very formidable, in response to some of the big ships of the Spacer fleets.
Naero orchestrated her arm of the attack from her command platform, her adept hands and fingers flashing from holopanel to holopanel, flying back and forth.
Waves of starfighters from both sides clashed, attempting to penetrate each other’s outer defensive screens.
Then the enemy sent in their bigs to blast a way through the Spacer battle formations.
Naero sent in her juggernauts to counter and engage, on optimal attack vectors.
The bigs wheeled and maneuvered about, slugging it out face to face, taking and causing damage.
Massive energy weapons of blinding power shot out wide beams of various colors, punching and carving into one another as the complex naval battle flared full on.
A knot of fresh enemy bigs jumped in very close on the starboard flank and tried to roll up the Alliance formations there.
Naero countered and shifted the formations of her forces to compensate, but it wasn’t going to be enough.
“Khai, our fleets could use a little Cosmic support out there on our furthest right. I think we should both go.”
He nodded. “Ready when you are. Let’s back each other up.”
Naero turned command over to her waiting strategic and tactical replicant. Nariine jumped up from where she watched and waited, took over without hesitation, and continued to flex and adapt with the changing flows and patterns of battle.
Naero and Khai transported directly among the enemy flanking bigs, hurtling at them, big guns blazing.
The vast warships dwarfed them in their human-sized energy forms.
“Take on the ones to the left,” Naero told him, “while I deal with those on our right. Reverse direction to disrupt anything you miss on the first pass, and meet back here. I’ll do the same.”
Khai formed his indestructible green glowing energy sphere around himself and accelerated to high attack speed. He proceeded to blast blazing, exploding holes straight through the enemy dreadnaughts, tearing out vital systems, slicing through fire control, drives, and power cores.
Naero assumed her partial Dark beast form and phazed through big after big, leaving behind orbs of concentrated Cosmic energy, forty meters in diameter.
When they began to cook off half a minute after her first pass, the enemy bigs charging in detonated from within, scattering burning wreckage across the battle grid.
Kha
i reversed direction and came back through the line of crippled ships, causing many of them to list and float, completely disrupted and disabled. Over half of them exploded at random.
Hundreds of lesser warships kept coming, blazing away.
Naero and Khai were still so small in size by comparison that it was very difficult for the enemy to target them properly. And the pair used cloaking and phazing to confuse matters further, striking again from unseen vectors.
Fleet after enemy fleet stalled or floated helpless, completely drained of energy.
Naero and Khai took that stolen power and reflected it back at other enemy formations, slicing through many vessels at a time.
The devastating pair regrouped, allowing the Alliance forces to race in and overtake the fleeing remnants of the enemy assault.
But while the two Cosmic Champions were busy in those areas, they could not be in other places.
A dark, vaguely serpentine form, three kilometers in length with a massive head, wreathed in Darkfire, phazed in and out among the Alliance rear formations. Without any warning, hundreds of Alliance ships were vaporized and many more severely damaged.
The entire Alliance rear had been shattered, almost instantly.
“The Dakkur king!” Nero shouted across her link to Khai.
They transported that way to engage the monster, yet it phazed and warped away as quickly as it came.
The attacks they launched struck nothing and passed out into empty space.
The Black King’s laughter blared and echoed through their minds. The creature’s Cosmic and psyonic might were extremely formidable.
The beast cleverly concealed his true powers.
Just a taste of what is coming, spack weaklings. You dare to arouse our great wroth? When the end comes upon you, we shall sweep across Quadrant after Quadrant. You think to stand before us? We will be unstoppable!
It was already too late, but Naero called in reinforcements through Om.
The running battle with the enemy invasion forces continued for two standard weeks before it was all over.
The enemy fought to the death, as usual.
After the high casualties of the initial engagements, further losses were kept surprisingly low.
But Naero gave full warning to Intel and Spacer Naval Command.
Even this large attack was just a feint, a probe meant to test the metal of the Alliance and their resolve.
The enemy was toying with them, most likely in preparation for the arrival of the looming, enemy armada waiting to find a way to flood into the Alliance galaxy.
The Alliance had barely a handful of Cosmic Champions.
That also included her seven-year-old daughter, Shetharra, who her mother was loathe to send to war at her young age.
As a mother, that would only be a last resort, before all was lost.
How many Dakkur Dark Kings were there? How many White Queens? If the enemy unleashed them and their Armada all at once, they could roll over entire quadrants at a time. Was that the enemy’s plan then?
There was only one other Cosmic Guardian such as herself.
Naero needed to locate and take counsel with Her Uncle Baeven.
18
Naero and her outcast uncle met on Zorin-2, one of his safeworlds. They caught up and discussed matters while sparring together in their partial Dark beast forms, across a vast, desolate volcanic plain.
Three live volcanoes alone were active within eighty kilometers of their isolated practice zone. The planet’s vulcanism was very dynamic.
The two Cosmic Guardians crashed and clashed together, blinding combinations hurtling back and forth. They battled on an elite level that few in the galaxy could match.
They unleashed Cosmic attacks at will, blasting each other through rock formations, and ramming each other into the ground.
Their nearly indestructible energy forms endured damage that would have wiped out entire naval fleets, and armies of hi-tek military forces.
They recovered and regenerated almost at will and kept battling.
“Congratulations upon completing your Mystic Training, Master Maeris. I thought doing so would serve you well.”
They locked and strove to throw each other off balance.
To Naero’s delight, they were now equally matched in speed, strength, technique, and cunning. But her uncle still held a slight edge over her in experience.
Yet even there, Naero was rapidly closing the gap with him.
As it was, they were virtually equals as combatants.
“No, I must say, Naero. Well done. You’ve really improved. You’ve perfected your own style, and you have skills that I have never known. If we really went at it, it would be a toss up. Half of the time you would win, and the other half for me. It would be a draw in the end.”
Naero bowed to him slightly and pulled back. “Thank you again, uncle. Let’s take a breather, shall we? There’s so much I want to show and discuss with you.”
“All right. There’s a very nice waterfall a hundred klicks away. Follow me.”
The area of the waterfall was exceptionally lovely, and Naero marveled at the double rainbows in the sprays of water about it, and the many tropical bees, humming birds, and other rare birds of paradise of shocking and vibrant, colorful variety.
They assumed their base forms once again and sat on some rocks, drinking fresh, clean, cold water that their fixers brought them in crystal goblets.
“You know, Baeven. With my quickening talent, I can teach you any of my skills that you would like to learn, and show you how to master them.”
“That’s sounds like an excellent idea, Naero. Let’s work on them one at a time as we go along. There are several that I would like to master on my own.”
“There’s one new defensive psyonic and Cosmic measure in particular that I think you’ll find very useful these days. I already shared it with Khai and Jan. I’ll teach it to Shalaen when we meet next. The Mystics are now training all adepts to learn it.”
She went on to describe how the enemy was using her powerful energies against her and others.”
Naero passed that knowledge on to him via her mindlink and then with her her quickening ability. From there they practiced the shielding effect until Baeven had it down.
She also shared other kinds of more subtle knowledge and experience through their link. These were things that she had learned in general, that might prove useful to him as well. Baeven might never learn or experience them on his own in his line of work.
Naero went on to describe some of the bizarre encounters she had survived, and some of the enemy’s new tricks.
Baeven shook his fists in the air. “We can’t trust those slippery bastards, Naero. That’s for damn sure. They’re going to keep trying to find ways to come at us from different vectors and take us down. We must remain vigilant.”
“I’m afraid it only gets worse,” she said. Next she told him about the weakening of the actual pocket dimension that contained the G’lothc spirits. How the dimension’s fractures and fissures were allowing those highly dangerous, lost souls to escape, and send their dark will and their vile influence streaming into the Astral Plane. And from there foes attacked into the Prime Material Plane and their universe and galaxy.
“That is a terrible new development,” Baeven said. “We can discuss it with Jia, but I don’t see what we could possibly do to seal such breaches.”
“Not even if we gather together all of the Cosmic players that we know? What if we concentrated all of our powers in an attempt to fuse just one of the fissures at–”
“We still couldn’t begin to even touch one of them, and have any hope to affect such structures in any way, Naero. It would take powers and energies far greater than a million of us or more combined, beyond anything we could ever hope to muster. We cannot operate on that kind of scale. Don’t you see? We might even make the situation worse.”
Naero frowned and looked down at her feet with a sigh. There weren’t a million
of them. “I guess I didn’t fully comprehend what it was we were up against. I hoped that we could find a way to do something.”
“Yes, well it was a nice thought, and it would make things easier for us. Our problems only seem to stack up against us. If the enemy can slip out through the Astral Plane and then from there into any part of our universe at will, they can come at us from anywhere. It gives them a huge advantage against us.”
They discussed the brief appearance of the Dakkur Dark King.
“He is mocking us, clearly,” Baeven said. “He’s making a challenge, pure and simple. When the time is right, he might even begin hunting us, trying to take us down one at a time if he can. We can’t let that happen. Just as with the White Queens, we must take on any Black Kings at least two at a time. Double team them. I’ll contact Ra.”
“You defeated a Dark King on your own,” Naero said. “And I killed a White Queen of the Dakkur on my own, in single combat. Although I did use kind of a nasty trick to polish her off.”
“If they die and we live, take the win. But Naero, in all honesty, I still think it was a fluke that I vanquished the Dark King that I fought. I got lucky, that’s all. By rights he should have digested me and shit out my dust. Gaviok did help me soften him up a bit before he went back down. The point is that both of us barely survived the damage done to us. I still wouldn’t relish the odds of just one of us taking on one of those damn monsters alone.”
“That raises another important question,” Naero said. “If there are more Dakkur kings, how many could there be at one time? What if they and their queens came at us in a group, all at once?
Baeven laughed heartily. “Well then, I guess we’d have to pucker up and kiss or sorry asses goodbye.”
Naero felt the blood drain from her face.
She didn’t quite relish the dark humor in such statements.
“Don’t worry, Naero. Such a thing as you envision is never going to happen. Due to the instinctive, territorial nature of Dakkur Kings and their White Queens, they would never cooperate in such a fashion. First, these beings are, thankfully, exceedingly rare.
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