Spacer Clans Adventure 3: Naero's Fury (45 page)

Enel and Surina were in the process of still comforting the rest of the crew.

When she spoke up, the pair screamed in joy an knocked her to the ground.

“Naero! You’re alive,” Surina shouted.

“Haisha! The captain’s back!” Enel yelled. “Alert the entire crew. The captain’s back. She’s alive. Those other reports were all wrong!”

Naero gathered that she had been gone for a little over three standard hours.

Gaviok blasted out of the lift to the bridge and picked his way rapidly through the other crew, pulling them to either side in his joy. He glowed bright pink.

He picked Naero up and repeatedly tossed her up into the air like she was a toy. The mantid was the strongest being she had ever met, besides Baeven.

“Naero!” he shouted. “They said you had perished. I’m so happy to see you alive!”

Naero laughed. “Gaviok! Good…to see…you
, too. Put me down, you crazy bug…Before you…rattle…my teeth loose!”

The reunion with her crew was the happiest Naero had been in many days. She spent
the first half of the hour going through her flagship, personally hugging and talking to everyone.

But the
facts remained–they were all about to go into great peril once again.

The last
half hour, she held a planning session with her officers and department heads. Everyone needed to understand what they were getting into.

At the end of that
hour, Naero transported back onto
The Darkstar
to save time, even though by then, all three ships were docked together.

When everything was set,
Alala opened the hatches leading to the ion cannon control systems.

Naero led her
pacification team in.

This time, Naero
was ready. She and Ty were armed to the teeth, and they brought Baeven, Jia, Gaviok, Danjen, S’krin, Zhen, and Tarim with them. All of them ready to do battle.

Black tentacles and tendrils exploded out of the walls.

Gaviok and Baeven simply ripped them apart. Behind their might, the others fought and blasted their way within.

In less than a minute, Naero, Ty, Jia, and Zhen reached the main controls, while the others fought off the
alien defenses.

Jia attacked the security system directly, backed up by Naero and Tyber, penetrating the defenses with teknomancy.

“I’m keeping the security system from resorting to a self-destruction sequence,” Jia said. “I can’t hold it off forever. You two get in there and shut it down. Disable that security system.”

Alala and Om cut in. “The alien system is trying to take over the rest of the ship and cause it to explode.”

We’re fighting it off, N. This system is powerful and insidious. Destroy it!

Naero and Ty struggled to shut it down. Every time they thought they had a lock on it, it seemed to regenerate and emerge from another place they did not expect.

Ty tore back the shielding on the very core.

Just as Naero
suspected, the security device was completely powered by what appeared to be a small Darkforce generator, the size of a person’s skull.

Positive energy. They needed to use
positive energy directly against this lethal entity. But Jia and the her were both too busy holding the device’s attack abilities off.

“Zhen!” Naero called out. “Attack this thing with biomancy.
”

Zhen hit it with everythin
g she had.

“No good, N. I can’t harm it. Th
is thing absorbs anything I throw at it.”

“No, Z.
Don’t try to hurt it. Heal it. That’s the only way to damage this damn thing.”

Zhen could heal with the best of them now–even Shalaen, and that was saying something.

She put the whammy on the Darkforce core and the entire section bucked and shuddered. She gritted her teeth and poured it on.

The alien defenses started to collapse as the core broke down and dissolved.

Finally the generator imploded, just as Zhen passed out.

Naero caught her as she fell back, and checked on Z’s condition. Her abani was spent, but all right. She had won the day for them.

Jia waded into the core herself, fearless now, dismantling the system as she did all around her, utterly crushing it in waves of teknomancy force, shutting the systems down.

She eradicated any part of the alien defensive tek that remained.

“It’s done,” Jia announced. “Alala, you and all of your tek are now completely free.”

“Many thanks, Alala said.”

Naero carried Zhen out as she started to come to.

Ty and
Tarim both looked a bit concerned.

“Oh, don’t worry, guys. Our great hero here will be all right, as soon as she wakes up. She just needs a nap. Come on, Ty. We’ve got a lot of work to do. Get all your tek monkeys hopping.”

41

When they reached Dotar-2 to begin their assault, Jia linked with the burning
, ravaged sentinel world and cried out in pain.

“We have t
o hurry, the enemy has already overwhelmed and penetrated the planetary defenses. I can’t reach Govae. They may have already taken him. Get us down there, Bae.”

“Naero,” Baeven said. “Let’s start the excitement.”

“Roger that,” Naero said, signaling commands over her wristcom. We’re sending in
The Dagger
to draw the enemy’s fleets off and keep them busy.
The Darkstar
will sweep in and back them up. Next, Baeven, you, myself, and all of our available fighters will assault the surface to find and secure Govae, and take him back from the enemy.”

Tyber called over their secure link.
“Beginning our attacks. Keep Tisa safe for me, will you, N?”

“
I’ll do my best, Ty. Like all of us, she can handle herself in a fight.”

Khai still
hadn’t rejoined them, but they could not wait for him.

Even at the start of a huge battle, Naero
chuckled to herself as they sped toward their objective, packed into the hold of
The Shadow Fox
.

What she would
n’t give if her only problem was just some smitten guy chasing her tail–for obvious carnal reasons. That should be the least of her worries.

Hell, she might even give
a hunk like Khai a shot at the gold ring–if only things were simpler and different. But they weren’t, and nothing seemed simple for her any more. So much complicated, messed up crap in her life. And like usual, she hardly had enough time to catch her breath, let alone attempt to figure it all out.

She would unleash her partial
Dark Beast in battle for the first time, if she must. But she needed to stay in control, and she had not exactly been herself lately. Too much had changed.

Or perhaps she
simply had.

She kept trying to tell herself that h
er Dark Beast was her–part of her. No matter how many times she tried to accept it, it just didn’t seem real. All of that darkness and evil, lurking deep down inside herself.

It was all
her.

It was her.

Herself.

Maybe that was the key to it all somehow, but
Naero just couldn’t see it yet, or know exactly what to do with all of that Gordian knot of self-knowledge.

The
complete solution eluded her. Not that there was always a solution. As with being forced to kill Master Vane, things did not always work out for the best.

Just the opposite in fact.

Warning, Naero. An intense ship-to-ship battle has just erupted among the enemy fleets above Dotar-2.

As planned. How
are our crews doing?

Right in the thick of things.
Arming them and all of our fighters with the new ion cannons was a stroke of genius. They’re devastating the enemy ships, leaving them floating powerless, and then cloaking again.

Sounds about right. Ty
said they were going to draw them off and keep them busy.

The
Darkstar and The Flying Dagger now have the full attention of the enemy fleets
.

Two ships? Just our two ships
and several fighters against hundreds of enemy warships?

That was in fact the plan.
Yet our ships possess the crucial element of surprise–as well as the new improved ion cannons–and all of our current advanced Tek. Both of our forces are zipping in and out, firing rapidly while fully cloaked, systematically neutralizing ship after ship. They’re causing so much confusion that the enemy are panicking, firing in all directions–even zapping each other. The chaos and confusion are nearly complete.

Naero nodded.
Yet that’s all just a diversion. “Jia, any luck locating Govae yet?”

She shook her head. “No, but I’ve realized that something is jamming my senses, somehow.”

Got him. Below the surface at these coordinates. Lead our best fighters down there, Naero. Take the battle straight to the enemy. Jia’s right. There is a strange interference pattern, but I’m scanning another Driathan mind signature besides Jia. Unlike her, all of his life signs are weaker. He must be either damaged or injured. Relaying all of this to the team via their stealth fixers.

Jia paused. “Adjusting my senses to compensate. Yes.
That is Govae. We all have a lock on him now. He’s hurt. Lead us down there Naero. Bae, Gaviok, protect our flanks. Give us time. Keep them off of us.”

Cloaked and on gravwings, they swept forward into the aftermath of a hellish war
zone.

W
aves and piles of wrecked Ejjai gravtanks, gunships, meks, and dead shock troops littered the ground as far as the eye could see.

The attack appears to have been
planet wide over the last week. The enemy has spent nearly an entire Ejjai freezeworld of forces to overwhelm the planet’s formidable defenses.

Another
enemy attack wave swept in before them up ahead, pounding the last defenses and some kind of vast, underground complex that the enemy had penetrated.

All
of the enemy units focused around an open complex in the planet, similar to Jia’s back on Zoa. But this one was being blasted, ripped open, and crushed by force.

The
Shadow Fox
took charge of the landing field and used fixers to set up defensive rings of cloaked auto-gun emplacements. The guns tore up the hapless enemy ships landed there, and held the area against all who turned to attack them.

And the enemy
kept coming, from all directions against any type of resistance.

Next,
Jia used her abilities and their nebula of spyfixers to refit and bring back online, all of the Driathan planetary defenses within ten kilometers of the base. Hi-tek defenses that had taken the enemy days to chew through, at great cost.

She snarled and
opened up on the invaders swarming all around them with considerable fire power from the synthetic planet’s re-activated defenses. The base literally bristled once again with automated, advanced Driathan weaponry and ordnance.

I’m scanning hundreds of Dakkur up ahead.

Enemy assault waves re-doubled their efforts against the stiff, renewed defenses, probing and falling upon them to tear open shields, destroy gun emplacements, and pummel the area once again.

“
Whatever’s going on down in that base,” Naero said, “the enemy’s not about to give up without one hellish fight.”

“
Then lets give it to them. Attack!” Baeven commanded. “Let’s take these bastards down!”

Jia sent in a wave of floating autoguns to clear a path before them.

Her attack wave got blasted to hell, but the drones did their job.

The attack got them down into the complex.

Gaviok and Baeven flashed slightly ahead, tearing apart any Dakkur or enemy stragglers.

No
doubt more foes awaited them up ahead, and more still would eventually pour in behind them.

N
aero and her assault team remained cloaked, sweeping in on gravwings, blasting right through enemy units as they passed overhead. They left death and destruction in their wake as they penetrated Govae’s stricken base.

Om
and their fixers assisted by optimizing target acquisition and fire control.

Naero lead them forward and held back nothing. She unleashed the
full advanced arsenal of her improved combat armor all at once. Multiple weapons and independent AI beam pods. Full spreads of microbombs. Layered waves of target-seeking, predator smartmines. The assault team’s heavy weapons people unleashed close support, rapid fire, phalanx pulse guns.

In a matter of seconds they
pulverized the enemy’s penetration teams to incinerated tek, meat, bone, and dust.

Naero sped through the air
, focusing all of her senses through the enhanced abilities of her third eye.

With
her advanced awareness, she could see up ahead of them.

They’d push forward, only to get stuck in one
heavy firefight after another, as the staggered enemy positions stubbornly turned at bay, and gave ground slowly against the assault team’s onslaught.

They battled within an immense underground
complex that might very well run under the entire planet’s surface. Naero could sense no end to it.

Heavily shielded Ejjai shock troops
had pill boxes and gun emplacements set up at key junctures nearby, backed up by full squads of enemy meks, poised to pour a hail of destroying fire at anything that came at them down the wide corridors of the complex.

The Ejjai were being backed up by hunter-killer units of Dakkur soldier drones, led by Dakkur Champions.

Are we safe here for a bit, Om?

No enemy forces in range. I will alert you if any approach.

“Hold up,” Naero announced. Their assault team gathered in, and she continued.

“I’ve analyzed the area around us. This is no good. This area is too huge. We’ll be fighting in this underground complex for days this way. The enemy has infiltrated the underground base with large numbers of troops. They will eventually wear us down if we keep fighting them head on.”

“What do you advise?” Baeven asked.

“The
enemy’s strategy is both obvious and effective, and we no longer possess the element of surprise. They know we’re here now. But they’re not focused on defeating or destroy us. If they take us down, so be it, but their strategy is purely a delaying tactic. They’re trying to keep us from reaching and rescuing Govae.”

This close, Naero used
Om and her third eye again to precisely locate the other weaker Driathan signal.

“
I’ve located Govae again at these coordinates,” she said, relaying them to her friends. “Our foes have moved him three separate times to evade us. Everybody gather in close. I’m going transport us all into the nearest open juncture to our target, between two enemy holding forces. We’ll surprise them and punch through before the enemy can move Govae again. Then, I’ll transport right in on top of them to delay them, and the rest of you fight your way in to effect the rescue.”

“
We’ll be with you shortly, then.” Jia said. “Help Govae at all costs. We can escape straight up through the complex to the surface if we have to. I can clear the way for us.”

Naero nodded.
“I think we will have to do just that. Be ready everyone. There’s something else. The enemy has Govae trapped in something I’ve never sensed before. Some kind of horrific device that they’re torturing him in.”

Jia
looked alarmed. “They’re trying to break him, to tear his secrets from his mind and destroy him.”

Naero added, “Whatever this thing is, i
ts Darkforce energies are far beyond anything I’ve ever detected before.”

It made the scary
Darkforce generators look like bugs.

“
Naero,” Baeven said. “Be careful. The enemy still has tek we’ve never encountered yet. Don’t let them trap you in it like they have Govae.”

“
Don’t worry about that. Now, let’s hit them hard and rescue Jia’s brother. Ready? We’re all going in hot.”

Naero steeled herself
, startapped, and flashed them in.