Spacer Clans Adventure 3: Naero's Fury (47 page)

The leader smiled his wide smile
of crushing teeth and hissed.

“
Death it is then.”

Naero smiled
her battle smile. “For all of you.”

Their leader held up a claw and forestalled the attack for an instant.
“I am Admiral Korleth Tulkas. One day, I shall see you added to my master’s trophy collection with all the rest of your pitiful kind. You stinking, Spack weaklings, who dare to think and pretend that you are so mighty.”

She recalled his voice
, the one speaking to Ullogk and the others.

Korleth was
just another Dakkur toady as far as she was concerned. But he was also possessed by a G’lothc spirit wyrm that had yet to transform, and that made him even more formidable–once he did.

“
In and take her, my servants, yet keep her alive. We need more of her ignorant kind to power our generators.”

Hundreds of foes ru
shed her.

At first
Naero held them off.

Then she impaled every attacker within ten
meters on multiple rods of Cosmic force, spearing out in all directions.

She detonated the rods, slaying, crippling,
punishing, and wounding foes in expanding waves beyond them.

Naero
plucked up Govae and leaped away.

Baeven and her friends
burst through the complex walls, and fought their way toward her position the next moment.

The
remaining enemy forces spread out and rushed to cut them all off.

A green glowing comet
blasted through the G’lothc ship, severing a handful of the tentacle cannons. It smashed into the Dakkur, scattering them like ten pins.

Khai rose up from the
resulting crater unscathed, and went straight at the enemy ranks.

Units of
Dakkur unleashed a torrent of fire from their advanced weapons, and charged at Khai to mow him down.

Khai ignored their concentrated blasts, completely invulnerable to their heaviest weapons. He waded right through them, his sword
Yii absorbing energy and flashing faster than thought.

Yii
sizzled as Khai flashed through them, blinding energies hewed and sliced the enemy and their tek to bloody, twitching pieces, and disrupting explosions.

“
Unleash the horde!” Korleth Tulkas’ holo commanded.

A
big troop carrier dropped down quickly.

Hundreds of hatches
crashed open, dispensing waves of Dakkur troops. They swarmed toward the attackers, even as they pulled together to defend themselves.

Even Khai could not
destroy them fast enough. He wisely flanked Naero and her friends on the right.

Naero shielded their position briefly, but she knew it could not hold.

Admiral Korleth’s holo swelled to gigantic proportions and drove them on, his amplified voice booming. “Take the three Cosmic Spacks and the other Driathan prisoner. Slaughter all the rest!”

The holo winked out.

Jia took Govae in her arms; his form began to shift as if it were melting. “My poor brother. They’ve murdered him. He’s dying!”

Baeven shouted.
“We’re all going to get murdered here if we don’t do something radical, Naero. Come, my battle brother. It is time for us to teach these scum another lesson–as we once did.”

Baeven began to swell with a mix of both Chaos and Darkforce
energy. Burning green disruptor blades emerged all over him. In an instant he stood ten meters high.

“
You cannot do this,” Naero screamed. “I know! Baeven, if you fully unleash it–you cannot control it. You’ll destroy us all.”

He smiled down at her and Jia
. “Then you two must bring me back before I do–before all is lost, including myself.”

He turned his face toward their foes and snarled. They were about to break through.

“Prince Gaviok. Fight beside me!”

“Ever ready, my brother. We will make them recall the sack of
Koguloth, and the fall and ruin of its dark king and his fierce queens.”

Gaviok
swelled up into his own gigantic mantid battle form, larger than Baeven. He turned jet black in his rage, and smoldered with deep scarlet Chaos flames.

The two of them strode before their comrades and bent to the attack.

Even as the shield collapsed, the Dakkur appeared to recognize them.

The entire horde drew back in stunned terror, shrieking and screaming.

“The Great Slayers! Fall back to the hordeship. The Great Slayers have come upon us!”

The Dakkur hissed in abject fear.
Hundreds of them soiled themselves in terror.

“
They destroyed and ravaged an entire homeworld. How can we stand before them and prevail?”

“
You cannot,” Gaviok roared. “Let the vengeance of the Shai fall upon you!”

He and Baeven charged right into them. And in the tumult and carnage that followed, the Dakkur
armies struggled and battled not to kill–but to flee.

Even Naero had trouble following their swift movements. Baeven and Gaviok fought like enraged behemoths, crushing and mutilating the packed masses of the
ir foes to either side.

They slew them by the score in
blurs and flashes within the space of each second–until the enemy broke, completely terrified and routed.

Gaviok and Baeven ran them down and continued killing them wholesale, destroying everything in their rampage
–even attacking the huge troop carrier.

Naero felt it. Something was wrong.

The severely damaged complex buckled, shuddered, and collapsed–tens of kilometers all around them.

The enemy spr
ang their trap.

“
We have to get out of here,” Naero said. “They’re going to destroy this entire complex, and bury us along with it!”

She led them back toward their only
possible escape route–straight up.

Jia carried Govae in her arms. All of them activated their gravwings and fled the total chaos and destruction taking place behind
, below, and all around them.

Anything living back
down there wasn’t going to stay living for very long.

The G’lothc ship
s rose up and opened multiple wormholes. Many more Dakkur rained down, cutting them off and dragging down into the collapsing structure.

Naero lashed out at
several that fell on her, slaying several before they all slammed back into the unstable structure.

Khai sliced
his way through several dozen more swarming on him.

A
Dakkur champion blasted Jia point-blank with some type of shoulder mounted energy cannon.

Jia screamed
, throwing herself in front of her helpless brother Govae, trying to shield them both.

Naero shattered the thick skull of her last foe with a single rocking kick
. The crushed and broken corpse flung back lifeless.

She turned at bay and
launched herself right into Jia’s attacker. She drove him straight through the thick walls of the complex and into the next section. All while the many levels all continued to cave in.

The c
hampion commando swatted her back through the breach with an energized tail lash.

Only Naero
’s own shields and Cosmic protections kept her from being sliced in half.

Khai broke free and
struggled to keep the enemy horde from seizing the stricken Driathans. He slew many with Yii as they piled at him.

Naero’s allies rallied around Khai, fighting back to back. They seized Jia and Govae and attempted to fly out.

The champion exploded out of the breach and grappled with Naero, dragging her down, crushing her to the ground. She struggled to break free, strength against raw strength.

Her Dakkur opponent
pulsed with his own dark, tainted energies.

And transformed right before her, while she still wrestled with it.

She had not expected it to shift shape, but there was more than one of the foul presences contained within its rippling form.

Black tentacles
and extra snapping heads and raking claws and constricting limbs exploded out from the thing. They grappled and shot out and enveloped Naero, dragging her down by surprise and wrapping around Naero’s throat and face. The things throttled, and strangled her, tearing at her and scorching her with Darkforce energy as they tried to absorb and devour her.

The howling maws of the thing raved
.

“
This Spack bitch is far more dangerous to us now than we ever guessed. Should we destroy her now? Yes, indeed. Yes, let us kill her, now. Tear her apart! Kill her, and consume her flesh!”

Naero struggled to
keep fighting. She struggled to even breathe.

She fired Cosmic lightning
right through the Darkforce-infused abomination, but it stayed on top of her, crushing and twisting her to death each second. More of the things continued to boil out of the one.

A bright flash.

Yii’s shining blade scorched its way through everything it touched.

Her attacker
shrieked in rage and pain and drew back, releasing her.

Khai severed all of the dark tentacles choking her
in one bright, expert stroke. Yii missed Naero by a millimeter as it sliced through a ravenous enemy skull, trying to rip at her face with its jaws.

Khai sliced the vile things away fr
om her like a surgeon, and the roiling, twisting abominations vanished in bright flashes of Cosmic energy. Naero gasped and choked down air as she fell free, struggling to recover.

Khai glanced down at her in
brief concern, and then strode toward their foes, undaunted.

“
The G’lothc were wisely exterminated from the universe once before,” Khai told them. “Their immense evils shall not be allowed to return. Go back to your Void of death, foul spirits. Your vile kind shall not be allowed to prevail here–now or ever!”

A dozen of them boiled together and tried to shift and combine with each other, swelling to huge proportions to fall upon the Enforcer.

Yii flared and incinerated an entire ring of the fell things, all about them.

The possessed Dakkur
yielded and gave way before such might. They pulled back slightly and gave ground, avoiding Khai and his amazing sword directly. They fended off Khai’s probing feints and thrusts with bursts and blasts of Darkforce energy. Even those energies disrupted each time Khai’s sword came against them.

Yii co
uld negate the Darkforce itself.

More
foes transported in and sought to overtake him from behind.

Naero flashed back in, wheeling and kicking, battering them away.

She nailed them with blue-violet lightning from her blades and gutted them.

Nae
ro and Khai fought side by side and back to back with their glowing blades as the shifting things cut them off and sought to drag them down again by sheer weight of numbers.

In less than a standard minute, the circle of death about Naero and Khai grew over their heads, as the two of them c
ut down and shredded any foe that came within their reach

Ruined, blasted enemy faces and severed heads and limbs writhed and snapped, and twisted among the quivering mass of the enemy fallen.

The fell G’lothc spirits animating the violated mass of flesh chortled, still manipulating their broken hosts, grim voices speaking in unison.

“
Ahhh…the Swordmaster of the Cosmic Prophecies, doomed to fail and die alone. The preening Oden half-breed, and his little Ur-metal stick that he prizes so much. We have long planned how to deal with you and your meddlesome race, wretch. Yes, indeed. We shall deal with your upstart kind–once and for all! You shall become our slaves. All shall feel the weight of our yoke.”

“
Wrong, you vile demons. You will perish before the light of my blade. You have no weapons that can harm me!”

The monster
s laughed. “Servants, drag this fool down and kill him before our eyes. Seize the female. We command it to be so!”

Most of the
remaining possessed Dakkur broke off fighting with the others. All of them rushed in and fell upon Khai and Naero, dragging both heroes back down with them into the depths of the collapsing abyss.

Several of the
monsters swept at Naero as they all fought in mid-air, shifting form, shrieking and grinning.

“
We’ll finish with you, Spack whore–after we’ve slain this green fool.”

Naero used her gravwing to try to rise back up. Khai tried to fight free as well, but the enemy was bent upon pulling them down
, and ripped at them and piled on to bury them.