Spacer Clans Adventure 2: Naero's Gambit (28 page)

“U
nknown,” Klyne said. “The Corps’ alien allies must be showing themselves. Everyone frost up.”

“S
ir, readings and analysis reveal that these new warships are doing their best to shield and conceal those energies. No ship known could sport intense energy fields like that without exploding, or irradiating their entire crews.”

On
screen they spotted a jet black ship shaped like a squid, but with hundreds of writhing black tentacles fore and aft, and bristling with weaponry. It was the size of a dreadnaught, and dwarfed the Corps battleships behind it.

The other craft was
just as strange. A flat gray octagonal cylinder with several sections and multiple armored hatches. Was the huge central bore some kind of massive spinal gun? Immense, it was still half the size of the black squid ship.

Yet both alien vessels gave off energy signatures that were off any know
n scale.

Where was the enemy getting such massive sources of energy?

And more importantly. What could they do with all that power?

The enemy drove straight at them at full speed.

“Five minutes until engagement,” Chaela said.

Corps Fighter screens way out in front.

Some type of Cosmic phenomena formed right in front of the gray, alien octagonal warship. It’s intense energy levels dipped heavily.

“I
mpossible.” Klyne said. “It’s forming its own wormhole!”

The gray ship vanished in a flash.

Then it re-appeared. Slamming right into
The Kathmandu
. Ramming it.

Every Spacer ship in the vicinity opened fire.

Whether shielded, armored, or both. No known weapons affected the gray ship or did any damage.

“Our best weapons aren
’t even touching them!”

“W
e’re under direct assault!” Klyne yelled. “Repel boarders. They’re transporting in!”

Admiral Klyne
stood right in the middle of an erupting fire fight, cutting lose with his own blaster.

“W
e’re being boarded!”

Naero saw Hashiko draw out her Chaos whip and launching herself at the attackers. Some ty
pe of weird creatures roared off-screen and lashed the very air with whip-like tails.

They
looked and sounded exactly like the strange alien killing machine that had slain Naero’s best friend Gallan back in the mining caves on Egano-4.

An Intel agent in combat armor
got cut in half right before her eyes just in front of Klyne. A strange, thick purple-gray vapor swirled throughout the bridge.

“G
as attack. Gas!” Klyne shouted, choking and pulling up a respirator. He kept firing and flung the enemy back with a mindblast. The air in front of him warped with the customary psyonic wave of the attack.

The
vid feed from Klyne’s bridge cut out.

Naero called to her wing leader.

“Strauss, take the formation in on the attack. Just like I did before. I’m heading back.”

“Y
es, sir. On it. Light ‘em up, Ghost Dragons. Follow me in.”

Naero raced back to
The Kathmandu
.

She went in, just as it looked like the entire front section of the bridge pod exploded, rocked by small blasts and
multiple sprays of intense small arms fire from within.

A heavy battle
still erupted down there.

She shot into a service docking bay just behind the bridge on top of the warship, one used for transport vehicles and loaders. She leaped out of her Ghost Dragon as it still auto-hovered down to the deck and powered down.

She ignited her gravwing and shot forward.

Activating a blazing red Chaos energy katana in each hand.

She used them to cut through two hatches and a bulkhead to make her way forward. Her respirator filtered out smoke and enemy stun agents.

First she passed stunned crew and intel agents along the decks and halls.

Then casualties from the battle. Bodies torn and shot up, in puddles of blood.

Then the gravity cut out.

The blood orbed up into clouds of red bubbles.

Her gravwing adjusted for zero-g and kept her racing forward.

She scooped up a bandolier of energy grenades from a dead agent. His head ripped off.

She entered the bridge just as the enemy boarding tubes
withdrew from the shattered blast screens in the thick mists.

The entire chamber de-compressed.

Naero activated the grenades and allowed herself to be sucked forward.

Before the end of the hatch could seal on one of the retreating boarding tubes, she hurled the full ban
dolier of grenades up the tunnel.

The gray enemy ship retreated.

Naero allowed the de-compression to draw out most of the stun gas. Then auto-shields sealed the breaches.

Klyne floated above his captain
’s chair. Naero secured him in it, and then activated the console to restore the internal gravity fields.

Spacer dead and dying lay everywhere.

“All medical teams. All medical teams. Report to the bridge immediately. Bring medbeds. Heavy casualties. Reserve officers, get up here. We still have a battle to fight. This is Captain Maeris. I’m taking temporary command of this flagship.”

She got a tactical screen up.

The enemy gray ship retreated under heavy fire. Yet the Spacer weapons still couldn’t even scratch it.

“S
top that vessel!” she commanded. “Destroy it. Pour fire on it! Don’t let it get away!”

“W
e’re trying, sir. No effect. Repeat. No effect.”

“L
ook out!” Chaela cut in. “That huge black alien warship is preparing to fire!”

On screen, the Spacers had the upper hand overall. But the two alien ships were both invulnerable and unstoppable.

“All ships!” Naero commanded. “We’re too close. Wide dispersal. Concentrate all batteries on the two alien ships!”

Amid a hail of withering fire, the gray ship continued to pull away
, back toward the other.

Th
e black alien warship cut loose.

A sphere of jet black energy formed around the end of each tentacle, by the score.

Beams of dark energy shot out and ripped through the engaged fleets. Shredding and vaporizing friend and foe alike.

One barrage hollowed out the core of the entire battle. Destroying between fifty and sixty total warships in a
single instant.

The burning wrecks and listing hulks cooked off and exploded in the aftermath. A disaster for both sides.

Then
The Darkstar
swept in, joining the fight late.

“A
lala and Captain Tyber at your service,” he announced.

Rapid-fire
from Alala’s optimized ion guns rocked the gray ship, doing damage finally, but still not putting it out of commission.

Then Tyber raked the black ship with an intense, wheeling, concentrated assault. Peppering it with close up, rapid ion fire.

Thanks to Alala, it’s ion cannons were even an improvement on the models the Corps used.

The attacks blasted off a few of the tentacle cannons or appendages
. They exploded, rocking the black ship slightly. But the effects were still minimal at best.

The Darkstar looked like a lesser bird darting in and pecking at an eagle.

Alala and Tyber turned back to fighting the gray ship, having better luck damaging and slowing it down.

But in the end, the black ship formed another custom
-made wormhole.

B
oth vessels vanished from the scene into it.

Any remaining Corps ships quickly fled as well.

Despite heavy losses on both sides, the battle was still the first major victory the Spacers and their allies had managed during the new war.

Along one part of the front, they
finally succeeded in halting the relentless enemy advance.

T
he new shields worked somewhat, but they could still be improved upon.

And the enemy allies of the Corps had finally showed themselves, and were open to analysis now. Intel had a wealth of data from the battle to explore
and analyze.

Naero gave command of the flagship and the fleets over to a vice-admiral whose name she could not recall. She vacated the
command chair and went straight to Klyne’s medbed.

“H
ow is he?”

“F
air,” the medtek said. “No serious injuries. but the stun gas has a delayed micro toxin that is virulent and deadly. We’re neutralizing it now. We almost didn’t catch it.”

Klyne began to come around.

“What happened, Klyne? What were they after? I thought at first it might be you, our High Admiral, and all of your tactical and strategic knowledge.”

“I
thought so too. But they never even tried to grab me. My people and I put up one hell of a fight, but they still killed almost everyone. What the hell were these things?”

“A
nyone missing?” Naero called over to the vice-admiral. “All crew accounted for, sir?”

The vice-admiral
nodded, double-checking her pad. “Forty-seven casualties. Thirty-nine KIA. Eight severely wounded. All crew accounted for.”

Naero looked around suddenly. A terribly bad feeling crept over her.

“Not everyone,” she said.

“W
here’s Hashiko?”

34

All along the extended
front of the war, the Spacers and their new allies used their fixer clouds and the knowledge gained from the Battle at Nightshade-3 to implement the new shields and tactics. They ground the conflict to a temporary halt.

Heavy losses g
rudgingly forced the mewling emissaries of the Gigacorps to agree to meet and discuss terms for a ceasefire on all fronts.

For the time being, all forces on both sides
of the war remained stabilized, poised to unleash all out hell once again.

And both sides took a breather, analyzed their strategies, and plotted their next courses of action.

The negotiations with the Corps quickly degenerated into a circus, serving mostly as propaganda flooding INS with the usual, heavily-slanted pabulum and insanity.

It also
gave both sides a chance to regroup and re-supply their forces.

Naero used the time to contact Master Vane directly, and attempt
ed to reach Baeven.

While she
waited for replies, she rejoined Tyber and attempted to use teknomancy to merge with Alala and learn the tek secrets of the ion cannons, once and for all.

They met near the secret sections of the ship still blocked off from the crew. Naero and
even Alala still struggled to bypass the intense security and open those sealed and shielded hatches.

Tye and several eager teks waited to help inspect the tek for the ion weapon systems up close.

Naero smiled at him. Zhen would be proud.

He and Alala made a great team and did well together.

“Tye, you look good in your captain’s uniform and rank. Good to see the cutlass at your side.”

He grinned. “And now my pay grade
’s above Zhen’s. Pretty good for a tek monkey, huh? So, how’s my gal?”

“As snippy and opinionated as ever.”

“That’s why we love her so.”

The hatches popped open.

Naero stepped in. Tye right behind her.

Alala spoke over the ship
’s com.

Immediately, an incred
ibly bad feeling swept all over her.

What in the hell were they walking into?

Om’s alarms also went crazy.

Be warned. This
tek cannot be breached and accessed directly. The defensive protocols I’m sensing are extensive and self-regenerating and self-aware. They learn from their mistakes. You will not access their data or interact with them the same way twice.

“This is all insane,” Tyber said. “Why would anyone install tek
like this on a ship in this manner. How could you ever control it?”

Merged with Alala, Naero gasped and swallowed hard again and again at the data streams flowing through her and the
constant battle going on between her, Alala, and the fierce resistance of the sentient ion gun teknology to their teknomancing.

Even with Om helping them, it was touch-and-go.

What the hell kind of tek was this?

Bypassing deep
encrypted defensive protocols. Layered self-destruct sequences: bypassed only for a short time. Four point five three standard hours. Long range remote control of the ion gun tek by outside entities–also bypassed and shunted into an infinite, regenerating break down loop to continue infinite cancellation of these noxious protocols.

“The aliens gave this tek to the Corps to use, Tye. But they
’ve also done an almost perfect job of making it impossible for the Corps to fully understand, access, or copy and or modify it in any way. And according to what I’ve seen, the aliens still have somehow managed to retain control of their tek, and perhaps even the very ships it is installed on. If I’m reading all of this right. I haven’t teknomanced in a while, so I can’t be completely sure.”

Even Alala had a hard time explaining it to them.

You are correct, Naero. We we’re forced to modify several of the ship’s systems to remain free. It was extremely difficult.

“That is scary,” Tye said. “We
’re looking at an entire herd of potential trojan horses here. And we don’t even know what they are. Why would the Corps take a chance at installing dangerous alien tek like this on all of their warships? That is a huge risk.”

“Simple,” Naero said. “They
’ve made deals with these devils in order to destroy us. And that has blinded them to everything else. And this tek is extremely advanced. Even most teks wouldn’t perceive these threats or understand them. I can barely make sense of them, and I’m teknomancing with Alala and Om. The Corps might not even fully understand how insidious this tek is.”

Om cut in. Almost in a panic.

Retreat! Get out immediately. A lethal defensive response by the alien tek is about to be–

“Everyone,” Naero commanded. “Get out of here. Back out now.
Run for it!”

Tye and his crew broke.

Naero threw up panes of shielding Chaos energy, layered directly behind them as they fled.

She sensed the massive counter-attack that the ion gun tek responded with.

Neither her or Alala could control it.

That very instant, writhing black tentacles erupted out of the walls, ceiling, and floor of the access conduit.

They shattered Naero’s defenses, ripping through them.

They ensnared almost everyone. Including Naero.

Only the two teks furthest back made it out.

They and the security detail drew weapons and fired on the writhing mass. But the tentacles were shielded and took little damage.

Shock charges stunned almost everyone.

Naero gritted her teeth a the seething pain of the
charge, shunting most of it harmlessly through her and Tye.

She
’d managed to grab his arm before they were pinned up against the corridor wall.

Then the entire access chamber hummed and pulsed.

Alala, Om. What’s happening? What do we do?

You must create a feedback loop and cancel out their defensive measures. They will phaze you into the walls of the structure and absorb your physical matter and your energies into itself.”

Om, do something. This alien tek is going to eat us!

Already the alien tek
began to pull them into the matter of the walls.

Tyber pointed at a control node.

“En! Teknomance through that info and command hub. Try to shut it down!”

Both of them started screaming as the walls continued to absorb them.

Naero fought back, using raw strength and Chaos energy to melt and tear her way free. To free Tyber also.

The other stunned teks were already half-way into the walls.

Yet the alien tek matched her every attempt, stepping up its defenses to pull her back in.

“I can
’t reach it!” she cried.

Tye wrapped an arm around it, still clutching her hand. “Do it! Teknomance right through me.”

“It might kill you.”

“We
’re dead any way!”

Naero used teknomancy through Tye to tear great rifts through  the walls and into the command and control protocols of the alien teknology.

It actively responded with a massive counter-attack. Stun charges and rippling layers of defenses she could not comprehend or keep up with.

I
’m going down, Om. Take over for me. Unleash those protocols of yours, damn it. Defend us!

Full function access granted to our current form..

Level 1,946 response. Invasive re-routing and–

Just do it Om! I
’m numb. I’m blacking out…

Naero had a sense of Om using what seemed like a
controlled explosion of tek to match the alien assault wave for wave.

Ribbons of dark, and light energy grappled with the tentacles and pulled Naero, Tye, and the others free.

Om flung them out the access chamber and disrupted the alien ion tek, almost to the point of making it inert.

Once they were out, Alala sealed the security hatches behind them, cutting off hundreds of the writhing
, fighting tentacles as if they were living snakes and serpents.

The crew still fought with them, trying to destroy them. A dozen more crew got zapped.

Even cut off from the main unit, the tentacles were heavily shielded and difficult to destroy.

They attempted to constrict and throttle anyone who resisted or was already down.

Naero quickly grabbed onto them one-by-one and disrupted them.

Just touching the vile things disgusted her and gave her a very bad feeling. The tek was that alien and menacing.

Tye struggled to remove one from the throat of a stunned crew member, whose face turned purple.

To her surprise, Tye disrupted the tentacle
. It fell to inert, sparking pieces.

Tye stared at her in sudden wonder.

“I…I just teknomanced, En,. I can teknomance!”

Laughing like a maniac, he helped Naero destroy the
remaining tentacles.

Later, after the wounded were tended to, they held a
n emergency planning session.

Om continued to speak to her and feed her data all the while.

The ion cannon tek is heavily shielded and obviously actively protected by a seriously advanced sentient knowledge base. It cannot be duplicated or installed on any vessel without a heavily coded set of advanced permissions from its originators.

Without them, the tek will
defend itself most vigorously, as we have seen. We will not even be able to get near it. Let alone garner its secrets. If need be, it will even detonate as a last resort, destroying the ship and all on board. I’m amazed that Alala was able to shunt its defenses aside so that she could use her ion cannons freely.

Alala spoke next.

This Tek was already installed on me. I have since upgraded it and eliminated several of the most detrimental features, including the self-destruct protocol. But even if you could replicate this tek in its current version, any ship you install it on would not be able to modify or bypass its virulent defenses without my advanced intellect.

“I concur,” Tyber said. “
Alala’s intimate knowledge of her own inner workings is unique. Only she could modify and bypass this dangerous alien tek. This tek is therefore far too advanced and dangerous to be of any use to the Clans in its current variation. Frankly I’m still flabbergasted that the Corps allowed it to be installed on their fleets.”

Haisha!
What they had gained was nearly useless.

“I
’m afraid we’re at another dead end here. A dark wall. We can’t take this any further. Tyber, turn the tek knowledge we’ve gained over to Intel. Let them analyze and attempt to find a way to utilize or defeat this alien tek.”

From what Om told her, it was nearly as complex and unfathomable as the KDM. But at least their side could g
et started on the process.

An urgent com reached Naero
from Janosha.

She sucked in a breath.

Things with Master Vane did not begin well. His face grew blazing red with rage, even through his holo.

He
proceeded to blame Naero entirely for Hashiko’s abduction or death, whichever it turned out to be.

Thankfully, the voice did not work over com links.

“Why in the devil did you leave her alone!”

“
I did not leave her alone. She was safer than I was. I left her on the Intel flagship with Klyne. In the rear. While I went directly into the teeth of a major battle.”

“But
what are the end results, Maeris? She has been captured or slain by unknown foes, while you remain unhurt!”

“E
xactly. Hashiko herself agreed to stay with Admiral Klyne while I went out to lead my squadron. No one can be responsible for what the enemy chose to do. How could we have known these new aliens would go after her specifically?”

“Y
ou should have stayed with her. You could have defended each other.”

“S
ounds like you’d have rather had them kill or take me instead of Hashiko.”

“O
f course I would, Maeris. Without question. Hashiko is a valuable adept that we’ve groomed for years. A potential Mystic High Master for the future. While you know very well that you are completely expendable.”

“T
hanks. It means so much to me every time you tell me that.”

“W
hy should I lie about the truth?”

“S
ure.” Chaos jerks.

“H
ashiko is an immeasurable loss. I demand that you and Intel do everything you can to locate and retrieve her.”