Citation Series 1: Naero's War: The Annexation War (40 page)

Huge rounds of applause
to that.

“L
et me just say that we have some heavy duty surprises of our own ready and waiting and in store for our enemies. We can’t wait for them to get here—and have them all for dinner!”

That brought a
n even bigger round of cheering, cursing, and applause.

“
We will engage the spacks in a matter of days, and with our increased numbers and new weapons—I say we’re going to kick their asses and stomp them bloody. We will gut them! I want all my girls out there to feast on spack Marine flesh until you puke!”

Further
rounds of cheering and vile responses.

“
We will ferment their blood in our huge vats and get drunk on it!”

More horrendous rounds of cheering and applause
.

“And once we have captured their filthy spack witch, all of you will watch as I personally
cut her up and rape her with red-hot knives, and torture her to death over the course of an entire week. She’ll sing to all of us with her screams. Then I myself will feast upon her guts, and eat her heart while the light in her eyes fades. I’ll crack her skull open and eat her brains!”

The Ejjai went crazy
.

“Wait until we post
that
on the webnets for the spacks and the skinners to watch! I promise you victory. We cannot be defeated. And we will sweep the human skinners and all the other inferior races into our meatships and out of all existence. They are our prey! Yet another galaxy that shall fall to us and our mighty masters!”

More about their mysterious masters. Interesting
.

Furious cheering
continued in waves.

“So my warriors. Feast on meat until you vomit, and then feast some more. Then prepare for battle as we crush our foes and ravage the rest of this world.
We shall drown it all in blood and swim in it! Prepare for our ultimate victory! Our time has come. None can stand against us!”

They erupted in an orgy of celebration and
vile gluttony.

Fights broke out among the meat piles, and the Ejjai fought with and murdered each other in their frenzy
.

The lead general ret
urned to the others, rubbing her claws together eagerly in the midst of the chaos.

“My sisters, I have a special treat that I’ve saved just for us, at this exact moment.
Please, enjoy my precious gifts to you all.” She motioned to a large knot of troops off to one side among some gravtanks.

A full squad of Ejjai in heavy battle armor led out six terrified human women, all of them naked
, and extremely pregnant.

None of them had a mark on them.
Yet.

But from the look
s on their pale faces, they all knew very well what the enemy generals intended to do with them. Each of them was heavy with child in the later stages of pregnancy.

That they had remained unspoiled and unharmed
up until now would quickly change for the worse–the worst fate imaginable.

Although they were unbound, t
here was no chance for any of these captives to break free or escape on their own against so many foes.

The generals each
glared at them and gloated. The Ejjai generals slavered and drooled, snapping jaws and smacking lips.

Each
general had a set of rusty, bloodstained butchering tools that they began to place out in front of them in heady, eager anticipation of their coming feast.

Then the squad of Ejjai troops
guarding the six women suddenly staggered a few feet away as if drunk.

Some melted into slag where they stood
.

O
ther Ejjai troops exploded.

The six
human captives looked around in confusion.

The next instant, they
all vanished.

The six
Ejjai generals shot to their feet in stunned surprise.

They couldn’t even speak, but a
few flung cleavers and knives at the spot where the captives had stood.

Their weapons fell harmlessly to the ground
.

All of this
was captured and displayed on the big arena screens, and slowly attracted the attention of the astonished crowds.

Then Shettana
appeared as if by magic, right before the lead Ejjai general, resplendent in her full Angel of Death mode. She was all dressed in black, shining black hair flowing in the wind, violet eyes burning above her mask.

Twin blood-red katanas crackl
ed and hissed in the damp air, at the ready in either hand.

Every eye fixed on her–
while the mini-gravpods from her fixers whisked the six cloaked, female captives away to safety.

Naero only had to buy few more seconds
for them to make it out. Fierce Marines waited nearby to take charge of them and keep them safe.

With the six captives
out of the way, at last Shettana could go to work.

“I
have come for you, filthy Ejjai cowards. I am Shettana!” she cried.

She rammed both of her swords through the lead general’s eyes and out the back of
the Ejjai’s scorched skull.

Two of the generals tried to run
.

The other three tried to attack her
.

It did not matter
.

Bolts of scarlet lighting tore forth from both her blades, ripping and blasting the other five into charred pieces of meat and bone
.

Naero cloaked and shot away, as the area around the tables
was engulfed in torrents of enemy weapon fire the very next instant.

Then the gravtanks, gunships, transports and other vehicles
lined up nearby began to explode.

Naero projected multiple holos of herself all over the arena and in the in the air
, drawing fire in all directions.

She used
the voice
, her words booming and echoing from several directions.

“Ejjai filth. Prepare to meet Death.
For Shettana is The Dark Angel of Death, and has no fear of murdering cowards.”

The Ejjai fired in panic from so many
angles that they cut down each other by the hundreds–just as Naero planned.

Fear began to infect them
.

Gouts of red lightning lashed into the arena stands from several directions like gigantic whips of destruction. The devastation flung dead and dying Ejjai everywhere in a cyclone of slaughter, adding to the total chaos and confusion
.

“No mercy, Ejjai scum. No escape. Fear is my mother, Death my sire, and I their daughter! You cannot harm me.
There is no escape for you!”

Just as the enemy started to figure out they were shooting at holos
and murdering each other wholesale, Naero merged with one in her mirror images in the midst of hundreds of Ejjai in the arena stands.

Multiple thin rods of red Chaos energy shot out from her, fanning in a diameter of thirty meters
.

First she impaled hundreds of the shocked invaders
.

When she spun, the red blades chopped them all into smaller
gory chunks and pieces.

Torrents of unleashed Ejjai blood suddenly gathered and swept down the arena, carrying others away in a sudden red
rushing tide of gore.

Naero cloaked and flashed away again
.

More enemy fire storm
ed and tore at her former position.

She took the place of another holo, and sent forth a sweeping hurricane of of Chaos bubbles and orbs of every shape and size into another section of the stands
.

The explosions collapsed th
at entire section. Wreckage toppled inward.

Next she appeared on the field before the horrendous meat piles
, in the midst of hundreds of more frantic enemies.

Half of them flung their weapons away and ran
in terror before her as she raced toward them. So much for the valiant Ejjai.

“Stand and fight, scum!
”

Naero surged and fought with the mob
of foes, sweeping one way and then the other, cutting them down by dozens, by scores.

She moved among them so
fast they could not focus their attacks.

Then she would abruptly change direction and sweep another way before they could hem her in
.

She unleashed m
ore scarlet lightening strikes.

She sent random Chaos blasts into packed pockets of foes
.

At times she just whirled and passed through them with her swords fully extended,
mowing them down in lines and bunches.

Once she had shattered them completely, she merely turned her back on them and began walking
away quickly and with determination, toward the nearest exit.

Naero set her shield pod
full on.

Three
enemy tanks roared at her, cannons blazing.

Naero dodged and deflected their blasts into the stands
.

Two
gravtanks she exploded with Chaos bombs.

The last she sliced
the last in half with her swords and kept walking calmly, straight through the burning wreckage as the gravtank exploded directly behind her to either side.

She ignored all enemy fire directed at her,
kept walking, and cut down anything stupid enough to attempt to stand before her.

She crackled with destroying red lightning as she passed
into one of the exit tunnels, laying waste to anything before her.

The enemy regrouped and poured into the tunnel in hot pursuit
.

Just as Naero hoped they would
.

Another kill zone. How convenient of them to all
bunch up for her.

She turned at bay
, just before exiting, and focused all of her energies in an intense Chaos blast cone.

The massive detonation tore the tunnel apart and blasted shredded pieces of the
packed invaders out the other end, right before a massive fireball that followed hard thereafter.

Naero cloaked, an
d called out over her secure link.

“You guys ready? I’ve got them primed, but I’m also almost out of juice
.”

“We’re in place and ready to join the show, Shettana. You okay? Do you need us to extract you
?”

“Negative. I can finish my part.
It just takes a lot of energy to sustain attacks at this level. You guys know that. Did Intel take care of those genocide devices?”

“Almost all accounted for
.”

“
All right, I’m setting up for my final show. They’ll take the bait, all right. You guys hit them hard when they do.”

“Hard as
we can, Shettana. You know us.”

“I sure do
, and I can’t wait to watch it all go down–right from the front row. Copy that. Make the legends proud, Bravo.”

She took up her position in the center of the fallen city
nearby, just outside of the shattered arena.

She formed a Chaos construct around her that duplicated her and her every move
.

Her construct became a scarlet
, giant version of herself, semi-transparent and fifteen meters tall, red and glowing with huge blazing swords.

She stomped on a meat ship and slashed
at it until it exploded.

Then she attacked the clone ship factory next to it
.

“Face me, cowards. Shettana shows you her might. Show me yours. Face me and perish!
”

Yet
in actuality, her energies waned with each passing second.

It wasn’t like being back on Janosha where there was limitless Cosmic energy to tap into. Away from the Mystic Homeworlds, Naero’s
energy levels and her abilities were not infinite or limitless. She made a good show of it, but even she could not sustain these levels of attacks for very long.

The
entire enemy invasion roared to life , and locked on, bunching and sweeping her way, to engage her from all directions.

The Ejjai went insane with fury
.

Up in the skies above and beyond Tholos-4, the Spacer navy sent the invader fleets
spinning down in flames.

Thousands of Spacer Marines
suddenly materialized out of the black at key points and positions.