Spacer Clans Adventure 3: Naero's Fury (9 page)

Staggering. Utterly staggering.

Om laughed with her at how small and ignorant they were.

I’m just as
overwhelmed, Naero. Trust me. But we can start exploring these basic concepts and possibilities a bit at a time, from the beginning. Let’s try basic star-tapping and replication, for now, partner–abani. I think that will be more than enough for now.

Naero sighed and blinked.
Tapping into the energy of stars. Khai had mentioned something like that once.

Replicating herself in various ways–separate, fully-functioning, other versions of herself. How was such even possible? Yet in her mind, now–she knew that it was.

Om, we’ll make time to work on these things. We might not ever be lovers, yet we are abani. But right now, I do have other matters to attend to.

I will faithfully pursue all of our goals, and keep you apprised of my progress. I like it when we speak Kexxian in your mind. It helps greatly, and keeps us on the same wavelength of thought with the KDM. Let us continue to do so.

Very well, Om. I agree with you; let’s continue to do so. We will communicate and think in Kexxian. It seems only natural anyway. I’m going to go out shortly.

Naero took a mist shower, dressed, and left her quarters for a late breakfast and to see to the needs of her people and her fleet.

First she had to check on Jan. She checked his status. Jan slept in, too. He was still in his quarters.

Naero went there first and chimed his panel.

Jan snapped it open, but from what she could see, the guest room was completely torn apart. There was even damage to the walls and outer hull.

Naero nearly panicked. She called out over her wristcom.

“Tarim, security detail. Jan’s room. ASAP!”

She stepped into the darkened room.
“Jan? Where are you?”

She heard sounds of what appeared to be some kind of struggle within.
Jan came hurtling at her. She had to fight him off, deflecting powerful kicks and punches.

“
Jan, stop it. It’s me!”

He grinned at her with a wild look in his eyes.
“I know!” he shrieked eagerly, and attacked her again.

Jan shook his head, and his face blinked at her in fear and confusion.
“Naero…help me…Danner’s trying to take over again!”

10

Naero tackled Jan and wrestled with him
with all her might.

She tried to
mindlink with him. Perhaps she could help fight Dan off somehow.

She could tell when Danner flashed into Jan’s mind briefly, because that insane laughter would start pouring out of Jan’s
babbling mouth.

Jan had had some basic training with the Mystics, fortunately. One of the first things adepts learned was how to shield their minds from others. But Jan was certainly not an expert at it yet, and Danner was a powerful, lifelong, psyonic savant, with a special link to Janner’s mind from them being twins.

Jan clearly resisted and fought his insane brother off with everything he had.

If Danner won, who knew how much destruction he could cause using Jan’s body?

Naero had seen Dan take out entire warships with nothing but his mind and his many Cosmic powers.

He could destroy a small merchant ship like
The Flying Dagger
easily, and kill everyone on board.

Naero finally held Jan down and
achieved a mindlink.

She could sense the battle between the minds of the two brothers.

Get out of his head, you bastard!

Danner laughed relentlessly.

He used Jan’s body to pummel her with several painful blows.

Naero endured them and tried to hold him back down, and maintain the mindlink.

Danner raved, as usual.

Going to kill you all. Going to take his body and go on a rampage. And he’ll be stuck where I am, back in one of those damn
, Darkforce generators!

Naero closed her eyes, trying to picture herself grappling with Danner within Jan’s mind.

He was still stronger than her.

Stronger than them both on this level.

Within the expanse of his mind, Jan tore a dark, yawning portal open with his bare hands, as Naero tried to fend off Danner.

N, shove him through here. It’s the only way to shut him out of my mind. We have to drive him out
by force!

Together, both of them fought Danner, kicking, punching, and shoving him into the dark portal.

All three of them battered and tore at each other, but together, Naero and Jan barely crammed Danner through the strange hole.

Jan
finally sealed it off.

Naero and Jan gasped, and came to, out of the depths of their mindlink, still wrestling with each other.

Even as Tarim and the security team of five others jumped on them both to pull them apart.

Naero quickly explained what had happened.

They contacted the High Masters on Thanor-4’s surface.

Master Tree had Jan shuttled down for an immediate crash course in further, psyonic mental defense.

No one could afford Danner taking Jan over again.

*

Naero stepped into sickbay.

Zhen smiled. “Glad you could join us.”

‘Us’ was Aunt Sleak, and her twin girls kicking around in her enormous belly, and medtek Trudi Cheyenne assisting with the check-up.

Everything on the medbed readouts looked good.

Zhen smiled, using her healer’s sight, and not the readouts, to confirm her findings. “Mother and babies healthy and strong. I’d say they’ll join us within two weeks–three, tops. Come here and check it out, N.”

Naero did so, coming close, using her
own sight to do the same thing. She rested both hands on Sleak’s tummy.

“
I’m glad you’re here,” Naero said. “Jan and I do appreciate the support. You can tell Klyne the same thing.”

Sleak smiled, resting her strong hands on Naero’s. “Klyne went back to work, once he realized the High Masters were
n’t going to execute you.”

“
Yet,” Naero said. “They still could. You heard about Jan?”

“
I did. Just one more reason I’m sticking around. I can’t do much else, until I pop, anyway. Zal’s on his way now. We both know it’s going to be soon. This is a good, safe place to have our girls enter our universe. And the medical people at hand are all top notch. I ought to know–I had most of them educated and trained, for years.”

Z
and Tru smiled and nodded.

Naero giggled, feeling the vital essence of her tiny nieces, roaring like little flames of life, beneath her own strong, gentle hands.

The next batch of Maeris girls. It was a stirring feeling. One that she could not completely put into words, but that was not necessary. Some things could only be felt to fully experience them.

Aunt Sleak chuckled as well. “I had this weird dream the other night, Naero. Perhaps you’ll get it; I sure could
n’t.”

Naero smiled. “What was it?”

Sleak shrugged. “It was weird, like I was sleep walking, or in a trance. You and Jan were there, too, and you were the same way–as if you were in a daze. We were standing in the middle of nowhere.”

That piqued her attention. Naero looked up. “What were we all doing?”

Sleak shook her head. “Not much. Just staring at this weird statue.”

Naero felt her blood
freeze in her veins.

“
What statue?”

“
It was weird. It kept shifting shape. Sometimes it was kind of scary. Usually it didn’t look like anything at all, but the way it moved was freaky. Once it looked just like Jan. Another time it looked just like me, and that was very strange. I felt like that statue of me was looking straight back at me. Then it would change again. But it took your form, several times Naero, in several different poses. Each time, it held its shape longer and longer. It kind of freaks me out now, just thinking about it.”

Naero nodded. “It should. Let me explain why. You need to put that statue out of your mind, and do everything you can
not
to think about it.”

She briefly explained why and what she knew about the enigmatic, alien artifact. She wondered if they should even be talking about
it, and suggested that they not do so. What was its connection to her blood?

“
Aunt Sleak, I think you’d better tell the High Masters, very briefly, about your dream. They’ll want to know. And then you should try not to think about that artifact. That’s probably for the best.”

“
Will do,” Aunt Sleak nodded.

Naero shuddered
, feeling just a twinge of her sense of warning flickering in the background of her mind.

11

Naero returned to her nanocabin on the surface of Thanor-4 after midnight, a long day of catching up behind her. She needed to sleep more, and that was just as well.

With her aunt’s weird dream still fresh in her own troubled mind, Naero braced herself. She worried that she would start dreaming more and more about the obelisk–the alien artifact that seemed to keep taking her form.

But she did her best not to think about it, and pushed it completely out of her mind.

That was a great relief.

The nightmares she did have…were,
oddly enough, about dragons.

Gigantic, long, sleek, glowing dragons of every color, some with horns and rippling tails and claws, a few with wings. There was an entire cloud of them, like monsters, writhing and breathing flame and lightning, and
some even shooting bolts of Darkforce energy out of their eyes and gaping maws.

Massive destruction followed in their wake.

They laid waste to entire fleets.

The
y destroyed entire worlds, and devoured both the flesh, and absorbed the life force energy of anything living.

What were these visions and where were they coming from?

Om suddenly came to her aid, as she woke up startled.

“
You are seeing visions of the Kahn-Dar. That is how they go to war and attack. They are Cosmic energy creatures, and very difficult to kill. They are more dangerous than most of the Dakkur in that they can fly, and move at great speed, both through an atmosphere, and through space itself. Some of them can even shapechange, and take on humanoid, or other forms.”

Naero attempted to go back to sleep with all of that in her head.

Some point past four bells, Naero’s sense of warning spiked off the charts, sending stabs of pain through her head. A second later, alarms and warning sirens went off all over the camp.

In the distance, Naero heard the unmistakable sounds of battle being unleashed. She knew those sounds very well.

The heavy Spacer Marine regiment guarding the obelisk was unleashing total hell on something.

Could the enemy be invading the planet?

Master Tree came straight for Naero and placed his arms protectively around her. Even his normal iron composure seemed shaken.

“
What’s happening?” she asked. He didn’t answer her.

Then she smelled the charred, smoky ozone smell of a Cosmic energy blast. And blood. Tree was wounded. Blood ran down both his arms and over his hands.

“You’re hurt.”

“
Our smartblood will close off my minor injuries. The artifact is moving, and we must re-locate to a secondary camp, on the opposite side of this continent. You will come with me, Naero Maeris.”

“
Jan, Aunt Sleak, the others!”

“
The other High Masters will get them to safety. You are my charge. Come. We must transport.”

“
Wait,” Naero said. “Listen!”

They heard nothing.

Seconds before, a great battle was being unleashed.

Now there was no sound at all but the light wind.

Then the ground shook and rumbled, as if a great earthquake was splitting and cracking the planet wide open, like an egg.

Coming right for them.

Master Tree teleported them in a flash of blue lightning.

The
y re-appeared near a beach on the eastern side of the continent of Nashara. Sea cliffs stood nearby.

Thanor-4 had no moons, so the Marines at hand labored quickly and efficiently to finish expanding the outpost into a full camp, aided by clouds of construction fixers.

In the nearby woods, Mystics work with the construction teams to create another sparring field, similar to the other, but twice its diameter, to be ready for the next day.

Huge Marine troop transports stood ready, Naero guessed, in case a mass-evacuation was required.

Naero rose up on her gravwing briefly and surveyed the camp, expanding rapidly before her eyes.

Another full division of Spacer Marines set up an extensive, defensive perimeter all around the camp. Gunships, starfighters, and close support ships floated up in the air at the ready.
Gravtanks, meks, and artillery units took up their positions.

Naero spotted several naval destroyers and a few cruisers higher up
in the atmosphere.

When Naero returned to the ground level, she was relieved to see Jan with Master Jo, and Aunt Sleak wit
h Master Vane. Naero hugged Jan and Sleak.

“
High Masters,” Aunt Sleak said, “as both a retired naval admiral and an adept, I demand to know what has happened. Did the enemy attack us again?”

“
Come with us,” Master Tree told her, his face grim. “We will explain all that we can.”

They followed the Three High Masters into one of the private, Mystic starships that the masters used for their needs. A small emergency starport existed, but it was being greatly expanded as well.

Along the way, the prime adepts for each of the High Masters joined them. Makita and Iselle backed up Von.

Yet all five prime adepts
looked pale, bloody, scorched, and beaten up. They had clearly all been through the ringer.

Makita and Iselle looked even more spooked and terrified than they had been with Naero’s little accident. The one that had nearly killed them. Yet even as they stood there, each of them began the process of healing themselves
and regenerating. High Mystic adepts were a tough lot.

In a large conference room on the Mystic starship, the High Masters took places at a nanotable and seats the
y pweaked up from the nanofloor for their numbers.

The masters called up several large holoscreens above them to assess all that had transpired within the last standard half hour or less. Everyone still seemed stunned.

“Let us start from the beginning,” Master Tree said. “A moment. Backup feeds from the Intel vidcams are still coming online.”

They all studied a long
, aerial shot of the west coast Mystic camp late that night, as it came into view in the dark. Time, around 4:13 in the morning.

In the null circle surrounding the alien obelisk, something ominous began to move
. Multiple vidcams and scanning drones attempted to zoom in on it from every angle.

The closest ones disrupted and burned out immediately.

Long range zooms revealed the alien obelisk beginning to move, and spin, and shift shape as it often did, without warning.

Then it took the shape of a young, athletic spacer girl with long hair. Like a statue all in muted shades of dark gray

The heavy waves of layered shielding began to buckle and disrupt next, sending showers of sparks and bursts of explosions from destroyed shield pods and generators.

All along the defensive perimeter, the heavy Marine regiment stationed there activated, calling up all reserves to the line
, as alarms and sirens sounded.

Tanks and heavy weapons heated up
and began to glow, preparing to fire. They prepared to unleash enough firepower to destroy an entire army, or a large city.

The alien artifact,
now in the form of a young woman, opened its blinding violet eyes.

A radiance that fleets in orbit suddenly noted
down on the planet below, as energy scans spiked beyond known limits and destroyed entire sensor and scanning arrays on every ship.

The statue with the blinding eyes stepped down, and the surface of the planet yawn
ed and split, fissuring out from it, as the bedrock of if Nashara heaved and groaned.

More strange energies and lights pulsed from the walk
ing juggernaut, and all remaining shields in that area collapsed.

The Marines opened fire
in that instant.

They poured blazing ordnance, beams, and explosive blasts at the statue, cratering the ground further all around it.

Nothing living–nothing known to exist could have withstood such intense, destructive fire.

Yet the statue ignored every attack and kept walking, entirely invulnerable
, oblivious. Nothing could harm whatever it was made of. Many of the attacks seem to deflect or bounce off.

Yet
other attacks, the statue appeared to absorb, directly.

Scans revealed that the statue was drawing in energy at a fantastic rate.

“What direction was the artifact moving in?” Aunt Sleak asked, her face, like most of the others in the room, pale and in shock at what they were watching.

“
Yes, Master Vane,” sneered. “Tell us, what was it heading for?”

Naero guessed, and blurted out quickly.
“It was heading straight for me.”

Everyone turned and glanced at her.
Her analysis proved exactly correct.

“
Watch what happens now,” Master Jo said. They all swept back around to stare at the holoscreens.

As the Marines attempted to increase the ferocity of their attack, a blinding pulse of violet energy fanned out from the statue in the sweeping flash of an instant.

The energy ring’s diameter widened faster than thought, and passed through the entire defensive perimeter instantaneously.

As it did so, gravtanks, meks, massive artillery pieces leveled straight at the statue, and heavy gun
emplacements, flared for a brief instant and were swept away.

These
advanced weapons did not explode.

They were all completely disintegrated in one blinding flash of total destruction.

Naero thought she noticed something strange about the statue’s face.

High Master Tree froze the vidfeeds for a moment for them all to take in what they had just witnessed.

“An entire heavy Spacer Marine regiment,” Jan noted, nearly stammering, “completely annihilated in the space of a thought.”

Master Jo was about to speak, but the mantid interrupted him, his carapace solid black, in his extreme defensive mode.

“What power is this?” Gaviok asked. Even he sounded as if he were at a loss.

Shalaen spoke up, striving to remain calm on her own. “There is no power such as this,” she said. “There is none like it, that any of our peoples have witnessed or ever known to exist. Nor even among our enemies. Even removed from the scene and watching these vids replay, one can feel it. There should be no such power as this. It threatens my sanity. We should all take the time to be very afraid.”

Master Vane spoke up, glaring casually in Naero’s direction. “We have witnessed such a power–once before–with another of these alien artifacts, on what was then, Janosha. It behaved slightly differently, but it was much the same. We tried to study it, as we are attempting to study this new one, now. Yet, much like the other, it is nearly beyond all comprehension, and any attempt to control it.”

Vane hesitated. Shame rife in his voice when he spoke again.

“We attempted to do so, and were soundly punished.”

Naero closed her eyes solemnly. “Did none of those thousands of brave Marines survive? Are we certain that they are all dead?

That very thought tore her heart out of her chest and stomped on it.

“
I was going to say, before,” Master Jo added, “as amazing as it it sounds, none of the Marines are dead. The strange energy wave stripped them of all weapons and armor–even their uniforms, somehow. It left them all smoking, stunned, and naked where they fell.”

Naero covered her mouth with both hands, her relief was so great.

Master Tree continued. “When we are certain the danger has passed, we will send their brothers and sisters to collect them, and see to their conditions. They still lie where they fell–unconscious.”

“
Let’s watch the rest of the vids,” Master Tree said. “The High Masters and I did make an attempt to contain the artifact, much the same as the way we suppressed your more violent, abilities, High Adept Naero.”

Master Vane rubbed his apparently aching head, his robes, like those of the other two High Masters, still blasted and scorched. “For all the good that did us,” he muttered.

Tree started the vids again.

The three High Masters transported in and formed a triangle, directly in the path of the approaching statue, with Master Vane, the strongest of them all, out in front.

Orbs of intense, blazing scarlet, azure, and gold Cosmic energy encased each of them. And around all three, an even larger sphere of shining white energy protected them.

They attempted to form such an orb of light around the statue, and for a moment, the artifact halted, and appeared to be either confused,
intrigued by, or studying the sphere’s composition.