Spacer Clans Adventure 3: Naero's Fury (28 page)

But when she transported back to her quarters, they were still dark within. Yet immediately, she detected something very wrong. Her sensitive nose twitched.

What was that
damn, musky scent in the air?

Her blood went cold.

Oh, no…

Holy crap. Bloody hell!

Naero II sat astride Om, both of them going at it like Bundian weasels on fire.

Naero could not speak. She could not breathe. He
r mouth gaped open like a trap door.

Her replicants began to
pulse with Cosmic energy at their…exertions, lit from within. Ribbons of light and darkness, actual sparks and little lightning bolts shot out from both of them, as their excitement peaked.

They laughed and smiled, completely absorbed in their
sexual efforts, taut naked bodies sweating, mouths gulping joyously for air.

Both of them
seemed very close to a mutual fulfillment.

Haisha!
What if they actually cooked off and blew up?

Naero II
looked over. “Hey, N. You’re back. Why didn’t you tell us this was so much fun?”

Om popped his head up, giddy, laughing, and wide-eyed.
“You gotta try this, N! Now I know what you mean by the exclamation–Wahoooo!”

Om howled like a Zandarian coyote.

It was both exultant…and quite off-putting.

Naero was quite certain that she was going into come kind of shock.

Her face had to be as red as an old fashioned Terran tomato. She covered her eyes with her hands and turned away as they continued to jerk, moan, convulse–and thankfully–finish their task at hand.

Her replicants didn’t know any better. And that was the problem. They had no
prior knowledge or any inhibitions.

She had
literally just watched herselves pleasure themselves. How utterly mortifying.

Once they fell back breathless, she slipped in and sent them back to sleepy land.
But she couldn’t wipe their stupid grins off their faces as they snoozed.

After their exertions,
putting them to sleep was pretty easy.

It took her a while longer to swap them out on the medbed, studying each of them carefully.

Hours later, with the help of five new, adapted medical fixers, and several biomancy experiments–she thought she had the answer at last.

She ignored calls from her friends, insisting she needed more rest.

Sleep was something she actually did not get, but she did find an answer to her dilemma–at least in theory.

As usual, it
was all about Cosmic energy and energy manipulation. She was starting to see a pattern there.

Combination and balance were often
the key, just like Master Vane–or herself–rushing a bird from egg to death. Patterns, no patterns, and patterns that did not at first seem to be patterns.

More and more,
she began to understand how so much of life was comprised of intricate patterns and flowing waves of blended, converted, Cosmic energy, and ever-shifting, manipulated energy.

All so very mercurial and complex. Staggering. Staggering and astonishing in its terrible beauty and utter majesty.

She could not see very much of it before, but now she could, as she grew in both experience and wisdom. Om had manipulated them when they were infused, no–bloated with Cosmic power–and cut them off from the Cosmic energy flows of their universe that threatened to destroy them.

In the end, h
e saved them by splitting them off into three parts, and releasing most of the excess energy back to the Cosmic source. That knowledge and insight was helpful as well.

The
y emerged, therefore, in three versions: herself, the original, and two replicants–one female and one male. But the process of pulling together the needed resources had not been perfect, and it reduced her slightly, which was why they were all shorter than she had been, originally.

Screw that!

She just needed to reverse the process, re-absorb them into herself, and expend any excess energies that resulted, to return everything back to normal.

Easy-peasy
now, to her mind.

Who was she kidding?

Hell, while she was at it, maybe she could finally make herself a little taller.

But f
irst, she had to experiment with the basic process. From what she had learned, theory was often very different than the actual application. There were variables that could only be experienced firsthand, in the course of actual execution.

She would create a small, basic replicant
in the same, exact way that Om did so, and then re-absorb it.

As she did so, she completely controlled its mental state and did her best to keep it docile and obedient.

As docile and obedient as a fierce little, ten millimeter, doll-like version of herself could be–with even a portion of her defiant mind and temperament.

MicroNaero.

She looked like a fairy with her tiny gravwings. An exact copy, down to its equally tiny, Nytex flight togs, Spacer weapons, and teeny wristcom suicide device. If her micro-copy set off the miniaturized device, it would still blow up, and most likely destroy the entire medbed.

The only thing she cou
ld not replicate, was Womi. He remained far too complex, and continued sleeping on her wrist.

Micro
Naero stood there and crossed her arms, tapping her foot and talking up at her creator with a tiny, squeaking voice.

Naero
barely made out the words.

“
So, what now, Giganta?”

Interesting.
Would all of her replicants have her scintillating attitude?

Naero took a deep breath.

With a wave of her hand she put her little copy into a deep sleep, just in case there could be pain.

She
never wanted to be cruel or indifferent.

Then she transformed and reduced it
–not to raw materials–but a step further, to pure energy. Finally, she re-absorbed that energy–as if it were the simplest thing.

There was some pain
, on her part. She let the energy rush up through her arms too quickly.

That could
be compensated for.

On a whim, she gathered more energy and created several more of the same tiny replicants.

Soon they flitted around her, hands on hips, scolding her, giving her tiny pieces of their tiny little minds.

She’d work on behavior modification later, to make them more coo
perative. That would come along.

Suddenly
, Naero felt weak again, to the point of passing out.

She
quickly reduced her sprites back to glowing pods of proto-energy, and drew their essences back into herself.

The spell of fatigue
quickly passed.

That was also a
good lesson. She had to remember to startap. If she expended too much of her own, primary internal energies, it would drain her and knock her out.

But her two
, life-sized replicants had been formed out of a dangerous excess of energy. That meant, in theory, that when she re-joined them with herself, she would also experience an exponential excess of Cosmic power once again.

Managing all of t
hat at once was going to be tricky.

She started with Naero
II.

She paused and smiled, patting her replicant on the shoulder.

“Sorry, sweetie.” Naero sighed. “Hope you enjoyed yourself.”

Haisha, s
he was starting to sound like Saemar.

For some reason, she suddenly
missed the rest of her family and friends horribly.

Re-absorbing Naero
II went surprisingly fast. Yet within an instant, she was bloated with dangerous, near lethal levels of wild Cosmic energy.

But this time
, she was ready for it.

This time
, she reversed the startapping process. If she could take Cosmic energy from the universe, she could give it back, siphoning the excess power back into the nearest star, and the Cosmic flows that naturally existed around it, her, and everything else in their dimension.

That was the trick.
She didn’t have to keep it all inside of herself and risk exploding. The difficult part was finding a proper outlet, and then surrender the energy with the right matching flow level, to give it back without sucking oneself dry, or blowing up.

That little triumph left her so confident, that she immediately turned to re-absorbing Om.
Get the task done.

Almost immediately,
Naero realized that she was horrifyingly wrong.

Ribbons, tendrils, and tentac
les of incredibly complex, Kexxian infused Cosmic flows, blended biomancy, and teknomancy ripples rose up to defend him.

She warred with the KDM defensive protocols–
dangerously over her head again, without a clue.

The only thing she could think to do was
re-absorb Om instantly, make him a part of herself once more. Then there would be nothing to defend against.

Om
awoke inside of her mind, disoriented and confused, but part of her once more–and so was the KDM.

Then she gasped, fighting against
a sudden swell of tremendous Cosmic energy–a hundredfold greater than before.

Om nearly shrieked in her mind.

Naero! Imperative that we shield our current form in every way possible. A massive explosion and something even worse is imminent. We’ve unleashed it from the protocols and now it is beyond our control. Hurry!

I
’m trying, Om.

Try harder. Do
n’t let up. Otherwise, we will not survive.

The ship, Om. We can’t destroy the ship.

That can no longer be avoided. Destruction cannot be avoided.

Everyone was about to perish, and it was entirely her fault.

Naero used all of the energy she had left, and startapped for even more, covering herself in layered waves of protective force.

Next, she attempted to transport them out into space, as far away from
The Darkstar
as she could.

It won’t work, Naero. Still too close.

Then the air around them went opaque and sparkling blue.

Naero tried to gasp, but could not.

The explosion detonated out from them–yet worse than the explosion, something else erupted from within her–a thing even more terrifying.

The raw energy
of the blast transformed and actually came to life on its own, a ravenous uncontrollable entity of jet-black, Darkforce energy and utter malevolence.

This was her Dark Beast set free on its own, yet still linked with her mind.
Chaos itself and annihilation personified, exactly like the destroying amoeba-like monster of her repeating nightmares, that absorbed and penetrated her very flesh and devoured and crushed her completely: body, will, and soul.

That
’s exactly what it was.

She looked on, petrified with horror as it came to life before her staring eyes and went on a rampage
.

But
it struggled, flipped, and whirled in place.

It couldn’t maneuver properly, and there was
nothing close by to destroy.

Where were they?

Then she heard Womi’s voice.

My,
you are incredibly fascinating–especially for a weakling of your kind. Since we were preparing to explode…I thought it best to remove both us and our Cosmic energies to the Astral Plane.

Her Dark Beast
whirled about suddenly, and looked straight into her.

It
’s ragged maw grinned with knowing recognition.

Then, even worse.
It rushed at her, faded from sight, and melded back with her–once again.

For a few brief seconds, she had
nearly been free of the vile thing, and wasn’t even aware of it. The massive blast had simply let it spring free for a few moments.

Naero realized fully
, therefore, that her Dark Beast wasn’t just part of her.

It was her.

And she was it, too.

Much more th
an Om, she and that terrible, sickening, delightfully wicked, and deliciously seductive force of total, gleeful destruction and abject evil…

Were
all one and the same. Another terrifying paradox.

The very real monster lurking deep within
her, was both
Other
, and also herself–somehow all at once.

Whatever she did, she would never be free of it.