Spacer Clans Adventure 2: Naero's Gambit (48 page)

60

The first
Darkforce generator crashed right into her.

With the full impact
of a run-away transport.

Swatting and lashing at her like an insane
, mutant black squid. Dozens of tentacles that chewed through the trees and rocks all around her.

Sticky, slimy tentacles whipping and buffeting Naero. Stinging her
exposed skin, burning and scorching her with intense pain wherever they touched her.

Naero cried out, swinging her twin Chaos katanas in whirring flashes.

She sliced through the shielded tentacles and the machine’s main body. Sparks and blasts of intense fire and Cosmic electrical discharges rocked back and forth between them.

Someone was trapped inside
each one of the infernal generators. The parasitic machines could not long survive and keep functioning without a living host imprisoned within them.

That was one weakness.
She needed to keep that in mind.

Then a
terrible, wonderful thought struck her again.

What if one of the
se things had Jan trapped inside of it?

Two more machines just
barely missed her, and rammed into the third, knocking it end over end.

T
he first had only been a decoy to keep her busy while the other two closed in.

She
soared above the expanding battle, forming a large armored Chaos energy construct around herself for protection.

No good.
Instantly the two new machines began draining her construct’s energies.

She tried to blast them with her cannons, but the de
vices sucked up that attack also.

While the original machine regenerated enough to hurl itself at her once more.

Naero negated her Chaos Mek, unwilling to feed her foes any further.

She returned to attacking them directly.

If she could keep all three of them off balance. On the defensive.

Who are you kidding, Naero?

She was in deep trouble and knew it.

They grappled with her. Lashing and battering her with mighty tentacles again and again.

In the space of a few short minutes, they reached a frightening stalemate.

Naero
sliced and hacked them apart, beating them back.

They kept coming.

Naero sensed something different about the fourth machine, racing in fast and uncloaking.

It
’s energy signatures were a fraction of the other three.

She spun.

It still manage to strike her a glancing blow, knocking her to one side.

Dazing her for the barest instant.

The other three pounced.

It was enough.

They had her.

Naero deflected their shock charges, even as they ensnared and scorched her.

Om attempted to absorb some of their Darkforce energy.

Nearly negating himself.

Om…
Om!

Naero had never felt him scream like that
before.

Yet he did his best to protect her, shielding them from the machines.

Giving her a chance to keep fighting and break free.

Naero thrashed, kicked, gouged, and punched.

She unleashed a massive sonic scream and flung one off her, driving it back end-over-end.

A mind-wave blast from her third eye
drove the others away from swarming on her.

That gave her some room and damaged all of them at once.

Naero launched her counter-attack.

Flashing wheel kicks.

Fight combinations lined the devices up, bunching them together.

Rocking, smashin
g, and shattering the machines with both speed and raw power.

Chaos katanas sliced through the frenzy of fearsome tentacles with splattering sprays of machine slime and acidic lubricants.

Naero encased the first one to charge at her in immolating blue flame. This was the fourth, the lesser device with the lower energy levels.

It hissed and shrieked, its tentacles sizzling and dissolving, flailing their metal insides like snakes and serpents.

It struggled, trying to put out the fire.

Three heavy blows cracked the device wide open in a spray of disrupting black lightning and red sparks.

It’s hatch flung wide open.

Empty.
No one inside.

That was why it was weaker.

It had no host. Yet.

The other three re-doubled their attacks, bent on driving her into the yawning, waiting trap of the fourth.

The machines meant to encase her.

Om.
We gotta flee!

You cannot transport. We do not possess enough energy.

Haisha! You’re right.

She
drove one back. Slowed the other two down.

Dropped another to the ground in a solid block of ice formed around it.

Ice that immediately cracked and burst.

Too many.

Four of them just…too many.

Their ploy. Exhaust and capture her.

The rammed into her, hemming her in, trying to crush her from all sides.

So much so, that in her panic, Naero
slipped up. Her own Darkforce beast nearly broke free again.

It was all Naero could do to maintain
control of her faculties.

But she thought she sensed something important about them as t
he machines closed in around her once more.

They dragged her
down toward the waiting, empty device that regenerated, yawning its maw, waiting to encapsulate and take control of her.

As its new host.

Naero screamed her war cry, scraping the bottom of the barrel of her energy reserves in an all out attempt to break free and run for it.

She blasted and hammered them, entangling two of them together.

A Chaos wave-kick hurled them aside, partially disrupting their defenses.

The final device hurtled around her in shifting arcs and circles, trying to keep her busy while the other two damaged devices recovered enough to rejoin the attack.

Not a chance. Om, hit the bastard with all we’ve got!

A few more second
s…and she’d be free.

She could get away.

Once she caught her breath, perhaps she could get them to follow her. Separate them somehow and attack them one on one. Spread them out.

Naero lunged in, her scarlet swords blazing and sparking.

Om unleashed an explosive attack of Cosmic energy ribbons, both dark and light.

His attack ripped into the remaining machine.

It broke and cracked apart.

Naero
saw her chance and slashed in, severing tentacles.

Ripping the device wide-open.

Make a run for it. We’re clear!

Naero went cold
inside.

S
he wasn’t going anywhere.

Within the shattered device, she caught sight of her brother
’s face, wan, tormented, and drawn.

Jan. Her little brother.

Or maybe Danner’s mind still controlled his body.

Either way.

She would either free him, or sell both of their lives dearly before she would let the enemy have her beloved brother–or the both of them–ever again.

Naero, you can
’t be serious. The odds we face are–

Screw the odds, Om. Give me the juice. Unleash it all. We
’re taking Jan back, and they’re not going to stop us!

Naero bypassed Om and immersed herself
fully into the Cosmic flows of Janosha itself.

Transfixed by the naked energi
es of the Mystic planet itself.

R
aw flows threatening to incinerate her.

When her Dark Beast tried to rear its ugly head, she instantly funneled the enemy’s shock charges right into its yawning maw. It absorbed their dark lightnings and destructive energies eagerly. With great lust.

Naero locked her howling Beast back down before it could break free.

Naero laughed at them
all and gnashed her teeth, snarling at her foes.

“Come on
!”

She fought them all close in, without quarter.

Mighty, thundering blows exchanged.

Lightning and energy waves rippled around her.

For an instant she beat them back.

Naero pulled her brother
’s pod free of the damned machine, releasing him from its torment.

“I
’ve got you, Jan! They’ll never take you from me again. Even if we die here.”

She flung his stasis pod far away into the safety of the huge
galu trees.

More attacks
, aimed straight at her.

If
she could last long enough, the empty machines would begin to feed off of themselves and implode.

Further w
eaknesses of the infernal devices.

They could not
remain in existence very long without a host as their power source.

It was obvious that the enemy intended
to overwhelm and capture her quickly.

The two machines
still with hosts slammed into her from two sides, almost taking her out.

“N
o!” she shouted.

“Y
ou’re the one’s going down!”

Taking a page from their book, she ensnared them both in rippling waves of energy ribbons of pure dark and light Cosmic force.

Once she held them fast, she swung them back and forth.

Smashing
them repeatedly into rocks, mountains, trees. Each other.

Concussion from the impacts rocked and split the very air.

Finally the other two empty machines were damaged enough that they began to cook off and implode.

Naero held the two remaining machines against the implosions to shield herself from the impending disruption.

Using the destruction to damage the remaining, vile machines even further.

Sparks flew. Her energy ribbons sliced through the tops of the devices.

With her Chaos katanas she cut and slashed the hatches open.

Vane
’s two missing adepts. The light and the dark one.

Th
at was why she hadn’t been able to sense their presence. They had been overcome and captured at some point early on, trapped within these two generators.

They and their ruptured pods gushed oxygenated fluid as they spilled to the ground
unconscious, as if from dark wombs of horror.

Naero quickly snatched them up and flung their helpless forms in the
same direction as Jan’s, deep within the forest.

They were Mystic adepts.
They could take it.

Om shielded her from the final implosion that shattered the area beneath her feet and all around her.

Pulverizing the ground and the very bedrock of the planet into a compressed, hyper-dense crater.

All four of the enemy D
arkforce generators devoured themselves to nothing in their bottomless hunger for raw power.

Naero won.

Alone, against four of the damned things.

Somehow she
’d won.

Jan–

A new warning from Om.

Three enemy battleships uncloaking.
They’re firing right on top of us!

Both she and Om flung up their defenses
in layers of energized spheres.

Rapid-fire ion cannons tore into them.

Om and Naero both screamed.

61

The
enemy ion cannons sapped Naero’s energies, draining her powers and defenses immediately.

She tried
to transport.

S
he couldn’t, not while being transfixed and drained by three powerful ion beams.

Om open
ed them up once more to the full intensity of the Janoshan Cosmic flows.

Maybe we can over
load them, Om.

That bought them precious
time.

But
the negating effects of the ion beams continued to wear them down and cut through anything they tried to sustain.

Oth finally showed himself, un-cloaking
to one side. Gloating and looking very pleased with himself.

Where had he been?
And doing what?

Now he walked up so confident and
calm.

Laughing
even.

“A
s soon as the guns suck your powers dry, our little contest can begin.”
He laughed and snapped his crushing jaws.

Naero grinned and used the voice
.

“L
et’s get to it then.”

She ground her teeth against the pain and split off three glowing
orbs. Each stuffed with cosmic energy going critical.

She
directed them all with a single purpose.

T
o take out those ships.

The
orbs phazed into each battleship, speeding straight to the vast, heavily protected power cores of the ion guns.

All three
enemy warships and their commanders sensed their vulnerability.

Attempting to veer
away at the last instant.

Far too late.

They disrupted and then detonated over the mountain range like big fusion bombs.

They and their crews vaporized,
raining wreckage and ash and burning debris.

Oth rushed in and swatted Naero
down, disrupting her failing shields with his razor tail attack.

He nearly broke through and cut her in two.

“The ion cannons did their work well enough. Now I only need to kill you.”

Naero plunged two Chaos katanas into his belly and exploded them.

“You may find that harder than you think.”

Oth roared in pain and twisted, slashing, spinning, whipping at her.

Naero dodged, sent him reeling with a sonic blast that drilled him back into the mountain.

They whirled
together once more and fought in close.

She tried to freeze his head and jaws in a block of ice. Blinding him for a moment.

Oth shattered it.

She tried to incinerate him with intense heat and fla
me. Oth endured and withstood the attack.

He clawed her down one side and leg
, tearing through her defenses.

Then
Oth rammed into her, and smashed her against the large crystal formations, shattering them in sprays of razor-sharp shards.

He sprang at her with his jaws open wide, as if to swallow her whole.

Naero punched him back with a mindblast from her third eye, sending him rolling, head over tail.

At last she had his shields down.

With her Chaos katana, she finally severed his tail, and then the front end of his snout when he snapped at her, barely missing her face.

He ripped at her again
. Naero dodged, then sped all along his left side, slicing his insides wide open. They crunched and ground like stone and metal, shrieking, spraying thick blood and glittering, glowing dust.

Oth charged again, still tearing at her.

Naero sent a Cosmic blast straight down his throat.

It ignited within his core, rupturing
him into glowing chunks from within, from gullet to tail.

The front of his head and torso crashed down, convulsing.

Oth even managed to chortle and laugh at her telepathically as he perished.

Fool. We
’ve still won. The masters always win.

Naero mashed and stomped his face into dusty, powdery mush at her feet.

Voices called out to Naero from up in the huge branches of the galu trees.

“N
aero! We’re here.”

Danjen and S
’krin came through the forest close by, armed and ready to assist. Too late this time.

Yet
Naero breathed a heavy sigh of relief. The battle with Oth and his forces had drained her almost completely once more. And she still had Jan and the two missing adepts to secure and keep safe.

Baeven and his people
had finally arrived. More help would arrive shortly.

Thank the powers.
She wasn’t alone any longer.

Danjen pumped a few explosive blasts into Oth
’s charred, smoldering skull for good measure, blasting the brain cavity wide open.

“I
’m still worried,” S’krin said. “What did the filth mean when he said that they’ve still won?”

Naero. We have a serious problem. Actually several serious problems.

She suddenly glanced back behind her, up at Master Vane’s cave.

Fire and smoke belched forth from it like all of the others.

“Oh, no!”

Transportin
g. She flashed inside and flashed back out to Danjen and S’krin in a panic.

Still so weak.

She fell to one knee, gasping.

“T
hey’ve taken Master Vane. His physical body at least. They took him while I was busy fighting Oth and the others. We have to go after Vane.”

S
’krin nodded and spoke into her com. “Gaviok. Three for immediate pick up.”

Naero.
We’re completely spent. We cannot do this.

Watch me.

Danjen listened intently to an incoming com.

“N
aero, your fleet is coming in. Other enemy fleets are engaging them. They’re outnumbered. This isn’t starting out well.”

“W
hat’s happening?” Naero said. “Get us up there!”

“T
he enemy ships are too many. They’re neutralizing your ships one after another. It’s a disaster in the making.”

This couldn
’t be happening.

Danjen listened closely to the battle chatter.

“The Dark Star just arrived on scene. It’s nailing the enemy ships as fast as it can, but it’s taking heavy fire. It’s being cut to pieces, even as it keeps fighting!”

She activated her gravwing.
“You two follow me. We’ll collect Jan and the two adepts. I have a ship nearby. That will save us some time.”

They scooped up Jan and the others from the forest.

“Hold on, Jan. I’ve got you.”

Naero clung to
her brother in her arms. Poor sib. He looked so horrible. She kissed his face.

The enemy would pay for what they did to him.

“We must reach my hidden vessel and get up there in the mix!”

They passed over the mountain range and the forest, heading directly for the secret hangar. No smoke. The enemy swept in that way, but in their hurry to reach the caves, the
y missed the–

Naero
’s thoughts snagged on hooks of brutal sorrow and horror exploding all at once.

She beheld
the absolute devastation stretched out before her.

Oth and his Ejjai came in hot.

Driving every living thing before them.

And cutting them down.

Naero cried out and faltered in mid-air, nearly crashing down into the shattered area with Jan sagging in her arms.

The forest and the area all around lay littered with violent splashes of blood and death.

Most poignantly–the bodies of hundreds of dead Tua. Flushed out of their hiding places.

Perhaps all of them.
The entire tribe.

Exterminated.

Naero sobbed and landed slowly, completely shocked at first.

She burst into tears when she spotted the still forms of Bahan and Iika
and dozens of kits, out in front of the other bodies. Nearest to the river.

She read the signs.

The Tua ran for their lives, trying to reach the swift river in order to leap in and escape.

Bahan and Iika
and the many kits clinging to them had all been blasted and gunned down. Then torn open.

Blood
.

Death.

Everywhere.

The other adults and older Tua scattered behind them had given their lives in vain, trying to slow the enemy down.

The brave pair and their charges all perished in the end.

S
till thirty meters shy of the river bank.

No matter how fast they
had run, how valiantly they tried to save the kits.

None of them
ever made it.

“W
hat are we doing?” S’krin asked, glancing around in confusion. “Why did we stop? Why are we just standing here? We can’t do anything for these dead creatures. I thought we were in a hurry?”

“S
hhh…” Danjen said, sensing her mood. “I think…I think she knew them.”

“I
did know them,” Naero said. “They were…my family here.”

The anguish. The flashing, bitter knives and claws of it tore her apart within.

She kissed Jan on the forehead and handed him over to Danjen.

Naer
o sobbed and knelt down by the ravaged bodies of her Janoshan family. They who had loved her and whom she had loved.

She took
them in her arms. She kissed their cold faces.

And laid them back down, in each other
’s arms.

Naero…we must–

Shut up Om. Don’t worry.

She clenched her fists.
Total ferocity threatened to tear loose.

“
Not one of them will escape this system alive.”

She turned to Danjen and S
’krin and spoke flatly.

“T
ake my brother and the adepts. Return to your ship. Heed my warning. Order Baeven and my people and any others far away from Janosha as possible. Warn them all to jump out of the system if they can. Tow them away if you must. Just get everyone far away from here.”

“W
hat are you babbling about?” Danjen said. “They’re all right in the middle of an intense naval battle up there. They’re losing. Almost half of your ships have already been neutralized!”

Naero looked down at her Tua friends one last time.

She knelt and touched their poor, kind furry faces. Now frozen in pain and fear.

Forever.

She sobbed.

A
s the tears in her eyes boiled away in flashes of steam.

“I
was not driven mad…until this moment.”

Naero
’s eyes ignited.

Her face became flame.

Her mind. Her soul.

Her entire being
became flame.

And swelled with typhoons of C
osmic energy drawn from the planet’s flows, turning thundering, boiling black inside her, veined with blood red fire and destroying lightning.

Naero let the flows of Janosha spear through her,
rejoicing in the fierce agony.

She
flung wide the gates to the secret cage lurking deep within herself.

Bursting with power, she launched off from the surface of
Janosha like a missile.

Preparing
to unleash her Dark Beast.

And give
the fell thing full reign.