Spacer Clans Adventure 3: Naero's Fury (46 page)

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Waves of
strange Cosmic energy thrummed into Naero as she tried to reach Govae.

Yet these waves scorched her with stinging agony
when she tried to tap into them. She gasped and drew back in terror and pain.

The enemy had
somehow tainted and poisoned the Cosmic flows nearby, transforming them into living rushes of Darkforce torment.

Naero did her best to shield herself and charge
d forward through the barrier.

At last she broke through.

But doing so stripped her cloaking away. For the moment, she floated up toward the ceiling unseen.

Dozens of enemy troops barred
her way forward–into the chamber where the enemy was torturing the Driathan sentinel, Govae.

But these forces
were far from normal.

Ejjai, a few Dakkur, even some humanoids and a smattering of other alien creatures. Yet each of th
em looked impossibly weird and twisted.

They glowed
and pulsed from within with strange energies, yellow, orange, red and green. Their flesh had become transparent, like some kind of shifting gelatin or plasma. Some of their veins and bones within them had turned black. They shambled about on patrol, their ruined faces drooping slack–open mouths moved and worked and twitched insanely–as if directed by another will.

Naero gasped.

She had fought against something like this before, at the end of the Annexation War. Back when she faced down the thing that Hevangian Admiral Maximillian Dreth had transformed into. Some kind of energy creature just like these. It had nearly been indestructible.

Then
her heightened senses told her what was going on. All of these creatures were possessed by the Darkforce and something else–oozing with malice. Their physical bodies would only hold up for so long before breaking down and being utterly consumed by the Darkforce. Long enough for the enemy to effect their will and complete their mission.

A G’lothc possession wyrm had activated inside each one of these creatures. This transformation was the result.

It did not matter to the enemy if these host bodies were consumed and destroyed in the course of their efforts. These foul abominations were the very source of the bizarre, poisoned Cosmic energies suffusing them, sustaining them for a short time, and permeating the entire area.

A ravaging G
’lothc spirit controlled each host. Naero could sense them. She was sure of it.

Om, alert the others what we’re up against.

The next instant, several of the things locked on her presence and came straight for her.

They fought with
the same incredible speed and tenacity she had witnessed before, attempting to overwhelm her with their numbers.

T
he sheer weight and ferocity of their attack drove Naero back at their onset.

Naero gave ground, and at the last instant before they overwhelmed her, she unleashed a massive
Cosmic energy blast to fling them back and obliterate a few of them. She was not so defenseless against these things now.

Yet
there were so many. She could not face down an insane horde of this many of the things, unless her friends finally broke through to back her up.

Naero transported to the next section adjacent to that area.

Right among a full platoon of Ejjai meks guarding that location.

Her sudden appearance startled them.

Good.

E
nemy fire erupted as she zipped among them and between their legs, fleeing further down a wide corridor, back toward the area where Govae was being tormented.

Being small and fast had its advantages…sometimes.

Naero took cover behind an immense, load-bearing support beam, while the blaster cannons of the advancing enemy meks chewed away at the structure to get at her.

Naero slowed them down with another Cosmic blast, but that would not hold them back for long. Their numbers were far too many.

She could retreat again, but that would not solve anything. As the meks gathered for another charge, their masters could be making good their escape, with Govae and all of his secrets.

Naero could not allow that.

Time for something drastic; she could not let the enemy delay and beat them.

Gathering all her strength and focus, she
startapped and even dipped deep into her own flows of stored Cosmic energy.

She created
dozens of tiny replicants of herself.

They hovered around her, little gravwings humming like sprites, tiny fists clenched, little faces all determined. Little voices eager to please.

“What do we do, boss?”

Naero drew her advanced blaster
machine pistol and sprayed the advancing enemy with fire.

It barely slowed them down.

As she ducked back, another intense enemy barrage chewed away at the huge support.

Naero
turned to her sprites and jerked a thumb back at their advancing foes.

“
Go get those meks, guys. Get in there and take them down. Each one of you pick your targets and set off a Cosmic explosion!

“
Will do!”

“
You got it, boss!”

“
Let’s get ‘em!”

“
Hey…I don’t wanna explode!”

“C’mon, guys!”

Naero sent them all in. “No arguments, guys. Just get in there and blast the living hell out of those bastards. I have to get past them.”

Her sprites shot away,
determined looks on their little faces.

They
streaked straight toward the enemy meks.

Naero flattened herself on the ground and
threw up the strongest protective shields she had around her.

Within the
corridor and the chamber beyond, the immense blasts and detonations went off, rocking the entire area and nearly collapsing it.

So much for all of those
enemy meks.

The support pillar buckled and crumbled.
Naero herself was flung back down the corridor by the intensity of the resulting blast waves.

Once she gathered her wits, she translocated past the enemy into the
enormous open launching bay beyond.

The attack was getting to
o hot for their foes, apparently.

The
enemy scurried in panic, preparing to depart in the waiting G’lothc cruiser. The damn thing still looked like some kind of mutant, ginormous black squid. More than three quarters of its length was a mass of large, writhing black tentacles and appendages, each ending in a hi-tek weapon.

Naero had seen that enemy ship
unleash a barrage before, and recalled the devastation it could unleash.

No doubt this ship proved invaluable in overwhelming the sentinel world’s significant planetary defenses.

Several heavily armored Dakkur soldier drones, in the same black-black combat armor that their ship seemed to be made out of, hurriedly floated some kind of valuable cargo toward the enemy vessel, under heavy guard.

She zipped in closer and noted the form
of a tall, glowing silver male Driathan, strapped down within the center of a heavy cargo gravpad, with energized restraining bands locking him down.

She counted not one, but six Darkforce generators fastened to his body, feeding off of his energies, tearing at hi
m, and trying to rip out his secrets. They swarmed and writhed all over him like hungry, feasting demons.

This close to him, Naero could sense
Govae’s energies and life force fading. He writhed and shrieked and screamed within a pulsating mass of determined foes–slowly tearing him to pieces.

Naero
’s blood went to jagged ice in her veins.

One of the generators was twice the size of the other normal ones that she had fought before. This larger one seemed to be directing the others.
Even worse.

Just as
the enemy turned a corner, heading for the G’lothc cruiser’s loading ramp, she spotted Danner looking out the faceport of the big generator.

At a glance, she could tell that her insane former brother was completely conscious, and controlling
the generator he was in willingly–suffused within waves and layers of Darkforce energy.

S
he experienced so much Darkforce power that she could see Danner’s skull and his twisted, crippled bones, black to the marrow with flickering energies and dark lightning. Control rods penetrated his head and flesh.

This much larger device was even more horrifying, and
kept Danner and his inner Dark Beast at near critical mass, feeding and siphoning off him at a much high rate.

Danner
had become the enemy’s puppet, tool, and weapon all in one–their primary Darkforce power source.

They were using him to
power their horrific devices and break Govae down into scrap.

The very air and reality around Danner seemed p
oisoned and twisted.

Naero’s
rage swelled to the point that her Dark Beast nearly broke free once again.

She shifted from energy being into a partial Dark Beast form, this one still her normal size, but packed with Cosmic force.

Her Ur-metal battle blades formed in both hands, and her scarlet katanas over them. Blue-violet energy blades jutted out of her armored form.

Naero
enveloped herself in a wreath of Cosmic flame as she fell upon the enemy, spinning and buzzing through their packed ranks at impossible speed. She sliced, kicked, and wheeled through them like an energized buzz saw.

Shredded piece of enemy troops and fighting vehicles burst and exploded, scattered and sprayed all about the landing area and the enemy vessel.

Dozens of the Dakkur commandos converged on Naero like seeker missiles, attempting to hold her off and drag her down by their sheer numbers.

At the last instant
, she translocated right beside Govae.

Her attackers smashed into the deck and each other. Others
bounced off the ship or were absorbed by its activated defensive fields and destroyed.

Naero s
watted Danner aside and focused a Cosmic blast around him that would have obliterated a battleship. She leaped in his place and ripped Govae’s capture pod away from the other five G’lothc generators. She fought with all five of them at once, wheeling and kicking, trying to break free and escape. She nailed the generators with mindforce blasts, disruptor beams from her third eye, sonic blast screams from her mouth, punching and kicking and tearing at the writhing things in her battle fury.

She broke free and leaped away with Govae’s body, and centered another C
osmic detonation on the foes directly behind them.

Her explosion flung her and Govae into the far wall of the hangar, smoking and on fire. The destruction was so intense, that it severely damaged the five generators, Danner as he raced back in, and the
G’lothc ship itself, tearing a great gaping, burning wound out of the side of the enormous living ship itself.

The vessel reeled
and writhed. Naero thought she even heard it shriek psyonically in rage and pain, as it absorbed the wound she had inflicted upon it.

A mass of writhing tendrils and tentacles seized Danner and the other damaged generators
, drawing them inside the strange ship itself.

Within seconds the huge
G’lothc cruiser came fully alive, tearing itself free, calling up shielding, and preparing to shoot away. It hovered about the open maw of the hanger. It didn’t even attempted to swing around so that it could level its guns at them.

Let them run
. Naero remained with Govae, fighting and tearing at the rest of the enemy capture pod, trying to free the Driathan from the enemy’s insidious tek, even as it continued to cling to him.

The pod itself fought her until
she sliced it away from Govae with her blades, and flung it aside.

Naero finally pulled Govae free.
He lay unconscious and nearly dead from what she could sense, or heavily stunned.

The remaining enemy forces
in that area poured into the open hangar from all directions, now that the gigantic squid prepared to depart.

The Dakkur
and legions of Ejjai closed in around Naero and Govae.

A holo of the enemy leader–a Dakkur Champion–appeared in front of the enemy hordes.

“There is no escape. Give us the Driathan and surrender, or else you die, Spack bitch.”

Naero spat on the ground before her.
“No way in hell. Just try to take him, and I will butcher you all!”